Growing up I would stay up late at night creating elaborate characters and stories, dressing myself up in anything I could find in my closet and I would create photographs. Always dramatic, always expressing, and always carefree. As an adult I find it hard to re-create these stories with out the worry of doing something wrong. I've found it harder to focus on the story because my mind is weighed down with doubt and fear. Is it just the fear of doing something wrong? I think its something more then that, its the fear of being wrong. Its the fear that what I have to express and the way I want to express it isn't good enough.

So this is the wall I'm faced with, as an adult, and artist. I wake up, almost every sing day, with the desire to express. When I go days or weeks at a time with out creating something that expresses myself, I feel it start to build in my chest and fog my mind. People in school especially, would ask why I like to take self-portraits. I try to explain the rush I get when I look at a photo I've created both as the artist and the subject and I see the exact emotion I was attempting to express.

Self-portraits are the greatest form of rebellion in a society that teaches us to hate ourselves.