A Fleeting Glimpse Of My Past Self

Creative Portrait Photography taken as part of an ongoing project called, ' I'm Still Me : Dealing With Disability'. This is a portrait of my dau...
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Creative Portrait Photography taken as part of an ongoing project called, ' I'm Still Me : Dealing With Disability'. This is a portrait of my daughter taken by the sunny window of the studio and edited to produce a conceptual representation of what she is having to deal with as she comes to terms with the onset of symptoms of the disabling yet seemingly invisible chronic illness we both have and the effect that it has upon your mental health until you have reached a point of acceptance. It could have been a photograph taken of me a few decades earlier, or any person whom receives the news that the illness they have and the way it changes their way of life and expectations is there to stay. With the news , most of us whom have to deal with learning that we have a lifelong condition go through a sort of mourning period, a time of grief, the feeling that the life we wished to live is lost , in some ways we see ourselves like my daughter standing by the window, a shadow of what we once were and the vision of what we wanted to be still there but clouding our minds and just out of our reach. There is good news , of course , dealing with disability is a process. This photograph is symbolic of a time of transition , a time when we feel lost and fragile , as though the darkness will never leave us , but when we reach the point of acceptance , the light does return , we see that we can take on the same opportunities but achieved in a different way and have as interesting and vibrant a life we could see for ourselves before. when the mourning for our past view of ourselves is over , we reach the realisation that "I am still Me, its just what I do that changed not the person that I am and will always Be", then the reflection we see is one of a stronger and more interesting Self than the one we are leaving behind.
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