self portrait with book and shoes

jamelah e.

Oh Flickr, the things I do for you.

I wanted to do something for this project, and I had some sort of vague idea that became clearer this afternoon, so I grabbed my camera, a pair of shoes, a book and a chair and set out. I just want you to know that trudging through ankle-deep frozen slush while carrying a chair is not all that fun. But whatever. Exercise, right? Anyway, I snapped a few then carried everything back inside and looked at my shots. I thought to myself, "Hey, you know what would be better? If the chair was in between the trees." So I loaded up everything and trudged back outside. I set it all back up, took some shots, then carried it all back inside. Upon looking at the shots from the second round, I discovered that no, it's really not better with the chair in between the trees, but hey, I got my chair-carrying and slush-trudging quotas filled for the day, so at least there's that.

Sometimes I think I need an assistant. Like when I decide that it would be a good idea to carry a chair through ankle-deep frozen slush for a photograph. For example.

Anyway, how does this constitute a self portrait? Well, since one of the project's major requirements was that I couldn't be physically present anywhere in the photograph, I had to represent myself somehow. There is, of course, a book (Adrienne Rich's poetry, which is even more of an "of course" I suppose), and fantastic shoes. Gotta have fantastic shoes. Outside among trees is a good place to be. And as for the snow, well, for one thing it's unavoidable since I live in Michigan, and for another thing, I understand cold.

(Another me-less self portrait is here.)

Okay, that's all the photo describing I'm going to do today. Whee.


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