Allysse Riordan | Self-Portraits

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A horizontal black and white photograph of me standing in a layered farmed flat landscape. I am a white person with short dark hair. I am standing in a field, wearing a light coloured short and dark coloured hoodie (with rolled-up sleeves. Beyond me is a river, a thin strip of land, and clouds above.

A horizontal black and white self-portrait. I am a white woman with short dark hair, lying in tall grass. Only my shoulders and head are visible through a curtain of grass. Above, the sky is full of clouds.

A black and white horizontal photograph of me (a white woman with short dark hair, face mostly turned away from the viewer. I am wearing dark jeans, trainers, and a checkered shirt with rolled up sleeves) sitting by a river with a footbridge in the background.

Flick through my family photo albums and you will notice an act of disappearance. As soon as I was old enough to be trusted with a camera, I changed from the photographed to the photographer and nearly vanished from my family's visual archive. I am only seen in a shadow, a reflection in someone's glasses, a finger poking out too near the lens.

The camera morphed into my crutch at family gathering and other social events. I could hide behind the viewfinder and disguise my ineptitude at the unspoken rules of parties. Camera in hand, I was allowed to bumble from one group to another with the excuse of a memory to gather.

A black and white horizontal self-portrait me, a white woman with short dark hair, in the batdh. Only my head is visible. I have my eyes closed.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me in a public bathroom. I am creating the photography using my reflection in two mirrors, however I have placed my body so that most of me is in the gap between the mirror. Only part of my arms and legs are visible, the rest if a white wall.

A horizontal black and white self-portrait bathed in dappled light. I am leaning against a tiled wall, eyes closed, following the trail of the light. I am a white woman with short dark hair wearing a dark tank top.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me creating a photograph in the rear-view mirror of a car. The car is in motion so the image is entirely blurred with nothing well defined.

A horizontal black and white image of me reflected in a mirror. The entire image is blurred from moving whilst pressing the shutter button.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me (a white woman with short dark hair) holding a camera in front of my face. My image is reflected in a window. Some of the building inside can be glimpse but mostly a garden us reflected being me.

Eventually I stopped attending family gatherings. I moved to a different country and the links that held my family together eroded as months turned into years and we all aged. A camera remained by my side. I had grown to love this tool. It allowed me to feel less awkward in public spaces and join the flow of people. The camera was still a crutch but gradually transformed into a way to apprehend my surroundings. I learned to record and imprint in memory fleeting scenes that caught my eye. Still, my position remained locked behind the lens. In part, I did not think about myself and preferred my position of self-effacement.

Fast forward to 2020 and the first Covid lockdown in the UK. I photographed and wrote compulsively. I needed to record what was happening to me. The camera and pen were my tools to understand what could not be understood. Parts of my body crept into the images I created. I needed to see myself and affirm my corporeality in a time when I spent so many hours in online spaces and in my head. I needed to see myself to remain afloat. I did an okay job at it until I didn't. I realised I am autistic and lost myself. This period of my life is still a blur in my memories and goes largely unrecorded save for the plethora of carboard pinhole cameras I frenetically built.

A vertical black and white photograph of my arm and hand extended over a pond. In my palm are a walnut and small apple.

A vertical black and white photograph of my hands in soil.

A horizontal black and white photograph of a lavender flower. Out of focus are my hands. One is reaching out to the flower, another further back in the dirt of the ground.

A black and white photograph of me (a white woman with dark hair) sitting cross legged on tarmac with my eyes closed. Behind me is a bicycle. On either side of me blurred cars are driving past. Drops of rain are visible on the camera lens.

A horizontal black and white images of me (a white woman with short dark hair) sitting in a park, hunched over a crossword puzzle. Opposite me, another white woman with short dark hair and sunglasses on lies on the grass.

A horizontal black and white self-portrait of me sitting against a radiator by a wall under a window. Light streams from the window and fall on one of my eyes. I am a white person with short dark hair wearing a light coloured short and a dark coloured shirt. My head is tilted back towards the light and my hands are together resting on my legs.

