i like this picture cindy took of me with her instant camera. this was on the night we were having dinner at robertson walk to celebrate her birthday. i was almost surprised when they'd waved it about and colours surfaced and a face formed and -- oh! that's me!

of course one sees oneself in the bathroom mirror, and in photos, but it is somehow always slightly unsettling to encounter yourself in an image - as if one of you were unreal. a photo often is both recognisably you and not you, because we hardly have a sense of what we look like, do we? we're simply not in our own field of vision enough for us to form any strong idea one way or another. and what was surprising about this one was that it didn't unsettle. it wasn't a photo of a goodlooking woman, but i thought yes that is somehow right, that it matched up with my sense of who i was inside, and i did not realise that the camera might see me the same way, and that what you felt, or the feelings that you interiorise most of the time could be seen on the outside like this, and that other people even might see you like that too, only you don't know it.

i like that i look open - which is to say, without defences, but not vulnerable, and without fear or self-consciousness, neither posing nor posturing for the camera - not in the way when one is caught in a a candid shot, because of course i knew i was being photographed here, someone leaned in with a camera and said 1,2,3, but i mean - without a mask. not guileless exactly, that is the wrong word, trusting is closer to what i mean, though perhaps i still mean open, that is, comfortable and unreserved and unafraid and frank. and i like that i'm not afraid of life or myself or the camera in it.