Butterfly Freedom

Symbols and images are a very powerful means of communication because they can extend beyond the boundaries of particular languages and therefore reach broader audiences. When we create a photograph we speak in symbols and images. Shapes, shadows, flowers, postures, animals all say something. Although different people will interpret what they each see differently, there are always basic archetypes that extend beyond cultures or even time periods. I like expressing myself through such archetypes when telling the visual narratives of my life through the photographs I create. Today I will write about change and it’s symbol, the butterfly, which I portray myself as in one of my self-portraits.

It appears to me that human beings are naturally disposed towards those actions that will allow them to arrive at their goals without much effort. We prefer the smooth roads to the bumpier ones. However, there will always be those goals in life that demand our laborious involvement. In fact, who hasn’t worked hard in order to achieve something they deem valuable in life?

I once read a study that listed freedom at the height of human values, as we all long to be free to design a life of our own choice. Liberty, therefore, appeared as a reasonable prerequisite for experiencing happiness, peace, love, etc. But freedom from what?

I suppose there are many potential sources of oppression in life. There are those that are internally generated, such as destructive and limiting perspectives we create within our own minds. And then there are the many external forces we can all feel restricted by. Oftentimes to free oneself from limitations, change is in order. We change the way we do things in life to achieve different results. If we don’t like a certain aspect of our lives, or selves, we have to make a change somewhere: either externally or internally.

To me, life is about change. With each mastered change we reach a new level of experiencing life. Many people are resistant to change because it is often accompanied by discomfort of some sort or another. We tend to give little value to discomfort, but even designs of nature incorporate struggle and discomfort into making successful changes. The perfect symbol for this is a caterpillar, having transformed into a butterfly, trying to break out of it’s cocoon.

I recall the first time I understood that butterflies need that period of struggling -while breaking out of the cocoon- for their wings to be strong enough to fly. I was sixteen years old and had read it in a book. I marveled at how when scientists helped the butterfly remove the cocoon, their wings remained underdeveloped and useless, leaving them as easy prey to dangerous predators. But when the butterflies were allowed to go through the struggle to achieve their own freedom, they flew high and beautifully afterwords! It seemed to be nature’s way of informing us that uncomfortable,

laborious effort contained a certain value when executing a major change in life. That struggle, oddly enough, leaves us with extra assets we would not had otherwise.

I have had to contemplate such subjects over the last few years as I have been orchestrating major transformations in redesigning my life. I call it my metamorphosis period, as it has somewhat mirrored the way caterpillars turn into butterflies. Perhaps the image feels a bit cliche to many of you, but I have experienced myself going through a series of phases, that, curiously, resemble the same ones necessary for such a change to occur: sensitivity to timing, a period of labor forming the cocoon, then stillness, withdrawal, a hibernation of sorts, growth, a shedding of the old form, then a breaking out involving discomfort, struggle and the building of new strength. Whew!

So here I am, still freeing myself from my cocoon, looking towards spreading my butterfly wings and soaring. My photography has functioned as a recording of my metamorphosis. It also depicts my reemergence into life. I illustrate this in this photograph by giving myself butterfly wings and surrounding myself with lush, fertile grounds. I am not there yet, but this is my vision of where I am headed. It is a powerful symbol I draw from when the fight to emerge from the cocoon leaves me exhausted. It is freedom, and it’s lure is most seductive!

Natural Settings

Nature surrounds me. I live on twenty acres of pastures and trees. A small creek runs through the western side of my property and a little pond sits on the southern side. I am usually awakened by the sound of owls communicating to one another just outside my bedroom. My neighbor is a tree farmer, and adjacent to him rests a wild-life preserve, behind me is a horse stable. Most of my visitors are deer.

After living in urban areas most of my life, residing in this rural setting was no accident. It was a deliberate plan that I worked towards for years, as I’ve always had a very intimate and dynamic relationship with natural beauty. Consequently, natural landscapes have greatly influenced my photographic art.

I believe I owe much of my sensitivity to the natural environments around me to my maternal grandfather who was an avid naturalist. He would wake my sister and I up at dawn and take us on nature walks, pointing out flora and fauna to us, identifying bird calls, giving us tastes of eatable berries and leaves. And he taught us to do all this quietly so as not to scare away the woodland creatures, which we spotted and observed, from a respectful distance, quite often.

My Grandpa also taught me about the tides of the sea, how to detect them from afar by the scents in the wind, how to walk on barnacle-covered rocks without getting cut, how to swim in the sea for hours without ever tiring of it. As a child, I spent three months out of every year at my grandparent’s home. My visits there were most nurturing. Since then I have always associated being in nature with feeling safe and loved. I feel most comfortable in nature and seek it out often. In the outdoor images I take I attempt to communicate this. Most of them are shot on my own private property.

Madame Butterfly - Puccini; final -3° acte(2)

The Stage

The stage has always held a special lure for me. My elementary school had a great stage with velvety curtains, and bright lights, and wooden floors. I would often escape my classes with the false pretense of having to use the lady’s room and make my way upstairs to the stage. Sometimes the tall wooden doors to the auditorium would be locked and I had to drag a heavy heart back down the stairs into class. Other times a school janitor would usher me back to my teacher.

But there were many times that I had the stage all to myself, and I would imagine an audience applauding my performance. I would dance, and twirl and curtssee. Or silently act out dramatic scenes in which the heroine took her own life in the end. (Please view video above) I suppose that was strongly influenced by Madame Butterfly, which my mother, (who loved singing opera), introduced me to when I was only eight. I remember I did not blink through that entire performance!

I loved having the stage all to myself! If I heard footsteps approaching I would scurry behind a velvety curtain and try not to laugh. Usually my giggles would give me away, followed by an escort back to class, or occasionally, the headmistresses office! Laura and I were on a first name basis.

