When looking for interesting coolhunts about identity I came across this project of a photographer named Kasimir Szekeres. He asked himself "What happens when hipsters and Muslims switch clothes? The results are six personal portraits about today's zeitgeist, religion, stereotyping and identity.
"The greatest challenge is to take control over your own identity. The whole of society is tugging at you. You're Muslim, you're Palestinian. People create an identity for you and with that self-fulfilling prophecy is born. But in the end, your identity is liquid and always developing" says Stryder, one of the photographed persons.
It's an interesting statement to say that people create an identity for you, I think there is so much truth in that. Now more than ever we are putting people in boxes. In my previous blogpost I wrote about how our identity is more than our job. It's the things we like, love and do best. But those things aren't visual from the outside, are they? We can create an identity by adjusting our looks to a certain stereotype. Just like that a whole new identity can be created. What does that say about our true identity and how truthful is our own identity?
If we look at this photo series, their true identity isn't obvious at all, because either of them could have been the hipster and either of them could have been the muslim. Identities are easy to manipulate nowadays. But is is something that keeps getting bigger or can we state the opposite?
Whatever it is, we can say for sure that it will get a lot easier to choose and shape your own identity in the future. Because of globalization and the information society we live in we have a 24/7 acces to everything that happens around us. In search of our own identities, our cultures, opinions and styles are overlapping. Although we are putting people in boxes now more than ever, the boxes also overlap more and more which creates a world full of shifting identities.
If you want to read more about this photo project, check out Kasimir's website.
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