Selfie / Self Portraits

In this modern day and age when technology is increasingly overtaking our lives, it is for better or worse all too common to be flooded with "selfies" of those on social media. It can be entertaining and fun or annoying and boring depending on who exactly is behind the selfie. In my opinion, what makes it entertaining and fun is when people either don't take it too seriously and have fun with it (but are not boring/basic with it) OR take it very seriously and have KILLER selfies. 

I work as a professional photographer and have been studying specifically the art of photography since 2003. In that time, I've fallen in and out of love with photography and then back in love just a few years ago. I had a meaningful affair with painting and fashion illustration, but photography still stands as the glorious artistic holy grail- especially when paired with modern technology, it is an instrument for great, beautiful works of art to be created. 

There is nothing wrong with loving yourself, appreciating your life and appreciating your body and that is what having portraits taken of yourself can do. They can capture not just certain moments, but a certain time in your life. You and your family- descendants that you may never know will be able to look back on the pictures you had taken and reflect on how truly beautiful you were at that time in your life.

I love photography and I love fashion, so obviously I LOVE (Some might say I LIVE) for fashion photography! Just like why I love fashion illustration- fashion photography can capture fashion as art. The aesthetics of illustration vs. photography is vastly different in so many ways, but for photography, I use digital manipulation very similarly to how I use classic art supplies to render proportion and depth in illustrations. It is fun either way but photography and digital art is more forgiving and allows for an even wider range of creative possibilities.

Of course, part of the fun of digitally enhancing photography into art is creating a fantasy world. Part of my fantasy is being on the cover of Vogue! Hey, it could happy. Until it does, or even if it never does, in my fantasy world it already has so I'm happy! I have this image to not only satiate my thirst for glamour, high fashion and art but to document myself as I am today. 

I've never loved myself more than I do today, at 30 years of age. I love the fact that as you get older, you get wiser and more comfortable in your own skin; I appreciate that fact and will be happy to get older until it's time for my spirit to leave this hot little body and float into the afterlife. 

I like to think that I will age gracefully and when I actually GET wrinkles, I won't airbrush them too much (if at all). I honestly respect age and hate the way society values youth and beauty more than age and wisdom. I understand the lust for beauty in this world (Libras love beautiful things), but I also understand that beauty in this world is fleeting and as hopeless to hang onto as earthly possessions that you'll leave behind when your life ends. Instead of loving beauty and things we should just love other people, ourselves and the earth!

So simply to commemorate this time, as I start my fourth decade of life, and to pay homage to the original master of the self-portraits Rembrandt, this post is to show that I was here in 2017 and that I loved myself. 

Was Rembrandt ahead of his time? Did he foreshadow a narcissistic culture of selfie obsessed people or did he simply embody a primal narcissistic trait in all of us that has always and will always exist? 

                                                   Self Portrait as a Young Man c. 1628

From Wikipedia: The dozens of self-portraits by Rembrandt were an important part of his oeuvre. Rembrandt created approaching one hundred self-portraits including over forty paintings, thirty-one etchings and about seven drawings; some remain uncertain as to the identity of either the subject (mostly etchings) or the artist (mostly paintings), or the definition of a portrait.

Self Portrait  c. 1634

The self-portraits create a visual diary of the artist over a span of forty years. They were produced throughout his career at a fairly steady pace, but there is a gradual shift between etchings, more numerous until the 1630s, to paintings, which are more common thereafter. However, there is a gap in paintings between 1645 and 1652. The last three etchings date to 1648,^[5] c. 1651,^[6] and 1658,^[7] whereas he was still painting portraits in 1669, the year he died at the age of 63

                                                      Self Portrait at the age of 63  c. 1669

Rembrandt is "with the possible exception of Van Gogh, the only artist who has made the self-portrait a major means of artistic self-expression, and he is absolutely the one one who has turned self-portraiture into an autobiography."- Kenneth Clark