I am going to tell this story once more and then close that door until there is an internal reason to open it again. I don’t know why it started, but I remember when and how and in retrospect I definitely know how it evolved and enriched me.
I was studying photography at school and the most interesting part to me was to shoot our monthly home assignment. I didn’t have a clue of what the fuck to do exactly, I’d just grab my camera and play with the light. I once took Julia to the seaside and shot some close-ups of her eyes and only later found out I was in love with her. There was the sea reflected in her eyes and I thought it was such a privilege to be able to see that and keep the memory forever.
That was just about it. Random details, portraits, flowers, streets, travels.
During that time, my best friend Alessia asked me to help her out with her assignment. She wanted to represent the seven sins and wanted me to model, so I did, it was fun. We then thought about how to represent Lust and I told her I had an idea but I’d shoot that myself and just pass her the files.
It was a sunny morning, the light through the window poured onto my bed and I just decided to bath in it. I lied on my back, covered my breasts and waited ten seconds for the shutter to close. There it was, the key that opened my entire life to me.
Alessia got maximum votes, my own assignment was some light-paint abstract stuff that didn’t have much meaning, and I was left with the image of me in a way I’ve never seen myself before. Nothing else mattered.
I started taking more pictures, half naked or wearing some cheap PVC fetwear. Either way, I felt alive and like I had a purpose in life. I didn’t have a plan, I was just doing and expressing my sexuality. Shortly afterwards, I published some of those photos on MySpace and a handful of photographers reached out, so I started my modelling career and left the camera in a drawer for years.
Almost six years ago I moved to London and brought my Zenit with me. Slowly I began to shoot again. It was boring, something was missing, so I asked my friends to pose for me, properly, in the intimacy of their homes, the less clothes the better. I wasn’t able to explain why, I just followed my instinct. I was fed up with photographers focusing more on their environment than the subject, I wanted my models to feel special, like these images really wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for them, but at the same time I felt like I was losing myself in the process. I wanted my photography to be more about me because I felt so lost, and lonely, and hurt...
I entwined my needs and channelled my energies into one person: myself. It was a way to express beauty and eroticism at first, or a way to capture the light the way I saw it when no one else did. Then, it became a habit. I think it was also a way of controlling at least one aspect of my life and my sexuality, I had no idea it was some sort of PTSD recovery in itself.
A couple of years ago I ended up in a relationship that destroyed the last bit of vitality in me, and it’s a long story that I can feel now completely behind me, but it’s not a pleasant memory. Few month prior me moving in with that person, I started a Patreon self-portrait project to at least cover my art expenses, and I kept doing that throughout my relationship. It saved me.
I shot an analogue series every month and it was a religious appointment with myself, a strong commitment that could fight its way through the fog of my own disappearance. I didn’t have any privacy or a healthy space to create and yet I kept shooting, I even managed to photograph some models. I kept writing and I directed my first film for XConfessions; on the tale of that fucked up relationship, I wrote the treatment for my second film for someone, anyone, it became my second film for Erika Lust. I keep creating even when there is no one to pitch to, or nowhere concrete to go, because when the opportunity arises, I am ready, and I learned it through isolation and pain; not much scares me anymore.
As soon as my emotional struggles were over and that person was out of my life, the urge to pose for myself ended. I started going out more, fucking people, expressing everything I needed and wanted. I think that shooting self-portraits was a way of dealing with sexual repression, it was a safe space in which I allowed myself to feel erotic. Now, when I feel lonely or like something is stuck and I can’t let it out, I masturbate and film myself and the energy is the same, I just become freer because I don’t have to pose in a sinuous fictitious way.
I am now so rough and raw and unstoppable; framing myself and waiting for those rolls to be developed and scanned before they end up in my hands, is not enough. Nothing is enough anymore. I evolve so quickly, by the time I look at a self-portrait it’s not me anymore. So a digital video approach is what I need to channel the mess I’m in. Therefore, no more self-portraits. Too much thinking and counting and framing.
My focus are p()rn, sex, pain, BDSM, and posing for someone else because they must see something I wouldn’t notice myself, and I don’t care for it to be pretty, I just want it to be true to the moment. As true as a photograph can be. None of this makes sense, and it doesn’t have to, and the only fucks I want to give are the physical ones. I have no time for pretty shallow pictures because I am no creature of the past.
Photos by Dimitri Autrement