So I initially had this idea of taking a picture of myself through some water to distort the image in some way. I began with taking a picture of myself over rippled water, but I didn’t feel like it was telling enough. I decided to go with a “glass half full” of water and to photograph me from the other side (the only reason it’s a measuring cup is because I don’t have any clear cups). It is very plain in the background, keeping the subject of the photograph focused. The half full portion of the glass causes the lower half of my face to seem enormous, and the glasses shadow keeps a trapezoid-like shape around the bottom of the frame, due to the light source coming from above and behind me. I used similar tactics Duchamp used by using ordinary household items and photographing them in a subtly artistic way.

So the “what” in this picture is simply me looking somber next to a poster of the great Lionel Messi playing soccer. The “how” is using simple Snapchat graphics (which is meant to add humor) on top of the sadness of my face and the intensity of Leo’s. With the graphics I created an upside down triangle (also very symbolic in reference to who won the award and why he won it) in the center of the photo, with the right and left sides being blue, maintaining symmetry. This hopefully causes the viewer to draw their attention from my tears to Leo’s to the golden soccer ball with a red X through it, signifying the “why” of the photo, which is that both Messi and I are very very disappointed that he didn’t win the award for best player on the planet, which comes in the form of a golden soccer ball trophy.