Vanity Is My Favorite Sin

Let's face it: Writing a blog is a pretty vain thing to do. The idea that you gather together your thoughts, musings, rants, beliefs and photographs and then post them on the web for other people to read definitely involves a fair degree of self-love. There are also those who monetize, adding advertisements to make a little money (or a lot) on the side. Vanity mixed in with greed equals two mortal sins for the price of one.

I will be the first to admit that I am indeed vain (hence, the blog...) Another way my vanity has always shown is with the self-portraits. Ever since I got my first camera at 15 I've been taking them. My first digital camera I bought when I was 30 and, for the past 5 years my computer has gradually been filling up with pictures I took of myself. I have it programmed so that the screen saver is a slide show. Inevitably the slide show goes like this: Photograph of me, me, me, a tree, a street in Berlin, me, me and Mia, Lilly, the pacific ocean, Noe Valley, me, me, me......

I have noticed in pictures taken of me by other people that I look a)fatter and b)less intense than I do in my self-portraits. The logical conclusion would of course be that I AM fatter and less intense than I imagine, but I prefer to believe that only I can take real pictures of myself. Silliness aside, there is also a somewhat serious side to the portrait snapping. I've always admired the photographer Cindy Sherman. Although I would never go as far as to dress up in costume and then take photographs of myself, I can appreciate the idea of using your own body as a prop. In front of the camera you're always on stage. You can be anyone you want.

The following are six self-portraits, one for each year from the age of 30 to my current ripe old age of 35.


Of course, the fair thing to do would be to add another picture taken by someone else for comparison but, no, I'd rather not. After all, this is my blog where, as should be, my alter-ego always trumps the everyday. ;)