The problem is this: if a self-portrait is an expression of the self, you need to know yourself very well in order to create a meaningful image. Otherwise, its simply your face in a photograph. As a college student working on creating a self-portrait that plunges to the depths of the self, I've realized that my definition of who I am is not that tightly bound. At times, it seems defined simply by whom I'm around. At other times, it seems so deeply buried that ten shovels and and earth moving equipment couldn't shake a clear image from my skull. Then, at other times, it seems so vast and complex that it could never be represented in a single image, or a series of images.
So what have I done? A lot of soul searching, obviously. Big questions come up frequently, like what it means to know the self and have a consciousness. Another problem is the naturally flawed glass one looks through when plumbing one's own depths. It common to distort or misrepresent, or to project an image of what you want to see rather than what you are. Such projection reduces an honest, powerful image to a somewhat embarrassing and fellatious fake.
My musings here are uninteresting and vague, but I've discovered that its a fools game to think that something so inherently ambiguous as the concept of the "self" could be represented succinctly and sufficiently in a photograph. The best one can do is capture an element of it in and hope that that element is true enough to be meaningful. If enough of these elements are collected, they begin to come together to form a meaningful whole.
That said, here a few images I've been working on over the last week. Hopefully I've connected to myself on a deep enough level that the viewer can see some of what makes me in them. After all, we're all made of the same fuzzy atoms. Click for full resolution.
(This is my back, which is riddled with acne scars.)
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