Confidence

If I need anything as I go into my senior year of college, a year that I feel surprisingly under-prepared for, it's confidence. A little over a week ago, I watched dozens of people I care deeply about walk across the stage and accept their hard-earned degrees, and I was reminded how their confidence and grace has shaped and formed my Furman experience. 

Coming to terms with the fact that I sometimes often struggle with self-confidence has been a surprisingly difficult process. I know I started to realize this last semester while being abroad, and the thought became fully formed in my mind around New Years' Eve, while I was sitting on my couch eating an omelette deciding if I should even try staying up until midnight or just go to sleep then (at that point it was only 9:30… whoops). I could've made a transformation in to a newer, more confident self into a New Years' resolution, but setting aside the fact that I can't stand New Years' resolutions, I realized that this development of self-confidence is a (slow) process I owe to myself and to everyone I know, and it's a process that needs to evolve because I want to do it--not because it's something I want to check off of a list.

I decided that, as a photographer, the first place I should start is with a self portrait project. The idea of a self portrait has always felt strange to me, because I've always wondered, "Why the heck would people want to see a picture of me that I took myself?" despite the fact that I have always enjoyed the self portraits done by other photographers and artists immensely. And then I happened upon this article in The New Yorker, where one photographer, Deanna Lawson, said: 

"At least once a year, I make a self-portrait. It’s an occasion for the artist to construct her representation through her own medium, be it a camera or a paintbrush or what have you. It’s an opportunity to declare who you are visually and who you aspire to be. A selfie is a smaller branch of self-portraiture—quick and less considered. A self-portrait considers the interiority of the artist; it’s a moment for self-reflection, to pause and to look at yourself." 

I've had a dozen ideas for this project bouncing around in my head all semester, involving wildflowers, books, my violin--anything that has played a part in my life. But I struggled to come up with a way to explore my selfhood through a photo. I wanted to incorporate all of the things that, until this moment, have helped me form my identity. Instead, I opted for none of those things. I decided to make myself sit down in my room and take a few photos without any sort of planning, primping, or anything. These self-portraits are simple, vulnerable. If I have learned anything this year, it is that I need to find confidence in myself, even when I feel or look my worst, and I wanted these photos to help me do that. In these photos, I'm sweaty, I don't have any makeup on, and the allergy medicine I'd been taking for the last few days made me super drowsy, so I look exhausted. These portraits aren't glamorous or unique, they simply are. 

They are me.