Self-Portrait

Another digital foray....

I photographed my face by holding the camera at arm's length, then played around with various effects. The hand is a pretty straightforward shot. The background comes from successive manipulations of tree photos taken the other day.

The key is the "magic key" I grew up with. What it unlocked remains a mystery -- the same went for many other keys in the house of my childhood, saved from who-knows-when. But that particular one fascinated me when I was a toddler. It kept disappearing -- I'd find it in one room one day, another room the next. Surely it had moved of its own accord while I wasn't looking. My parents' trick stopped when I swore to them that I had seen it vanish while I still watched it. Whisked away to its magical place if for only a second, then reappearing before my wide, thrilled eyes.

It now sits in my little home shrine and seems happy enough to stay in one place. In the montage a further manipulation of the other day's palm frond photo fills the key's open oval.

The text is from my 1983 journal, penned shortly after I had set off on my own (and subsequently typed and scanned). I used Adobe Acrobat to snip pieces of lines, Photo Editor to rotate the pieces, and Paint to assemble the image.

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.