WHY SELF-PORTRAITS?

They come unbidden. A moment arrives—the light shifting not more than a fraction, a melody altering by two or three notes—and suddenly the image stands before me, already made, as though it had been waiting. My photographs fall into place like entries in a diary, each one a heartbeat captured, fragile, unrepeatable. I take three, perhaps five, in sequence, so that the silence between them might speak, so that the small tremors of movement might weave into story. Contact sheets enchant me—those of Mapplethorpe most of all. Twenty-four frames strung together like pearls; not merely photographs but an entire novel told without words.

And I find myself circling back, again and again. Repetition—always repetition. I return to the same place, the same angle of light, the same stillness of face. Yet what occurs is never the same. A shoulder leans, the hand loosens, the fabric slips or vanishes. Each alteration magnifies, swells; posture, presence, mood—everything shifts. The images tell more of my being than sentences ever could, for words stumble where gestures breathe.

Why self-portraits? I ask, as the photograph slides into my palm, as the picture darkens, blooms. Why always myself? And yet the answer never comes. Or perhaps it is the question itself that is the answer: they happen, inevitably, like thought, like breath.