Self-portraits are by no means a revolutionary concept. In fact, they might even be a huge cliche at this point. But, I decided a goal of mine this year to do a year-long self-portrait series.
Usually, I’m not a huge fan of new year’s goals or resolutions, as I fall much more into the mindset of you don’t need to wait until January 1 to set and chase a goal, change habits, or strive towards change. You can start literally any day, any second.
But the timing worked out for this one, so it’s now a 2024 project.
There really aren’t any rules for this beyond doing one self-portrait shoot every month of the year. Ideally, as the year goes on and I get more skilled at self-portraits and get some momentum going, the concepts will vary widely. As I brainstormed some ideas and took to social media to look for some inspiration, I found everything from intense studio shoots to simple backyard shoots, and as much as possible, I want to push myself to try new things and expand my comfort zone.
I also know life will get busy or the weather won’t be ideal or something else will come up and force me to get creative, and that’s all part of this, too. The rules are loose, because at the end of the day this is a personal project and I can do what I want/ what feels right for me.
There are two main reasons I want to do this project this year and what I want to get out of it:
Rediscover my creativity
and
Self-love
Creativity probably doesn't seem like something you can ‘lose’ and thus need to find again, but I disagree. After years in a toxic job that gave me nothing but intense anxiety, creativity felt exhausting, and any spark I had for photographing was long extinguished by a body and mind stuck in survival mode.
But now I have space to enjoy photography once again, and self-portraits are the perfect way for me to fall in love with creating and bringing a vision to life without the pressure of having to deliver a gallery to a client. I’m in control of everything, and can prep, plan, prepare and even reschedule as I want and need. I can make the shoots as intense or simple as I want, I can change my mind at the last minute and follow a different idea entirely.
It’s incredibly freeing to approach photography this way for a change. There is no money attached, no real timeline to deliver images, no back and forth of communication. Just me, my ideas and camera.
Creativity has been a struggle in this particular season of life, self-love is something I’ve always struggled with, to varying degrees. One huge way this shows up is in how much I truly hate seeing myself in pictures. (Ironic, I know, for a photographer.)
I don’t have anything to go on but a gut feeling here, but I think putting myself in the front of the camera over and over again will not only help me create dozens or even hundreds of myself that I either like OR can retake until I do like them, but truly help appreciate the person in the photos.
Confidence and self-love show up in photos. It shows up in how a person carries themselves, how they go about through life. It’s something you might be able to fake over a short period of time, but at some point, it always slips away.
I suppose this is my way of attempting a new way to bridge those moments, to bring them closer and closer together until it’s just a way of being, a default normal instead of a sporadic feeling.
Maybe I’ll share all of the photos, maybe I’ll share none. Maybe this project will do everything I hoped and more, maybe it will fail epicly and I’ll end up with hundreds of photos that are hopelessly terrible.
What I do know is that I’m excited for this and while I’ve had whispers of ideas in the past months, this is the only one that felt worthy of taking action on it. So I’m going to follow that and see what happens in the next 12 months of photoshoots.
Here’s to a new year and a new passion project, for no one but myself.