Last Wednesday I attended an art show showcasing the work of Nicholas Carbonaro. I found the art to be quite fascinating to look at, as it was not exactly what I would call “typical.” Instead of paintings of people that display a type of  perfection not usually found in real life–faces that most would consider to be “beautiful”–Carbonaro’s work depicted faces that appeared distorted (I think that most people would prefer to not share any image of themselves that looks like that). However, Carbonaro himself pointed out that usually the images of people that we see on social media, such as selfies, do not accurately display how a person often looks, but instead depict a brief–and often fabricated–moment of perfection. Just from looking at photos of people on social media, one might suspect that most people look “perfect,” but in reality they usually do not.

We usually think of people as being symmetrical–as in, if you were to fold someone in half vertically, their two sides would line up perfectly. However, this is not actually the case. Nobody is 100% symmetrical–not even when it comes down to facial features. Carbonaro showed this in his art by exaggerating these asymmetries in someone’s face (such as having eyes of two different sizes), which caused them to be more noticeable. Nobody would mistake someone in Carbonaro’s art as being symmetrical. Although the people in Carbonaro’s art do not necessarily look like the people in photos on social media, they are, in a way, more accurate depictions of people, as they draw focus on the imperfections that we all possess.