Arm’s Length

Despite modern appearances, seeing yourself is underrated. When I started taking self-portraits, we were still in that sleepy stage of early digital photography, when not everyone was used to turning a camera on themselves. Cell phone photos were still so poor in quality that the word “selfie” wasn’t in wide usage. So I learned to set a shot at a distance, the old way where a timer and tripod took my place behind the lens. The inclination in recent decades has veered toward only shooting your self-image at arm’s length. I’m ready for my close-up, sure, but just as eager to be a figure standing silhouetted in the distance. You might look at my regular self-portraits and imagine me somewhere between egotistical and pretentious. Truth is, I only started taking my picture because it was the thing I hated the most. But I figured that any good art should be a struggle for the artist — so I took my greatest struggle head-on. Since the start of my daily journal, at least one image each day has been of me. If you don’t like to look at yourself, I highly recommend it. The surest route to self-acceptance is repetition and desensitization.

April 3, 2026
Granville Centre, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6718 of my daily journal.