I have come to a point in the daily self portrait project where I have lost my inspiration to go on and do it daily. I knew this point would come because it always has. It’s winter, it’s been winter for a long time. I spend a lot of my time by a computer writing. My walks are done in the cold. I am hidden under many comfortable layers. I don’t find many opportunities that I am inspired to photograph. I become lazy and return to mirror shots or shots of my hands doing something. Nothing wrong with this, this is part of the project I have to remind myself. A human can not be inspired every day of her life. There are winters.
I was in Paris a few weeks ago and I had the flu. I forgot to even take a photograph one day. And then as I returned home to Sweden I forgot another day. The project is not on my mind.
And yet I still love it as a project. I love to try to record time in this simple straightforward manner. I love to have the already taken pictures as a reference for days spent.
What I will show you now is the last roll of this project that I have developed, and the last bit of it that you will see in these letters for a while. It’s the month of October 2023, long before I lost inspiration for the daily photos. I haven’t developed any personal film since November 2023. I have a little bag full of films waiting to be developed that I am really excited to develop, but I want to take them to my lab in London when I next go there. I am not in a rush. Anticipation is quite enjoyable.
I am not in a low inspiration moment in general. Not at all. I have been writing essays for a book and I am feeling such release and joy in this task. I have found a good daily routine. I look forward to sit down and write and I feel good afterwards.
So what do I do about the daily self portraits and my lack of inspiration with them? I let it be? Or I shake things up? Maybe I should plan it more? Often I find myself late at night remembering that I have not taken the photo that day and scrambling to take one. Maybe I should write down a list of ideas for self portraits and chose things from that list like how I have approached some commissioned jobs in the past? I rarely if ever do this with my personal work. But why not? Why do I make an extra effort for a client that I do not make for myself? Will I think it’s too staged? Will I even be able to tell the difference? Isn’t this interesting to explore?
What is the difference to my current writing practice where I sit down in front of a computer after my morning routine and morning walk every day to write, and to actually have a similar approach and plan my self portrait photography? Why am I walking around with a camera waiting for inspiration to strike? Inspiration does not strike.
When we hit an impasse, isn’t that the best time to reconsider how we do things?
This morning I texted these words to my friend Roberto:
“I am writing today and enjoying it so much, maybe I prefer it to photography haha
This just makes me happier somehow”
Later I wondered about that. My relationship to photography is not as simple as my relationship to writing. I have built a whole career and life upon photography. With writing I have less confidence because I didn’t have the same external validation, but in a way that allows me more confidence, more freedom. I even wondered if I had chosen the wrong career all this time, what a thought.
These photos below were taken in France and the UK and Sweden. During what still feels like an exciting time, full of delicious memories. I don’t remember exactly why the last photo has the wrong date, I think it’s due to summertime changing and also me changing timezones and being in London at that time and my camera staying in the old timezone.
(This email contains a lot of images so you might need to open it on your browser to see them all.)
PS. I have also just updated my website: https://www.linascheynius.com/2021