Since a young woman, I take self-portraits with a variety of
photographic media. Very often I take self-portraits to re-enter my
life, feel an emotion, and authenticate that I am here. I recognize
that photography enables me to feel strong and reclaim myself. I use
the camera as a method for healing, and through my work I overcome my
weaknesses. Knowing and accepting whom one is, how one looks and what
one wants—is very important to me as a woman. This project is a
philosophical reflection about aging, accumulation and identity.
I have looked at myself throughout the years in many different
circumstances: obsessions, addictions, reveries, deepest depressions,
stigma, abuse, healing, and sexuality.Yet, I always seem to be doing
it in the context of a more external conflict. As I look back at these
portraits, I realize there seems to be a block between the expression
of my feelings and the way I traveled and lived in the world. It is as
if I want to remove myself from my reality and hide. Yet, that's just
a protection, a skin, and a veil. Meanwhile, the point of my life is
to be exposed, and the point of my vision is to be vitally opened and
able to bleed. This is my way of knowing that I will prevail.
Contemplating the hurts I've buried and the disappointments in my
career I have hidden, while making sense of all the styles that I have
embraced in photography—this project is an intervention into myself.
Through these self-portraits, I force myself to look at the material
below the surface of the picture planes: the codes, thoughts, emotions
and colors. These self-portraitures are guides into my life beyond the
veil. Focusing intensely on these images is an outlet to transcend the
physical and look for something internal. I can't go back and retake
these images. I can't recreate this story or the self-portraits in the
same way. I cannot hide. These self-portraits function as a conduit
for tearing myself apart and rebuilding my self-esteem.
There is a value on how one person, one woman, saw these sixty years
of her life. This is my life.
