Empowering Women through Self-Portraiture

How Self-Portraiture Became a Safe, Rich, and Open Place for Women to Explore Their Inner Selves

There is something I have been noticing recently about self-portraits - particularly the large amount of women and non-binary folk who seem taken with the medium, drawn to it, excited by it’s potential.

Posing for a photographer, being on the receiving end of the lens has been a common experience for many women - including myself. Knowing how to turn, where to direct my gaze, what persona to embody in the moment - all come easy for me and feel fun. But since I am not the one behind the camera, I can’t see what I am doing or expressing -

I am not the one pressing the shutter, I am not the one creating.

When I first started my self-portraits in 2019, I realized that this was an entirely different experience from merely posing for someone else’s portraits.

I WAS THE CREATOR.

I could embody any form I wanted - express my darkness and sadness, as well as my lightness and joy. On dark days during the COVID lockdown, when my mind couldn’t make sense of the chaos around me, I photographed myself.

On days when life felt full of promise, of miracles and synchronistic events that connected me ever so closer to the Universe, I photographed myself.

I realized something that I believe many others involved in self-portraiture realized as well - it’s about me, and it’s not.

When I look at these images, I see myself but I also see something else. I look like a different person in almost all of the images I take of myself, yet they are all undeniably, indistinguishably, me.

In this way, I became a kind of vehicle for my own inner state expressed in the outer world. I could mold myself, hide myself, sever myself, expose myself - all to express what was within.

This brought me to think of artists like Frida Kahlo, who outwardly painted images of herself to express her inner turmoil and chronic pain. By using herself as she saw her, she was able to show the viewer what was going on inside.

It feels like such an incredible ability, especially in a world that is so hyper-focused on the external, on the skin we live in. It is like turning oneself inside-out, and having what is inside overlayed on the outside.

Why I have recently started seeing this as empowering, especially for women, is because when we are photographed by another - we are shown to the viewer to be as they see us, as the creator sees us. And while there is nothing wrong with that - after all, the photographer will always show themselves and how they see the world in a picture, I often see a discrepancy between the photograph and the real person in front of the camera. A woman may look beautiful in the moment, but may feel anxious inside, filled with dread. Or vice versa. In that case, the photograph doesn’t actually represent who she is in the moment. But when she is able to take the camera in hand and photograph her own truth, real expression of the inner self becomes possible. And the result can be something both new and familiar - a face we see in the mirror everyday, but never quite in this way before.

For those who are interested in exploring self-portraiture, here is a link to some inspiring photographers doing incredible work

Self-portrait photographers to view: Margarita Mavromichalis Ximena Echague Cindy Sherman Lee Friedlander

You can see more of my self-portraits on my website here