In his photographic and textual montage, author Jason Lewis reveals his struggle with the concepts of personally constructed and appropriated identities using nine squares to lead the viewer on an immensely abbreviated journey of his life. In his preface, Lewis compares his life to the age-old adage of cats and their “nine lives”. Lewis argues that people, too, live many different lifestyles during their one lifetime; with each temporal fragment contributing to the collective self at its most present state. In “Nine”, we are first introduced to Jason via his “native, original” identity: Edward Gutherie. However, shortly afterward we are reintroduced to him via his “white, adopted” identity: Jason Lewis. The sequential presentation of these two identities creates an opposition – who is the author? Jason or Edward?. The piece continues to argue that perhaps it is impossible to choose just one identity, and (judging by his pen-name, Jason Edward) I would say that presently Jason has combined both of his pasts to create who he is today.
In the beginning of “Nine”, we are introduced to a young man who is haunted by his mysterious past. Though he was aware of his origins, the protagonist did not reach out to his Native American brethren until 1988 while he was in college. Despite his attendance to a powwow, Jason still felt somewhat out of place. As he states, “Among other natives, I’m native…somehow“. The lengthy distance between his past and that present moment proved to be a problematic barrier in his quest for self-discovery, though. Struggling to create a connection between his two seemingly different personas, Jason began defining himself simply by his surroundings. If he was around natives, he was native – if he was in Berlin, he was somehow Turkish – and if he was in Indonesia he was some “rich guy from Jakarta”. However, defining himself by his physical and cultural location was merely a means of escape, and soon his past began catching up with him. As Jason concludes, “My brothers and my sisters from the island are chasing me”.
There is not an obvious reconciliation of Jason’s two identities at the end of “Nine”, instead the struggle of identity replays itself for the viewer-while simultaneously morphing the images into various mismatched puzzles. If we judge by Jason’s name used in authorship, we might assume that he has come to terms with the duality of his past. But then again, perhaps the puzzle replays itself as way of saying that is never an absolute reconciliation between our diverse personas. Maybe the struggle with identity is an ongoing process, the makings of those “nine lives”, that lasts throughout our entire lifetime.