A SELF-PORTRAIT

We all live without ever having seen ourselves as others see us. A self portrait is a view of ourselves from the outside. We are all living in our bodies, looking out at the world and others. We never see ourselves as complete figures in a context. All we have is the POV perspective. There is the occasional look into a full length mirror, but our lives are lived in a ongoing view of everything from the inside out.

A self portrait reverses this perspective. For ages it was done as a drawing or painting. The result is usually one image that is shaped by a mix of unconscious and conscious intentions and limited by the degree of artistic abilities. It grows slowly during the making of it and it is the domain of few. Photography is a completely different medium which allows us a whole different control over the resulting images. In the new age of digital photography we are able to record many exposures and immediately review the results and discard the ones that don’t conform to our ideas of what it should be, meaning how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by the world. It would get very complicated and reach into the deepest corners of ourselves to try to explain what determines that decision. I call it instinct. I think it is the totality of what we are as an individual that expresses itself in those choices and how we do the photo to begin with.

Normally a self portrait is an image of ones face or body in an isolated setting, usually focused on the facial expression. What I would call my self portraits are images that depict me in some kind of context.

For many years I have been taking trips into the desert a few hours to drive from Los Angeles, where I live. The wide open space of the desert with isolated locations that are void of other humans and of manmade things are my favorite location to let my thoughts and emotions run free. At these places I like to place my camera and open a suitcase of props and clothing that have special meaning for me. I am imagining myself in a different time of the place I’m at.

I make images in which I act out what goes through my mind at the time, but not only in the here and now. This is fictional but also real. During the process ideas emerge and take shape. The resulting images seem controlled and staged but are improvised. They most likely don’t conform to the common understanding of what a self portrait is, but for me they are traces of my having been here which I want to leave behind.