Self-portrait
Claire’s 365 project: A self-portrait a day accompanied by a one-word description
At the beginning of 2018, Claire Armitage sensed her photography was in a bit of a rut. ‘I felt like I was making pictures for other people, pictures they wanted to see, and I’d kind of lost my way a bit,’ she recalls. ‘Also there was a lot of stuff going on at home, and I find it quite difficult to express myself – one day it just came out in a picture.’ She posted the image, entitled ‘Under’, on Instagram on 7 February, then the next day she took another self-portrait and did the same. ‘After about a week I started to think about what I had taken on,’ she admits. ‘Because I was posting on Instagram I kind of felt I had to keep going.’ Some days Claire will assess how she’s feeling, choose a word to match her mood, then shoot an image to express it; other days the picture will come first. ‘Sometimes it’s planned, and sometimes it’s spontaneous,’ she reveals. ‘ there are days when it gets to 11.30pm and I haven’t taken a picture, and I have to do something.’ Claire doesn’t like to plan ahead, but she often makes a mental note of suitable locations. ‘I store things in my head,’ she explains.
the project has allowed Claire to explore her own emotions and identity, but sharing such personal insights in public is not always easy. ‘We all have these inner experiences: there’s fear, joy, sexuality, vulnerability and happiness,’ she suggests, ‘ but it’s scary putting yourself out there – you have to stop worrying [about] what other people think.’ to begin with Claire was concerned about how her friends and family would react to her posts, but while her brother keeps telling her to put her clothes back on, the general response has been positive. ‘Putting yourself out there does sometimes make you feel vulnerable, but it can also be empowering, and it does feel quite liberating to be able to express yourself,’ says Claire. there have been days when she has disliked her self-portrait, but she has posted it anyway. Despite the demands of the 365 challenge, she has never felt like giving up.
One of Claire’s favourite images, ‘Fairytales’, was taken on 5 April. ‘It tells a bit of a story,’ she reveals. ‘When you’re little you have these ideas of what things are going to be like, then you get to a certain stage in your life and realise it’s not going to be quite like that. things don’t always work out.’ the project is a visual autobiography of sorts, and Claire can recall where every picture was taken, and how she felt at the time. ‘Some of them are not great photographs on their own,’ she admits, ‘ but as a series they tell a story.’ She decided not to limit herself to one camera for the project, and experiments with everything from an Apple iPhone to a Canon eOS 5D and a Fujifilm X-t10. When it comes to technique, focusing is the hardest part. ‘It’s more challenging when I’m using a manual lens,’ laughs Claire.
All this experimentation, and the discipline of shooting a self-portrait every day, has had a positive effect on Claire’s work, with improvements to her compositions and technique. ‘I really feel like my photography has changed,’ she reveals. ‘When you do a project like this not everything is going to be perfect or right. however, every time I take a photograph I am learning something.’ When the project is finished Claire plans to create a book, and shoot a self-portrait once a month, rather than every day.