Untitled No. 39. 2010
Back in 2002, photographer Jen Davis began documenting her lifelong struggle with obesity with a series of self-portraits.
Taken at her most vulnerable and lonely moments, Davis transforms the otherwise forlorn photographs into beautiful images through her use of light and color.
One picture shows her gazing determinedly ahead while clad in her underwear. In another, she is depicted asleep on a couch, with light illuminating her face.
It’s interesting to note how her body changes throughout; she appears heavier in some photographs and the length of her hair varies as well.
“It was beauty that I could control, a world of beauty that I myself created and inhabited. In a way what I was doing was seducing myself. I couldn’t necessarily identify with the idea of someone seeing me as ‘beautiful’, but I could accept that the pictures that I created and inhabited were. It was a very contradictory experience,” Davis explained.
Her photographs are currently exhibiting at ClampArt in New York City til 3 July.
Check out some of her self-portraits below and view the series here.
Aldo and I. 2013
Untitled No. 53. 2013
Untitled No. 34. 2010
Pressure Point. 2002
Untitled No. 24. 2007
Untitled No. 14. 2005
Untitled No. 55. 2013
[via Juxtapoz, images via Jen Davis]