Self portrait

The differences between the literal and the figurative do matter. There was a reason Cezanne painted the same mountain over and over, beside his ability to see it from the front door of his home. Painting is a form of self-identification, of finding the self in something other than the self--a series of gestures that reach outward to reach inward. The painting I most admire is not painting necessarily that looks like the thing(s) it's painting--though that kind of representation in paint is fine too--but the painting that looks like what that particular painter is seeing. 

I had an idea some time ago that I never did anything about, fairly typical behavior I'm sorry to report: rather than using a photograph for official identification (passport, driver's license etc.) the applicant would be required to make a self-portrait. The image would, of course, have to present a clear identifying likeness of its bearer, and would be accompanied by language for unmistakable clarity--height/weight/sex/eye color/DOB/SSN--the standard-issue bureaucratic info. 

I scoured Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Representation", finding support for the idea. Common sense too indicates the requirement that every citizen to create a self-portrait is an ideal merging of literal and figurative instincts, a real bridging of the ideological gap, an effort not unlike the great national work projects of the 1930s which encouraged a renewed commitment to the notion of personal responsibility so crucial to successful citizenship.