a self reflection

Self Portraits are always a challenge. How do I want the world to see me, how do I want to be portrayed, what am I trying to say, and who cares? These are all questions that flooded my mind while attempting to properly document myself. In this digital iPhone age, everyone is always taking selfies and photos of themselves, we have gotten quite good at it actually, maybe too good. Despite taking an “outfit of the day” photo every day in the mirror, there was a large jump between the casual selfie or outfit photo, to a meaningful self-portrait that I felt accurately represented how I felt in that moment and how I saw myself. This was an entirely personal experience and I learned a lot, I’ve never shared these images before either. It truly was an exploration of the self through the photographic medium.

Now about the images. I could get all technical about how I set up my tripod and used my phone to trigger the camera, but I’m pretty sure I am the only one who cares about that technical stuff. As I mentioned before, these images were a self reflection, a challenge. I had been toying with some other ideas and concepts, but none of them were working and I was hating the way I looked in the photos as well. It was getting late, so the streetlights outside my window were starting to shine through my living room and cast a beautiful red shadow and light on my wall. You can really only see this late at night when the streetlights are at their brightest and all the lights in the dorm are off. I was sitting at my desk brainstorming and drawing, trying to come up with ideas at 1am, the day before this “project” was due. I told myself “man I really wanna shoot with that red light someday”, and once I said that I realized that thats exactly what I needed to shoot. I loved the way my shadow was being cast on the wall, I didn’t actually have to be in the photo. That solved one of my main problems. Once I got everything set up, I started to actually enjoy incorporating depth in the scene with myself in the frame. I threw in a mirror and rolled with it. The more photos I took, the better I felt, and the more personal it became. I started to create this scene that I was documenting, It was me late at night just thinking. I was dealing with my emotions, looking at my reflection and shadow, three different versions of me in the photo. Neither version is less real or wrong, they were all representations of me, and I wasn’t sure which to listen to. This is when It became more than a selfie, it was a self reflection being documented. This is why this photo matters to me, it’s more than a selfie, it’s personal. These photos were definitely not planned, they kind of just happened, and I think that is what makes them even more impactful.