Self Portraits as a Way of Seeing
- Lisa Raie
- Jan 26
- 1 min read
Self portraits open me up to moments when I can see myself as who I truly am.
Not as I am perceived.
Not as I am performing.
But as I am ~ present, breathing, becoming.
There is something disarming about turning the gaze inward and outward at the same time. To sit with my own form, whether sketched in graphite or caught mid-movement by a camera, asks me to pause long enough to notice what is actually here. The slope of a shoulder. Hands resting without urgency. A body that has lived, carried, weathered.
When I set the camera up, I’m not chasing an image. I’m inviting attentiveness.
I’m saying: let this ordinary moment be enough.
Fragments of a day are more than fragments when we let them be witnessed. A morning at the seaside, wind lifting hair and salt settling on skin. The horizon steady while everything else shifts. Or an afternoon in the studio, charcoal dust on my fingers, light falling across paper just so. These moments don’t ask to be curated only noticed.
In these acts of noticing, something quiet happens inside me. Every cell seems to inhale. Breath returns to places that have tightened without my knowing. Life moves through me again, not loudly, but faithfully.
Self portraiture, for me, is not about likeness. It’s about presence.
It’s about standing in the world arms open, feet grounded and allowing myself to be seen by my own compassionate eye.
And perhaps that is the truest offering:
to see ourselves with the same gentleness we extend to the sea,
to the studio light,
to the passing day.
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