I have used photography in different ways throughout my practise as a visual artist. This has included double exposures, projections, or drawing on pinhole camera images. For me the DANGEROUS FIELD is the subject of ‘self portraiture’.

I have never wanted to draw or paint myself. I have photographed myself twice, once to illustrate a text and once to document an injury, neither with the intention of presenting a Self Portrait.

One was taken to explore a text visually and one taken thirty years later was to explore an injury. Inadvertently they document the ageing process, and by default they are self portraits.

The first was taken in 1987 with a Pentax SLR (originally developed and hand printed in the darkroom) and was subsequently exhibited in ‘Skripturale’ at the Frauen Museum in Bonn in 1988. The other from 2019 was taken on a Canon Ixus 95.15 digital camera (remaining unprinted until now). The prints displayed here are inkjet on photo paper.

Both photographs were taken considering concept, intention, composition and realisation and primarily to explore an idea. These are the same procedures I use when I start on a painting or drawing. I have frequently and inexplicably worked on TWO images and given ONE title.

The ‘Basic Slag’ image was related to a text by a feminist writer interested by the large number of words (220) used to describe sexually promiscuous women and the far smaller number (20) for men. I was reluctant to ask another woman to pose in the discarded rubbish bag so wore it myself.

The second photograph was one of several attempts to document my black eye in the bathroom mirror without the camera obscuring the injury. It was taken on March 8th International Womens’ Day, the day after my 79th birthday, and was never intended to be shown publicly.