Self documentation

In these photographic self-portraits, which I frequently take at the end of the day when I let my hair out of the bun it has been in, sometimes for over 24hrs, I am trying to see something new in myself. I am no longer interested in my beauty or what others think of me, a constraint placed on me long ago, but in my weirdness, in my vulnerability, in what I’ve shoved deep down. My hair has always been a point of conflict for me, as has the necessary hygiene to care for it; showers are a difficult sensory experience for me. I have used my hair as a shield, a mask, a blade, I have used it as a signifier in different contexts in order to fit in and mirror those around me. I only recently remembered years of trying to avoid showering and being shamed, the hours spent in the bathroom as an adolescent trying to make my hair perfectly smooth in my pony tails, re doing them again and again, and again, almost unable to leave the house until it was right, fighting back tears. Now, I pick it up off the floor in fistfuls. Hair holds trauma and texture, both things I am interested in exploring right now.