Self Portrait Statement

Self Portraits express a variety of things to many different people, but if done right, you can send a message that everyone will get correct. Being fascinated and familiar with portraiture photography, I wanted to challenge myself and take it to the next level. I decided to do partially nude self portraits, and expose my love and how comfortable I am in my tattoo and body art.

Tattoo's and body art has definitely shaped who I am and what I've been through since my child hood. Tattoo's are a regular part of my mother's side of the family, and growing up with that side of the family, instead of with my father, I believe I am a better and more understanding person to all cultures. There is nothing better than expressing yourself through photographs, than body art, so naturally I combined the two and decided to focus on them for this assignment.

Growing up in poverty and confusion, I never knew my father and basically grew up thinking I was only Mexican. I wanted to use my standing back portrait to be placed in the middle to show this; which has my sugar skull day of the dead tattoo. My tattoo's represent the person I've become throughout life and who I want to be remembered as when I die and this is all that is left. I want to be remembered as a caring person who wasn't anything but open to everything and everyone.

This assignment was a little disappointing to me in the fact that I think I over excited myself. I was expecting self portraiture to be easy because I've done it using a DSLR and not a 35 mm camera. The results aren't exactly what I was expecting but it most certainly taught me many things and definitely opened me up to so many ideas and possibilities. Although these final prints aren't, in my mind, absolutely perfect I still really enjoy them and I am proud at myself for taking this approach. To me, they are beautiful and I enjoyed having this opportunity.