I am my worst critic.

As long as I can remember, I have always turned the lens towards myself from the moment I received my first camera. No, not in vanity but in desperation to find beauty within myself.

Confronting my history

I was diagnosed with alopecia around the age of 8, an autoimmune disorder that left large bald patches in my hair. For years after, the moments I felt truly comfortable in my skin were few and far between. The next twenty years after my diagnosis I was constantly at war with how I perceived myself—too often without kind eyes or words. I spent a lot of time avoiding my reflection in mirrors.

Wild, I know, especially because I have always been inexplicably drawn to the human figure. In college, I took a human subject photography class, a class devoted to exploring the human form. I learned how photographers could exploit light, shadow, and texture to craft a captivating and otherworldly image of the human body. Through that class I found humankind to be utterly diverse and breathtaking. Everyone was beautiful, except for me.

See photos from my 2013 Silver Lining Series below.

During the COVID quarantine in 2020, I grappled with fluctuating emotions tied to self-appreciation. As a necessary step toward self-improvement, I started pointing the camera at myself again. Even during moments when I felt disconnected from my true self, this practice of gazing with intent slowly developed an objective view of myself, bringing clarity to old traumas and outdated ways of thinking about my identity.

Mirror Gazing Meditation

Mirror gazing is a form of meditation that involves intentional periods of looking at oneself in a mirror. I took up the practice of mirror gazing during quarantine along with my return to self-portraiture. These practices allowed me to observe myself without attacking. With less negative emotional attachment and a more practical understanding of my form and how light and shadow played against my figure, I became simultaneously distant from my body and hyper-aware of it.

I began to see myself as the “subject” to which I had no emotional attachment, I simply was “what I had to work with” and would find myself contorting for hours in the sun, in front of the camera, stretching and adjusting trying to see myself differently until I found an arrangement within the frame I enjoyed—intriguing, stimulating, inspiring, and yes, beautiful—through this process, I began to think of and accept myself as such.

During my time in quarantine, as I gained more clarity of myself through various forms of meditation such as mirror gazing, journaling, and somatic dance. I also gave serious thought to the words I use to describe myself, including my gender. As a nonbinary artist, I use my body in bold aggressive ways to fill the frame and use my lines and curves to create slender profiles caressed in light and shadow.

Headless - Self-Portraiture Series

Often during the photo sessions, both consciously and subconsciously, I chose to be “headless”, to remove emotional and physical constraints. The addition of genitalia could lead to imposed considerations of sex and gender. Adding emotional thoughts could lead to descriptive, subjective words such as “too bony” or “ugly”. The addition of my face and head could personalize the experience or lead to a focus on my alopecia and the patchwork quilt of hair and skin on my head (a photo project I would explore separately). Without those additions present, how could I view myself through the critical eye of a photographer in awe of the human form? What would it be like to be my muse? And thus, the Headless photo series was created.

What did I learn from this photographic exploration? To be human is to be beautiful. You need not question it. Simply work with what you have. And once you begin to see yourself, truly — without the boxes and constraints the world puts on you or you put on yourself — you begin to understand how the opinion you have of yourself is most important.

Beauty really is in the eyes of the beholder.