dermonexus

Today someone told me that I have low self-esteem. I was amazed. They told me that the reason I take self-portraits and post them on the internet must be because I think very low of my self and need others to tell me how beautiful I am. This in itself was a little upsetting if only because I thought the person who said it, knew me better than that. But then I realized, that this might be what most people think of what I do.
I'm easy to lose in a crowd, if you ever saw me in real life, you probably wouldn't recognize me. The woman I show you in my photos, in only a small fraction of the woman I am. You could pass me on the street and never know that everyday you look at my photos online. My photos are honest, yes, but not everything. I don't take them to define me, or to be beautiful. I take them for two reasons: to help myself better understand the ways in which I feel, and react to what's happening in my life and to try to create something that the viewer, you, can relate to and have a reaction to. I post my photos to the internet so that I can have a dialogue about my life and share with those who share with me. And also as a type of record of what goes on in my head. I frequently go back through my Flickr stream and remember what I was going through during a certain month, or I can look at a photo and know what I was feeling on that certain day.
Taking self-portraits for me is so much more than a practice in vanity. And posting them online is so much more than a self-serving search for praise. If no one, not a single person commented on my photos, so what? I wouldn't stop taking them. But because you do comment, I grow more, I learn more, I appreciate more, I experience more - both as a photographer and as a person.
Oh my god, to say I have low self-esteem...that is just beyond me. Once, I had a boyfriend who told me that his favourite thing about me was how humble I was. But I think I may have lost that somewhere along the way, hahaha. But low self-esteem? Hm. Mind you, we aren't really seeing eye-to-eye on things, no matter what it's about lately. But I found it hard to explain to him why I do what I do, and I found it hard to argue with him about something he thought he had so right. As if it was some big revelation to me, "Katie I hate to tell you, but you have low self-esteem." How do I argue something that someone thinks is a dark secret revealed?