Unbecoming

Unbecoming is a series of self-portrait photographs using optical distortion to explore emotional and psychological states. Using a hand-built reflective chamber made from several types of reflective polyester film, I create these images entirely in camera.

I distort the portrait because a faithful likeness cannot convey the emotional and psychological states that interest me most. Instead of documenting appearance, I use distortion to create portraits that give visual form to interior worlds. I’m fascinated by the moment when a portrait begins to disintegrate and become something else. As the image shifts, familiar features become reconfigured without disappearing completely. The face remains recognizable, yet grows uncanny, resisting the clarity we usually expect from portraiture.

Using my own face transforms the self-portrait from a document of my appearance into a site of experimentation. I treat it as material, repeatedly subjecting it to distortion until it gives form to narratives that cannot be expressed through likeness alone. Although these photographs retain a painterly sense of beauty, I am not interested in idealizing the female face. I begin with the visual language of feminine beauty and then disrupt it, allowing it to unravel until the portrait becomes psychologically expressive.

Influenced by painters such as Francis Bacon but rooted in photography, this work questions the expressive limits of portraiture, exploring what a portrait can reveal once it no longer depends on faithful resemblance.