Self Portrait (Neg and Pos), Artist statement, Trial and error.

Artist Statement:

For this photo I decided to show my cultural background- sort of. In this picture I have a beaded crown which was my mothers when she was an eighteen year old and beaded herself, I believe. I have a Pendleton blanket wrapped around my shoulders, because Pendleton blankets are something that is common to native people to have. The blankets that are woven often tell the owner of the blankets (a woman) life story. The otter hair wraps are just an added hair piece, but the shells on the otter hair wraps show that I am from a part near the water and the woods in the background show that I grew up near the woods as well. I have a choker on as another piece of jewelry. Now to get into the real stuff... This is not the only self portrait that I took, but I chose to use this one because its more powerful than the others. In the others you get the point of me being native, but this one speaks to and hopefully does the same for others. The black makeup was to show effect of being something dark and somewhat vague. I have tears streaming down my face because I wanted to show the pain and that is why the tears are black... I think of pain as something dark. I also have a serious face because the things that were done to cause pain are not a joke to me. To me, the metaphor of this image is showing that ancestors has been through pain because of people stripping us of things that we knew and forcing us into things that they were accustomed to but wanted us to be a part of. Also killing us off because of the way we were. The viewer may only understand that I am dressed in regalia and that I am crying. But there is a deeper meaning to this picture than just that.

Trial and error:

One of the biggest problems that I had for this photo session was probably the fact that I didn't have the things that I needed to take the original photo- headpiece and a bandaeu. The next thing that was my hair... I originally wanted to have it in french braids but my cousin was having difficulty doing them and no one was available to do them for us. We finally did my make up, finished my hair, put the crown and the otter hair wraps up. Then it was time to go set up for the photo sessions which we did in the back area of the cemetery because it looked a lot more autumn and dead like. We put everything on the Pendleton blanket and I got my leggings and moccasins on... I realized that I didn't even bring my camera with me. We then had to pack everything pack into the truck and drive back to my house to pick up the camera. We were then well on our way back to taking the photos. We set everything back up to the way we had it and started taking the photos. It was actually quite cold outside... And even winder with the fact that we were very close to the water and in an open field. I basically had shorts and a t-shirt on. So I was pretty cold but I held up. We took the pictures and many of them turned out great! Specifically for this picture we had to make it look like I was crying... So for some reason I found eyedrops in my bag and we used that plus liquid eyeliner. We put a lot of liquid eyeliner under my eye and then I quickly put many eyedrops and made them drip. That was how we got the effect of me crying black tears. The problem was my cousin getting the liquid eyeliner in my eye PLUS the eyedrops burning my eye... This caused my eyesight to be blurred and burn. I tried to blink for about five minutes but it wouldn't work. Then it finally stopped, and we moved onto the next thing... Was the sunset! The sun started to go down faster and faster and we had a lot of images but we were worried because we didn't get the right shots and a PERFECT self portrait picture for this class. The last thing that was the problem was being on the cliff overlooking the water and taking pictures because the wind was so harsh and the Pendleton blanket that I had with me was blowing all over the place. But we managed. And this was where the birth of my self portrait started.