After school I created my own stages. I would gather the neighborhood children and organize elaborate performances of many kinds. I choreographed dances and directed plays. I found costumes for the other children and took care of hair and make-up. Sometimes we used the piano, sometimes just our voices, and the rehearsal’s would often go on for weeks! When I felt our act was presentable, I would invite my friends parents and other children to be our audience. I would write out little invitation cards on construction paper, and hand-deliver them door-to-door. Between the ages of eight and eleven it wasn’t uncommon for adults to ask me for impromptu performances at their tea parties, or family gatherings. I could produce instant entertainment to everyone’s amusement.

My photographs visibly engage this theatrical aspect of my personality, as the stage curtain rises and falls with the opening and closing of my camera’s aperture. In creating theatrical images I feel myself resuscitating my childhood self, who lives vicariously through my photographs. She loves dressing in costumes and creating a dramatic scene that will completely absorb her audience. In their attention to her performance, she hopes the observers will see her own dramatic depths; which can be oceanic!

Only Ten Seconds

When I step in front of my camera to create a self-portrait, I have only ten seconds in which to reincarnate a feeling, convey a message, retell part of my personal history, or share hopes for my future. I never use a remote. I intentionally give myself only ten seconds because, in my experience, that has been the best way for me to give myself fully to the moment. I am able to suspend all thoughts and all efforts at achieving a pre-calculated result in the spontaneous urgency to create. I think I have always been happiest when engaging my creativity in this spontaneous way. It is what feels most natural to me. It is also very exciting.

The limited time seems to connect me with something beyond myself. My heart races as the timer on my camera ticks away. I inhale deeply and let my body move with the moment. It is in that very instant that I feel most alive! Almost as if my existence itself was tangibly nourished by expressing myself artistically. As if my art were food for my soul. Perhaps this would explain why I have always felt such intense urges to create!

Ever since I can remember I’ve sought to express myself, and share those expressions with others. The dialogue I have entered into with others as a result of my photography has been most rewarding. But it is also a dialogue that not only reaches out into the outside world, but it seeks to communicate within me as well. In creating self portraits I seek to enter into a rich dialogue with myself that excludes all judgements. It is raw and accepting, and it embraces everything I wish to express without first estimating it’s value. It is part of a total surrender to my creations, and it constantly challenges me to expand my comfort zones and just be myself! I create art to discover how much there really is to who I am. When I hear my camera’s ten second timer clicking away, the possibilities of what may manifest seem endless: like a whole galaxy being born from within me.

Uninhibitedly I continue to explore these uncharted regions of my being, and return from my journeys with little maps of the places I have explored. These maps are my photographs and I invite you to experience them.

My Masks

When I first begun creating self-portraits for public consumption, I wanted my photographs to show as many sides of myself as possible.I wanted to experience a full release of my being into my photographs. Ironically, the first items I purchased to ensure that this occur -even before I bought a tripod- were several masks. They were carnival masks reminiscent of those worn at the masquerade balls of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: a gold one with red feathers, a black velvety mask with beads dangling from it, and a little pierrot mask with a tear painted on it’s cheek. They were to serve me in achieving a certain liberating, playful anonymity of sorts.

Within this unidentifiable state, I wished to reveal more of my identity than I ever had before in public. With my face always hidden, I was certain I would be able to give myself fully to my self-portraits. I wanted to enter a world in which I would feel completely uninhibited, like the guests at Venetian balls, who danced as they never had before, in their elaborate disguises. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, if I could capture my spirit dancing freely in my photographs?

Too many people already knew my face, in my life, and because of that, they mistakenly thought they knew me. My photographs, I hoped, would function as windows into vistas of myself that no one ever saw painted on my countenance. They would be glimpses into sides of me that lived beyond the superficiality of common sights, like my face. Or even common knowledge, like my name. So, along with the masks I chose a pseudonym of sorts for myself to complete the disguise, and twirled into the ballroom with wild abandon!

The Beginning

I have decided to start writing this blog today. Why today? Maybe because it is spring and a time for new beginnings. That is what it felt like when I first begun using my camera to express myself; like a new beginning in the ways I let the world see me. Allowing myself to uninhibitedly offer myself to the lens, (and the eyes beyond my lens), and reveal what had been previously hidden. Maybe not so much hidden as temporarily put to rest. Something that had been dormant woke up in me when I began taking pictures of myself. It wasn’t exactly a new side of me, but one I had lived in as a little girl.

My parents told me many times that I was born an artist. That I used to decorate their walls with life size, colorful murals of myself: self portraits that, perhaps, seemed to scream “I am alive, I exist, look at me!”. I made a habit out of doing this when we would move from one place to the next. I would leave my art on the walls, as evidence that this place had known my presence. That I had moved, and cried, and laughed, and breathed inside it’s walls, inside that space. I wanted the space to contain me even after my physical self had exited it. I think it was my way of reaching for immortality.

As a child I wished to leave permanent traces of my identity. Not little carvings of my name on wooden banisters, or trees in the back yard, but large, vivid portraits of my activities, my feelings, my thoughts. Somehow, I needed others to know. To know about me. Not just the pretty parts but the dark ones as well. And my messages were delivered in poems or stories, paintings or drawings, dances or plays, pieces I made up on the piano and played with great feeling. Ever since I can remember I have suffered from an overwhelming urge to express myself, and share my expressions with others. I believe I longed for some kind of dialogue with the observers. I wanted to know how my art affected them, if it even affected them at all, and for how long. I was a very precocious child.

Today these expressions of mine have found a way out of me via the lens of my camera. This blog will be my attempt to share my journey into photography, as a means to both conceal and reveal my identity, with whomsoever wishes to follow it. I hope this means you.