My Most Challenging Shoot…

This is honestly a tough one. and I’m not sure where to start.

I don’t like seeing photos of myself, especially photos of my body, and yet you’re probably wondering, “Then why do you have so many photos of yourself on here???” The simple truth is that I’m an easy model to use if I need to produce images when I need to, and mostly because those are often not meant to be glamorous, are artistically inclined, and I’m not specifically the focus of the image; it doesn’t mean I don’t get self-conscious about having my image taken either.

I hate seeing photos of my body, especially at angles that are absolutely the least flattering, and whilst I can handle shots of my face (probably my least worst feature) anything that shows the rest of my body often triggers me… which leads me to one of the most mentally challenging shoots I’ve done.

So the brief for my commercial class is to produce a series of photos to be submitted to a competition created by an advertising company called the Skull Awards, not necessarily a bad thing but the concept they were wanting submissions for was to “promote healthy lifestyles”… and frankly I just couldn’t handle it.

This blog is as much about being honest as it is about talking about photos, and frankly all my life I’ve had this bullshit shoved down my throat, had bullshit fad diets and exercise equipment peddles towards me, made to feel like utter dogshit by “healthy” people (especially the fucking jocks throughout my school life), and I cannot in good conscious be a part of that.

So I came up with a concept as a bit of a “Fuck You” to the brief and to a certain degree the awards and the advertising industry as a whole, they are after all as much responsible for the obesity problem as everyone else, in that I wanted to shoot myself showing the damage of being obese, something that these ghouls often skim over in favour of hot people… but I hit that problem with my self-conscious.

I started to work on the concept hoping to give me a direction to push it, but that voice in the back of my head just kept resisting. I talked to a friend about my concerns and they helped out a little, but that voice in the back of my head just kept resisting. I developed alternate ideas, which admittedly was part of the brief, to give myself some excuse to do something else, but another other voice in the back of my head turned on me for being a coward. Finally of all things it was a damn stupid personality test I did in the business course which kickstarted all these thoughts together… this is what it told me was my most important virtue.

As absurd as it sounds it was right in the aspect that as part of my art I’m always wanting to challenge myself and explore different things, I’m not deluded (HA!) enough to think that it was the eureka moment but it was enough to tip the scales to do the thing subconsciously needed to do. I wanted this to be raw, ugly, ruthless, and as I said to someone when they suggested using other models instead of myself, I replied, “I would never do what I’m about to do to another person.”

I’m… not an attractive person (yet another in the list of things I have to mentally deal with). I’m ashamed of my body. Every time I look in the mirror and see this misshapened blob that constitutes my flesh I disgust myself. And yet I had to do this, but I didn’t want this to be a pity party, or worst somewhat humourous, I needed to give these images some bite and to make the viewer as uncomfortable as I am. So I decided to keep it simple and overlayed text of the abusive words send towards me, inter cut with some of my own self image negative thoughts.

I made a prototype based off of an unflattering image I found on the internet, which I will not show you, and the response from people I showed it to was exactly what I wanted… it was uneasy and confrontational. Then came the moment I couldn’t put off for any longer, I shot myself (mostly) naked.

I didn’t want to sugar coat these images, I wanted them to be light enough to see the imperfections but the poses were neutral and raw, this was not glamorous. I self shot everything which made it even more harder because I didn’t feel comfortable to do this in front of anyone else (I actually used a piece of luggage to do all my focusing on). I’m even having difficulties typing this right now just thinking about what I’ve done. I’m not happy with these shots but I guess the point is that I never will be, I look disgusting and I hate myself for it.

Truthfully putting the harmful words over myself wasn’t as hard as I thought, I think or feel most of these every single day and I’ve heard enough of it throughout my life to have gotten myself some semblance of armour. I think I’ve crafted something that I’m simultaneously proud of and horrified by, and just by writing this I’m starting to doubt everything about this… because this may get shown publicly.

I have to submit this to TAFE and this is typically accompanied by a viewing to the other students, and I’m not sure I can go through with that, and whilst there is no particular requirement to submit these to the awards I feel like it wouldn’t be the fuck you if I didn’t… and yet I’m scared that this may either damage my photography career, or worse become the thing that makes me popular.

I wish I had the confidence to shake these thoughts off, but I just don’t, and what if this work just gets completely ignored? What if putting all that time and stress and self-doubt into something that just gets dismissed… just like everything else in my life. I guess it proves my point.

S

I don’t know if I’ll ever release this, but it exists regardless.