INTRODUCTORY VIDEO COMING SOON
The photograph on the left was taken shortly after my awakening began. I was still carrying so much in my body, and no matter how good the photographer was, I could never seem to look the way I wanted to look. One eye would appear swollen, my face felt uneven, and I could see how uncomfortable I was. The photograph on the right came later, after much more inner work, integration and self-acceptance. By then I had started self-photography, and something had changed. I knew how I wanted to be seen because I was beginning to know how I wanted to see myself. For me, the difference between these photographs isn’t simply professional photography versus self-photography. There’s time between them. Healing. New beliefs. A different relationship with myself. And a reminder that sometimes the thing we’re trying to create on the outside is simply arriving before we’re ready for it on the inside.
THE SHADOW SERIES
There was already an idea forming somewhere inside me about how we wear our own shadows. What we reveal, what we conceal, and the parts of ourselves that we carry with us. But these photographs happened much more spontaneously. I was at home one day, already deep in this period of Self-ography, when I started noticing the light falling through the house and creating these incredible shapes and shadows. I felt compelled to go and lie inside them, to place my face or my body wherever the light had landed and simply see what happened. There was no real plan. I was playing. I was taking time alone with myself, using my own body and face as part of the creative process, watching how light could reveal one part of me while another disappeared into shadow.And perhaps somewhere underneath that play, I was exploring something much deeper too. How we wear our own shadows.
I was bullied terribly through school, and for years I carried a deeply distorted image of myself. Strangely, I could often see that distortion in photographs too; the small eye, the uncomfortable expression, the feeling that I couldn’t quite settle into my own face. It also showed up in who I thought I needed to become. This photograph was taken during a time when I was desperately searching for the right look, the right brand, the right version of myself. In the coaching world especially, I thought I needed to look a certain way to belong there. I didn’t. I needed to look like me. I’ll never forget taking my iPhone out into nature and beginning to photograph myself with nobody else watching. Somewhere between the camera, the quiet and allowing myself to experiment, I started finding my own face again. And with it, I found a piece of myself I’d lost a very long time ago.
SERIES 2
