Small Self
When my children didn't want to be photographed anymore, all I had was myself and I had always been curious about self portraiture, it seemed like now was the time...
This project started as a means of expressing elements of my personal experience of motherhood. As an introvert who homeschools I often feel overwhelmed simply by the energy, sound and sensation of always being in the presence of my children. I experience a sensation of mental suffocation, my thinking slows, I grasp for clarity but it swims away on the noise. My speech stutters, I gasp, I need air.
This project began as an attempt to visually represent these feelings of inundation but as I worked though my images they started to remind me of more universal ideas that already inform how I live my life.
It is an idea in Buddhism about how we all have a small self and a greater self. The small self represents our deluded self, our lack of self-belief, the repetitive negative cycles that we become trapped in. But Buddhism proposes that each of us also possesses a greater self. This is the life state of Buddhahood, the best version of ourselves, it is our limitless potential.
And so the project itself has evolved from the small self of my intimate personal experience to a greater self that attempts to speak of more universal truths, truths which exist for all of us. My images seek to provoke the sensation that shrouded beneath all our layers, our fears and insecurities there lives our true self, our inherent beauty, our endless potential and profound good.