Welcome to my Identity Editorialis

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This is an ongoing archive of self documentation, consisting of photographic auto-retratos [self portraits] and durational performance.

When I begun practicing photography, shooting my own portrait, became a conduit testing physical and mental adaptability of body, persona and mind, a way to investigate the stories and rhythms of my own relationship with myself. I had previously commodified my body through commercial modelling, giving myself as a tool for others’ creativity in whatever light was perceived to be desirable by the director, the industry and the client.

Self Portraiture became my way of rebelling against this.

Alongside protesting the industry, they have become a protest against the increasingly ‘bubblegum’ perfect ‘bubble’ culture of self portrayal on social media, and an attempt to ritually make visible difficult moments within my psyche. Many of these early portraits are the dressing up of my young, vulnerable self, for the battle of adulthood in the world. These works, mixed with archival images of myself in vulnerable transition to womanhood are an ode to my shadow selves. What we omit, reject or never see in ourselves in the first place.

In this diary of sorts include photographs of temporary and permanent injuries, disease, psychological conditions and trauma. The full knowledge being that one day, this collection may very well outlast my own living body. To this day, 10 years after I begun to make images of myself, self-portraiture remains a creative, messy, honest, dress-up box to process the experience of living in my own skin.

An open diary of body + mind + environment and shadows.