Tarek Fahmy: Cultural Critic

My Facebook profile image has become a digital canvas of sorts. My profile pictures are almost always doctored in photoshop. At times it’s just a traditional self portrait. In some instances I created a digital montage instead of the traditional self portrait.

Cindy Sherman and Lucas Samaras come to mind while looking at these portraits. They both utilized their own visage in their work. Cindy’s work was more of a cultural critique concerning women’s role in society and Lucas was more of an introspective artist, looking inside himself to explain existence in a sense.

I have a history of drawing and painting portraiture so this comes naturally to me. Below is a selected few of my ‘Facebook Profile Portraits’.

The following semi-doctored and color corrected screenshots are of the World Cup finals that took place yesterday in South Africa (07.11.2010) between the Netherlands & España.

The selected images were carefully chosen to tell my narrative of the match; the side that believes that the Dutch played borderline aggressive/dirty the entire match and were lucky they weren’t given more red cards (disqualifications) throughout play.

This continues my blog series entitled ‘Postmodern: I Take Pictures of Pictures‘. This time i chose the world cup finals match using ESPN’s highlight video footage.

The Red Card (The Ejection)

THE GOAL

The year was 2000. I was 26 years old and a year removed from receiving my BFA. At the time I was working at the Zimmerli Museum as an Art Handler and had dreams of acting in film or theatre. In my undergrad years I took 4 acting classes with this amazing professor that studied with Stella Adler.

I needed head-shots. In the back of the New York Post I found this fairly cheap photographer advertising her services in NYC.

photographer

If you look at her business card it only has her first name, definitely a fake name. Back then, my private eye skills were lacking big time. Her studio was located in a loft in NYC and looked pretty legit.

She took the black and white head-shots and at the end asked me if she could take an extra roll of color film, free of charge. She fed me some line that my face is interesting and she’ll try to sell these extra color pics of me over seas and it could be great exposure for me. I got a little excited but was unsure of her intentions!

Bellow is one of the B & W head-shots that she took of me that day. The quality is substandard.

headshot

After she took these horrible head-shots she persuaded me to stay a bit longer and pose for the color prints. She, off-course, took out a release form and I signed it nonchalantly. I didn’t even blink because I just wanted extra PICS in my acting portfolio and never thought that these imags will end up anywhere.

Off-course she tells me to make weird and funny faces which comes naturally to me. I’ve been making funny faces since my 9 month stay in my mother’s womb!

extra PIC

She gave me the above digital printout as a memento and send me off. The above photo session occurred on September 21, 2000.

Fast forward to April of 2003. I receive an email from friends in Naxos Greece telling me that my picture is in a magazine called ‘TELE-satellite’. Date of the email April 28, 2003.

kamari letter

I felt excited and angry at the same time. I didn’t know what to do so I contacted my father’s friend Marty. He referred me to a law firm that specializes in this sort of thing. In my excitement I completely forget that I signed a release form with the head-shot photographer.

I call the law firm, set up an appointment and go the following week. On June 4, 2003 they agreed to take on my case on a contingency basis; agreeing to take 25% of whatever money I may get from Samsung.

retainer letter

I signed the above letter and the case against Samsung officially started. It took us (lawyers and I) a month to do research about Samsung and who designed this advert for them. The lawyers strategy was to embark on a letter campaign, scare off Samsung, and force them to agree on a substantial settlement out of court.

We also found the image on Samsung’s website:

samsung website snap

The first letter goes out on July 1, 2003, to Foote, Cone, & Belding, the firm believed to be responsible for designing the advert.

2nd letter to fcb marketing

3-letterto-fcb-marketing-b

On July 15th FCB responded and bought Samsung a little more time denying any involvement in the design of the advert. At the time, FCB did a substantial amount of design and advertising work for Samsung.

4-fcb-response

On July 21st, we send another letter to FCB:

5-2ndletterto-fcb

While all of this was happening I was unsure as to whether I singed a release form or not. I wanted to go ahead with it since we were demanding 250K. That’s a lot of money not to take a chance on. My memory was selective at this point!

Finally, on August 5th my lawyers sent a letter to Samsung directly.

6-final-letter-to-smasung-1

7-final-letter-to-smasung-2

The moment of truth was nearing. It didn’t take too long for Samsung to give us the final decisive reply.
On August 27, 2003 Samsung responded.

8-samsungresponse

Accompanied off-course by the release form that I nonchalantly singed back in 2000!

9-releaseform

I knew it all along but had to try. I am also lucky that the lawyers I hired didn’t get upset and sue me in return. They understood that I forgot about it and also took the chance with me to make some money.

Their final letter to me was sent on August 29, 2003.

10-lawyersfinalletter

To me, it’s a great story to tell my grand kids. I never expected anything to come out of the extra color photographs that the photographer took at the end of our head-shot session. Before I hired the lawyers I went back to her loft where her studio was located and her business moved locations. The door person further informed me that many other people went back looking for the photographer for the same reason. Her main business was not head shots, it was selling stock photography over seas.

The advert was translated in many languages and circulated all over Europe and northern Africa. I bought 10 copies of the TELE satellite magazine from Barnes & Noble as well.

tele-satelite

By the way, I love this story and it makes me feel proud and lucky more then anything else. The money would have been icing on the cake but the experience was fun!

Social networking sites have become an important tool in marketing your business, gaining an audience, and translating that audience into clients. Part of these business pages, whether they are on Facebook or other sites, have avatars/profile pics. It’s the first thing that the end-user sees. These avatars are usually neglected and not catchy or conceptual. More often then not they are the business’s logo or a stock image that is thrown in there with no connection what so ever to the product. These avatars need more attention!

I believe that businesses should start devoting time and energy in designing thoughtful and aesthetic avatars for their Facebook pages, and ALL OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES that they are involved with. These so called avatars should become an integral part of any identity/branding system. The corporations’ style guides should contain specs for each social networking sites avatars.

As a designer, the first thing that I look at is what I like to call the ‘canvas area’. The space that the given social networking site allocates to each user to display their profile pics/avatars. After finding out the maximum dimensions, create something that suits your business conceptually/aesthetically and that ALSO fits in with the surrounding area; the site itself or in Fine Arts terminology - the background.

A good example of that is my VIMEO avatar. I used a background color that I copied from VIMEO. I also made my avatar snug, it fits aesthetically with the entire page (rounded corners on the top and sharp corners on the bottom) as well as my current mini-branding campaign.

Do not neglect those avatars because whether we like it or not, first impressions do matter especially when the competition is everywhere.