Visual Riffs

The visual riff, as I’m defining it here, would be an easily identifiable sequence of images within the larger ongoing stream, where the photographer is making a very conscious, deliberate attempt to repeat some obvious visual idea, with a dash of improvised variation. Hopefully eye-catching and clever, the riff has a clear beginning and ending. Its purpose is to catch the viewer’s attention as a specific visual phrase that stands out from the rest of the photostream. In the sequence of images above, we see a riff on the visual idea of the bicyclist, with each image involving a different scene, person, and post-processing. A riff might entail such possibilities as:

- several images of the same scene, shot from different perspectives or using different shooting techniques

- the same exact photo post-processed in different ways

- the same unusual post-processing technique applied to different photos

The visual riff is similar in some respects to what photographers might intend when they create a collage or organize their images into sets, as they often do in online photosharing communities. A difference, I’m suggesting, is that the riff is a sequence of images, one after the other, which implies a progression, temporality, and rhythm, as in the notes of a riff in music. Because a collage is a presentation of images as a Gestalt whole, it automatically suggests a sense of intended unity. So too a set, because it was created as a collection organized according to some shared similarity, has a built-in sense of unison. The integrity and cohesiveness of the riff, on the other hand, comes from the persistently or “stubbornly” repeated visual element across a series of photos.

Why bother with visual riffs? First of all, we humans often derive some pleasure from the familiarity of reiteration. As Prince said, there is joy in repetition. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that creativity often thrives when certain restrictions are placed on it. If you are forced to shoot the same exact scene from different perspectives, or to experiment with different ways of post-processing the same photo, or to find another clever place to put that coffee cup, you will be exercising your creative muscles and visual sensitivities. When you present the best of these images as a riff within your online photostream, you are encouraging other people to share your realization that, “here’s a persistent visual idea, but there’s more than one way to see, think, and feel about it.”

- source: http://truecenterpublishing.com/photopsy/riffs.htm

The visual  element repeated in this case is the self portrait which appears in 9 of the 10 images in the series. It creates consistency even if the word in each image changes. 
With regards to its symbolistic meaning, it represents my mind and which acts like a screen displaying different mental states on a daily basis.