16

In 2020 I took a self portrait as a part of my A-level photography work, and it remains one of my favourite photographs I've taken professionally. Not because I believe I look nice in the photo, but because I captured my true self. It is one of the only photos of myself from 2020 that I truly see myself in, the person I was.

I found the photo again recently and fell in love with the form my black dress made, almost flat colour in the photo, and I wanted to capture that negative space somehow.

This may look like a silly drawing, and it absolutely is, but it is rich in history.

I remember back in 2020, I brought this photo to my photography class, and we all shared our self portraits and gave eachother feedback. I believe the task set was to take a photograph based on an assigned photographer's style. Annoyingly, I can't remember who I was replicating in this image, however I know it was someone who took portraits/self portraits to reflect almost an alter ego. When it was my turn to show the photo to the class, I remember my tutor saying:

it doesn't look like you, she looks quite scary!

which I agree with! At the time this is not how I presented myself to my peers, I dressed differently, I barely wore makeup to classes, I didn't have a nose piercing, and most importantly, I wasn't nearly as confident as I appear in this image. Despite this, in the moment I was taken aback by the comment; in my mind, this was me. This was the most accurate image of my best self in my mind. If I was more confident and self assured, this would've been how I'd present myself. That is why the image is so powerful to me, only I knew who this character was; others saw an alter ego, I saw myself.