In this series, I do not use the self-portrait to offer a recognizable or finished image of myself. The camera is rather an instrument through which I try to get closer to something that resists being put into words: the question of what moves me, what makes me look inward, and why the need to make images is so strongly present.
The photographs are black-and-white, direct, and without much softening. Light, shadow, skin, and body form a sober visual vocabulary. The classical approach to the portrait is combined with a rawness that pulls the images out of the familiar. I do not only appear as subject, but also as the one who looks, chooses, and constructs the image. I am simultaneously in front of and behind the camera.
Within the series, the face becomes a landscape on which different states of mind become visible, without ever being fully explained. The gravity and hardness of the images suggest an inner confrontation, but offer no definitive answers. Each portrait is a new attempt to face oneself — and, at the same time, an acknowledgment that a person can never be fully captured in a single image.
The repetition of the self-portrait turns the act of photographing into a ritual. Again and again, I take up position opposite myself. Not out of self-glorification, but out of the necessity to make visible what would otherwise remain hidden. What emerges is a series that is not only about identity, but also about the act of making itself: photography as a means to search, to doubt, and to be present.