Time passed and I returned to myself but could not recognise the person I was seeing. My body caught me by surprise when I glimpsed it in a reflective surface. I'd stopped to scrutinise myself over and over again. I could not comprehend how I wore the same face, the same body, the same hands I'd seen all these years. I felt shatteringly different and I needed to see this difference. So I turned the lens on myself.

Blurred, frayed, and unrecognisable, I saw myself in those images. I was satisfied. The lockdown eased, my time furloughed ended, and I gradually returned to the world beyond my front gate and local park. I was too busy learning the world anew, and too glad to be taken out of my own head, to worry about my body all that much. Still, my eyes lingered on my reflection whenever it appeared. 'Hi,' I seemed to say. 'You're still here.'

A horizontal black and white photograph of the outline of my hunched body reflected in a window. Outside the window is a brick house in suburbia.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me (a while person with short black hair and rolled up sleeves) reflected in a car window. The scene shows the inside of the car as well as bushes from the outside and a person with short dark hair glowing in the sun bent over a seat from an open car door.

A horizontal black and white semi-abstract self-portrait. To the left my hunched shadow ca be seen with a headlight above my head. To the left the moon and its reflection can be seen. The two sides are separated by a white line.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me (a white woman) wearing a helmet. My full body is reflected in a round street mirror.

A horizontal black and white photograph of my legs pedalling. The front wheel cast a shadow on the tarmac. I am wearing a light coloured short and light coloured trainers.

A square black and white photograph me of (a white woman) reflected in a street mirror with a camera over my face. I am straddling my bicycle.

I treated myself to a new lens to dabble in digital photography after a few years of film only. I wanted to experiment, play more overtly with light and shadow, details of life and passing moments outdoors. When I received the lens, I turned it toward myself and found I could not stop.

I frantically photographed myself as if it was the only subject I could now explore. Then I stopped, other creative projects demanding my attention. Still, I was pulled towards myself again and again. I'd notice a frame, imagine my body in it, and create a mental image. The compulsion did not stop, and when I finally decided to invest into an every day digital camera, I stepped once again in front of the lens.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me (a white woman with short dark hair) sleeping in a tent with arms crossed. I am visible from the chest up.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me (a white woman with short black hair and dark trousers) reclining on the sofa, reading the book 'Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits' by Frances Borzello.

A horizontal black and white photograph of a close-up of my legs from the knee down resting on stones by water's edge. I am wearing dark jeans and trainers.

A horizontal black and white photograph of me by a campfire at night. I am a white person wearing a dark outfit from leggings to jacket to beanie.

A horizontal black and white photograph me from the chest up - a white person with short black hair, eyes closed, a dark shirt with rolled up sleeves - lying diagonally on a carpet.

A horizontal black and white photograph of my hands sharpening a pencil in a wooden eggcup resting atop a notebook.

So when my friend Matt suggested a month long photography challenge in August 2023, I jumped at the opportunity. For thirty days I would photograph myself, over and over and over again. Consistently. I was to put the camera in front of me every single day and not just when a burst of inspiration came.

I was a little apprehensive but I did it. I presented myself to the lens every day for thirty days. It was a good experience, one that developed effortlessly as the summer peaked and dwindled.

The images are diaristic, staged all of them (how do you take a candid self-portrait? Maybe a question to explore in the future), but a truth of me in all of them.

A vertical black and white photograph of me standing in a suburban garden in the rain. I am a white woman with short dark hair. I am wearing a dark t-shirt and dark part of shorts. I am barefoot. I am in the act of jumping, my body blurred in the air.

A horizontal self-portrait in a shaving mirror reflected in a wider wall long mirror. I am a white person with short black hair. I am only reflected in the shaving mirror, with part of my face visible and some of my hand holding a black camera.

A vertical black and white photograph of me (a white woman with short dark hair) in my pyjama, playing a video game. I am sitting by a grey sofa, holding a black Nintendo Switch controller.