THE OTHER’S MIRROR

Self-portrait featuring orchids and a porcelain teacup, 2025

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When shooting self-portraits, most of the time I don’t think about myself at all. I am looking for "someone else." I try to use my own image the way actors use their body and voice to embody different identities. For me, taking a self-portrait is simply a way to seek the person who usually stays hidden. Even from myself. I find this exercise incredibly valuable. We are bound to ourselves for life, and only madness can free us from this burden. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes notes: "For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity." It is precisely this dissociation that intrigues me, but from the dual perspective of the one behind and the one in front of the lens.
Very often, when I see the final result, I can’t recognise myself. It’s me, yet it’s someone else. That’s exactly when I know the self-portrait worked. The more unfamiliar and distinct the "self" in the frame, the more valuable it becomes to me. I know this contradicts the classical concept of the self-portrait. But for my personal approach, this is where the meaning lies: in capturing the identities that coexist quietly beneath the conventional image of myself I am used to breathing with.