VERA RYKLOVA
©2012












Images are digital photographs
In my first undergraduate year, as a photography student, (I thought that) I photographed myself for the first time. In that specific moment I found that self-portraiture was an easy and quick solution for the difficulties that I run into while working on an assigned project. Inspired by Jo Spence’s politics of the photographic art form I produced a series of shots of myself posing on the toilet.
Phototherapy: Running Into Difficulty is a visual metaphor through which I demonstrate the process of failing I experienced in trying to create a meaningful piece of artwork. Excited by this new-to-me creative approach I returned to using myself as a model again. I intuitively knew that being the subject of my work is something that I wanted to further explore photographically as well as conceptually. Although perhaps I did not realize at the time I have predicted the direction of my current practice.