This is a portrait of a young woman named Avalon. She is a tall girl and like many of her age is very unsure of her beauty. When I look at her I see that she has the most unbelievable stillness about her, she’s poised and graceful (and she loves birds).
Heartbreakingly, it doesn’t matter what you look like in this time, there is an age where that love of self gets taken from us, only to be returned to us many many years later if we are lucky. I feel so strongly about photographing women of all ages, especially the ones who have lost themselves as I did. Portraits re-expose us to our own beauty and help us all find our way back to acceptance and love.
I chose to use birds in this portrait to represent and reflect self-love and also because Avalon relates so well to them. The hat although deceptively beautiful is a cage, and it is intentional that the cage surrounds her thinking head. The birds in her hat are trapped in a cage of thoughts, the very things that stop us from being free, limiting either our thinking or our behavior.
