The other side of self-portrait

American photographer Melissa Shook began capturing herself on camera one day in the 1970s. At the time, she was raising her young daughter alone, and with her hectic daily routine, she had no time to observe or even think about taking pictures of herself. But after she happened to photograph herself in natural light with a Rollei camera equipped with a self-timer, she ended up working on this project faithfully for a while. In this work, which is said to have been guided by unconsciousness and instinct rather than intellectual judgment, she mainly shows lively and sometimes naked bodies, and her daughter also enters the frame from time to time. Melissa Shook's self-portrait is a record of an extremely ordinary life and at the same time a woman's struggle against her fragmented identity and lost memories. As time passed, Melissa Shook said: “In this photo, I see a young woman trapped in an attractive body, struggling to hide the pain she is experiencing and the weight of her life.”