the anatomy of a self - portrait 

© Sofia Dalamagka

the anatomy of a self-portrait 


This particular project is the result of a lifetime of work. When it stops being enriched with pictures, then I myself, will no longer be of existence...

Every self-portrait consists of a personal story - telling.
An encoded visual language. Useful or useless objects became part of a staged scene. Incongruous elements, ideas fell into order inside a frame. Chaos was shaped and settled.

Every trace of memory was shaped for the needs of this project. With experimental mood and mix-media techniques in combination with deep-diving into pre-unconsciousness, in order to make memories emerge through photography.

The initial form was gone and almost its personality,which was reshaped into something new that was combined by accident and created a new image of my own self. An image unknown to me, maybe a version of me that I didn’t knew existed.

A creative and without wanting to hide, impulsive mood…
The camera turned into a scalpel…
With surgical accuracy the lens bent down over the wound that smelled of rotten and guilt.

Rapture. The gap. Dead issues. The smiling manipulation which you try to avoid violently and clumsy. Everything turned into pictures. Connecting links of a personal story.

Every self–portrait consists of a fragmented Ego.
Intimately through you, inside and outside of you for catharsis and redemption. To get rid of the cuffs, these invisible chains you don’t see but feel, holding you so tight that it makes you angry.
The common element of all of these pictures is disengagement.
The desperate escape by all costs.

Words fail. Pictures never do.


© Translation by: Anastasia Chormova


"I stand in front of the mirror. I only wear a black coat.
I'm holding a camera. I look at me through the ...!
I can see my reflection. I see everything I have done, everything I have thought of, everything I have been. I am baffled with what i managed not to see. I push the trigger. It's a self-portrait. A picture. Is it deceit or madness? No. It's the truth. It's all there. Patriarchy. Rejection. Obsession. Stereotypes. Fear. Anger. Grief. Gender. A mother. A father. You. Me."