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I started pointing the camera at myself when I was very young. Partly because I was the subject closest at hand, but also because I was exploring identity through image making.
I doubt I would have decided to follow a creative career, had it not been for a course on “sex and sexuality in contemporary art” I took while at uni – and more importantly the support of Rune Gade, who was teaching the course. Until I met Rune, I had kept my self-portraits more or less secret.
In June 2008, when I had just joined artreview.com, critic Laura McLean-Ferris wrote a bit about my work in relation to anonymity in Roundup #10:
“…interestingly, much of the work explores portraiture as a representational trap, and many of her images of women in particular are fragmentary images of body parts, such as legs and stomachs.
The figures here seem caught in a bind, unable to represent themselves through image-making. The viewer, the photographer and the subject are all part of a process of refusal and small resistance.”
I like this in relation to the self portraits, since to some extend the viewer, photographer and the subject are one and the same, and still there is the same process of resistance going on.
I think the self-portrait genre is considered a little embarrassing and improper, there is a certain vulnerability about it, putting yourself out there at the risk of everybody regarding you as a narcissistic exhibitionist. However ourselves and our mortal coil ought to be one of the subjects we know best. I think it is a question of daring to be honest.
The self-portrait above was shortlisted for the BJP International Photography Award, single image category & exhibited at Vision 09.
When I was pregnant I photographed myself and my growing belly every few weeks. The images were uploaded to my Flickr diary. We jokingly called the resulting series The Architecture of Art, making the connection between two different kinds of creation; the construction of a child (Arthur, my son) and the much less wondrous making of an image.
I find the human shape and the changes it goes through very fascinating, after all our minds are bound to it, as is our feelings. If you think about it, that is really very hard to relate to or comprehend. When I photograph I think I’m trying to capture a glimpse of what goes on behind the skin, the combination of feeling and flesh, or somehow translate the bodily experience.
Every day Flak Photo features a new photo, which shows up on my Facebook Home page. Today it was this image by Susan Worsham. There’s some really interesting, odd and inspiring work on her website.
“SOME FOX TRAILS IN VIRGINIA
This series of photographs is taken in and around Virginia, the place in which I grew up. The title comes from a book written by my father’s ancestor, to show the lineage of the Fox family in Virginia. For my own purpose, it acts as a metaphorical map, of the rediscovered paths of my childhood home.
At the age of 34, I came back to Virginia to care for my mother, who died shortly after my return. As the last of my family passed, I turned my lens to old friends, and their new families. I photographed the house in which I grew up. The man that lives there now houses snakes in my father’s old office, and rests them in my old bedroom, while he changes their cages. My mother always promised that there were no snakes in my room, and now that she is gone, there are.”
