Why Self Portraits Are Important To Me

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Hi friends! I thought that since I have the self portrait workshop coming up at The Light Factory on October 23rd here in Charlotte, in person. So this will be my first in-person Workshop in a few years, I’m very excited!  But since I have that coming up, I wanted to talk about self portraits and why I take them and why they’re important to me.

So to give you a little back story, if you’re new. Wow, these mosquitoes are coming after me right now. If you’re new here, I’ve been taking self-portraits since 2010, maybe a little bit before. Actually, definitely before since I got a camera when I was 16, so that was in what? 2006? 2007? 2006… 2006. So even though I was probably taking naked self portraits before I was 18 that I will not share because I was underage and that’s really creepy for other people to see. 

Self portraits have been really important to me. At first, when I was younger, when I first started taking photos at first, it was just, I was the easiest subject to find for my photos. I didn’t have to have another person with me to take photos of them. I could just take photos of me to practice and learn my camera. But as time went on, I learned that I somehow felt more connected to myself when I took self portraits. I feel like I could learn more about myself and experience my emotions in a deeper way through self portraiture.

And I think that’s because a lot of times when I’m feeling something and experiencing something I don’t have a mirror or camera in front of me, so it’s all kind of abstract like in my head and in my mind and in my body with like the way that I was feeling… but once I started taking self-portraits, the way that I felt became something that I could see and seeing it helped me experience it more.

I don’t know if you have heard of aphantasia, but I have aphantasia, which is where you don’t have a Mind’s Eye. So I can imagine things, but I can’t see anything when I’m thinking about it. Like I can’t see anything in my head, I can’t visualize. I can like, remember what things are like, because I’ve seen them before and I like, remember it, but I don’t actually see anything in my head. I can’t like, oh, I’m going to imagine a unicorn with rainbow hair and sparkles and it’s going to be prancing across on a rainbow.

Like, I can think about those things, but I can’t see them in my head. And it took me a while to realize that that’s not a normal thing… or well, okay, maybe I don’t want to say that. It took me a while to realize that people could actually see things in their head and I couldn’t. Self portraiture, since I don’t visualize self portraiture helps me actually like make the things that I think about or the ways that I feel more tangible and more real, because I can see them because a lot of times things don’t quite feel real if I’m just thinking about them. But once it’s something that’s visible and tangible than it becomes a lot more real to me. 

And I, I got into a much deeper relationship with myself through self portraiture when I was on my cross country road trip in 2019. I was going through a lot like, personally, emotionally, romantically. Yeah, mentally, like life things were pretty wild. That was during my Saturn return. If you’re into astrology, at all, you know that a Saturn Return usually like turns your life upside down, or it can.. and it definitely turned mine upside down. So, I was processing a lot of feelings and a lot of like, Unknown. And I was able to process in a much deeper way because I took so many self portraits on that road trip. 

And I learned so much about myself. I mean, if you’ve been around since then, you know that I realized I was non binary like right after I came home from that trip. It really helped me get to know myself and understand myself on a deeper level, through actually being in my body and allowing myself to feel all my feelings while I was taking self portraits and then looking through them later, realizing oh wow, I’m a real person, I have real feelings, and I can see that, and I can like experience that all over again when I look at the photos. So self portraits mean a lot to me. They have allowed me to connect to myself in a deeper way than I ever have been able to before. 

And I took a bunch of self-portraits either at the end of 2020 or early 2021 that I haven’t gone through yet, that I’ve talked about already, that I have a members only like webinar hangout thing where we’re gonna go through them together. I’ve already scheduled it, you’ll get a post about it when it’s coming up, I have like notifications that I’ll come onto the website to remind you like hey, this is happening soon! So that’ll be in like mid-November (the 18th at 6pm EST!).

But those self portraits took that we’ll be looking through are really emotional and really personal to me and I’m feeling emotional thinking about them. Yeah, I really let myself feel all of my feelings when I was taking those photos and it was kind of scary and it was definitely vulnerable and I’m kind of nervous to share them with you, especially in their raw form where I haven’t done anything to them and can see all of them. But I’m also kind of excited, because I don’t really want to hide myself from y’all, like you’re supporting me so much by being here, so the least I can do is not hide myself from you. 

So, I hope you join me in November (the 18th at 6pm EST!) when we go through those photos together because it’s going to be scary, but it’s gonna be awesome! They’re pretty dark, and I definitely cried when I was taking them, and yeah, it’s gonna be a lot but it’s going to be great. 

To give you a little tiny bit more information about them before I end this video. I took them in my sister’s house after she moved out, and it was empty, before she sold it. And that’s where I was living when a lot of not-so-great things happened to me, and I had some not so great experiences there, so it was like my Releasing that house and the feelings that I felt in that house through feeling my feelings and taking self portraits in the house once it was empty. So it was a great release for me. And yeah, I’m laughing because I’m like trying to hold back tears. 

Yeah, so I feel like self portraits are really important for me personally, in order to more fully embody how I feel and to more fully experience my life through creating them. So I hope you have enjoyed this video of me being kind of emotional and talking about self portraits. Yeah. 

I think that’s all I have to say right now. I really appreciate that you’re here. It means the world to me. I couldn’t do any of this without you, so I appreciate you and I hope you enjoy what I share. I love you!