While rummaging through the dusty boxes of photographs from my childhood, I began to reflect on the memories that went along with each snapshot of my life abroad. Picking up each photo, I became reacquainted with the people I met; I reflected on the challenges I overcame; and I relived for an instant the adventures I had experienced. Pulling the photographs towards me, I realized that –combined -- they took on a new meaning; they came together as the phonemes of my life, representing a single entity, the person I am today.



For this assignment, I selected from the pile of photographs my favorite memory from each country in which I lived. Then I attempted to bring each “memory” to life with body paint. The idea to use paint was rooted in a preschooler’s delight in dressing up and finger painting pictures. Musing, I asked myself, could I have been anticipating the future popularity of “body art?” (Actually, I have spent way too much time on this assignment because it gave me the perfect excuse to indulge in this favorite childhood activity with zero apologies. Indeed, what could be more appealing than an assignment titled, “Self Portraits,” when the subject as a child happened to love so much using her own body as her canvas?) But I digress.



To help illustrate the fact that the photos were taken in a number of different countries, I set up the “self-portraits” in the style of passport photos, copying the style and poses of my many passport photographs. To provide context to the set of photographs, my first photograph is of all of my passports scattered on a map. This photo launches my concept of creatively combining passport photos with self-portraits in order to communicate graphically the importance of travel to my personal identity. The next ten photographs mix old with new to further illustrate the intertwining of travel with my personal identity.



The old photographs are of my favorite memories. To depict them, I painted symbols of those memories on my shoulders; on my face, I painted the map of the country in which the event that produced the memory occurred. Showing only the face and shoulders, the self-portrait mimics the pose and the seriousness of a passport photo. However, for the last photo, I chose to do something a little different and utilized both color and black & white to symbolize the process of my maturity and personal growth. The combination of color with black & white is appropriate; it represents the vividness along with the confusion of my origins that is the product of a life that was redefined with each new home in each new country. It illustrates how when asked where I am from, my thoughts go to “pause” as I reflect upon my memories. Although born in the United States, I lived in five countries, each of which I called home, and still consider to be my home to this day. As the photographs communicate, my honest answer to that question -- like my image in this photograph – is found in the grey area.