VISUAL STUDIES

00, 2019

A lot has changed and happened since I last made a selfportrait photo series. So I challenged myself to make a new one, by photographing my feelings and mental state for the duration of 7 consecutive days.

This series expresses the fused worlds of reality (body) and illusion (mind). While I can come across as strong, happy, or confident, this may not anyways be the case. The subjects that I'm trying to visualize are grief & loss, body acceptance and positivity, love, fear, personal development, insecurities, experimenting throughout art and acceptance of the mind and heart.

It's a highly personal series, posted in combination with writing and poems. While experienced sadness and depression throughout making this series, I have found positivity and happiness. Once again I have come closer to myself, my body and my mind, through photography.

Part of growing up was finding your own identity and learning how to love yourself and accepting your own body.

I always thought I wasn't feminine enough. My boobs were too small and I was either too thin or too fat. My lips weren't big enough and I felt like a child in general. This is just a small list of insecurities I've dealt with. Seeing all those perfect women and images of women around me made me feel insecure and sad, but slowly I learned to love and appreciate myself. These images stand for a celebration of my own body. My body is the home of my soul and mind, which deserve love and self care.

This is a journey I'm still walking

Finding power in fear

Dance of empowerment

My father fell ill last year and he has little time left now. I am griefing and preparing for the time when he will be gone, and dedicating this picture to him and the grief about my old self.

When I got into an accident two years ago, I started to think about life and death a lot. Realising that I was almost gone myself made me go through a lot of emotions. Life can stop any moment. I always thought that I had all the time of the world. Time to work on myself and my problems, time to work on my art and time to enjoy my life.

At first I felt depressed. Thinking about how I almost died and how I will never be the same anymore made me sad. I had to grief about my old self, because she was gone and will never return. The thought of the pain my death would've caused my friends and family made me feel guilty. The thought of the pain and worries I already did cause, hurt me a lot.

Then I felt loved. Loved by family, friends, and everyone who stood by my side. The doctors fixed me up real good and I will always be thankful for that. The question; "will people miss me when I die" never returned in my head again.

At last I felt strong. Strong about my new self. I decided that I wanted to stand for my values and my opinion. I worked hard on myself and started to value myself more as a person. I'm not broken nor fixed.

The emotions I'm feeling right now about my dad are so different, and yet they also feel the same. There's only one thing left to feel. Acceptance.

Don't forget me in this kingdom that I own

The flower we saw that day

Vivid Subsurface, 2019

I started this project in the beginning of 2019, after a conversation I had with my mother and grandma. They were talking about things that happened in their lives, like taking caring of a mother with Alzheimer, or violence they've endured in their lives. I realised that even after the divorce of my parents, my mother kept all her problems from us, and I lived a life without knowing the hardships the people I've known my whole life went through. This inspired me to make this series, because we are all dealing with things, but it's so hard to realise what's happening with the people around us. With this series, I want to show that we are all going through hard times and hope we can connect a bit together and care more about each other. You can't see most of the time what we are dealing with from the outside.