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additional note

The headshots, portraits, self-portraits are about employment, the self, and self-directed expression of the self, and whilst the conventional, money-making way to really dominate visual culture in the arts is to become commodified, and whilst I fully understand that there's a reason for this, and it's how an industry that relies heavily on the visual actually sustains or markets itself - I dislike saturation.

Seeing a near constant desire to pose and post and pose and post and click, click, click, only serves a purpose to a certain extent. The removal from the organic elements of what it means to represent oneself is something I am not entirely comfortable with, and this has little to do with the clichés of escaping being someone's product. I would like to clarify that it has more to do with knowing oneself, remaining authentic, and being accessible.

I am not above being for sale, I just need to believe in and respect what I'm selling, because if I have the ability to sustain myself without giving into something I feel unsure of - then I know by now that I will choose the lonelier, more painful, really hard and unstable, at times overwhelmingly despairing path, then the one that allows me to cash in and then call it a day. I have done that once or twice but for the most part I've followed my heart and whilst in my line of work that can be considered extremely naive the truth is a part of me will always be more proud of the fact that I trusted my instincts than the fact that I ended up on the magazine cover first.

It has to feel right, it has to feel good, it has to align with something I believe in, and if it's none of those things then I'm not sure it'll ever be worth it - whatever the price tag may be - because if my image is associated with it then regardless of brand or commercial value - I need to see some truth, soul, heart, and love. That may be romantic, idealistic, foolish, but I was beginning to find it too painful to look into a camera so something had to shift within.

There's a certain amount of calm that is needed and blows to the spirit require repair. That type of healing can't necessarily be found in conventional ideas of what it means to have made it or to become a product. There is an element of it which feels hollow, shallow, empty - at least to me. Yes, pragmatism does help.

Money is important. Marketability is important. Masses are important. 

All I'm saying is: so is how it all makes you feel. 

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