Sophie Self-portrait

Artist Statement

My self-portrait shows my sitting thinking at the beach. In the background is the Ocean and in front of me are words that I am thinking about. I am sitting there thinking about which way I want to go next. That’s the reason why I put the word “Next step” in front of me. And around that the other words. I am making a way with my fingers what I could do. I am from Germany and I have to decide if I want to stay here or go back. So I’m thinking a lot about my next steps and what would be good and what bad. The ocean in the background shows that my thinking and feelings can change every moment, like the Ocean and the weather at the Ocean can change every moment. I‘m not looking into the camera, because I’m looking into the future try to think about my next decision. I am alone in this picture and without a lot things going on around me, because I keep my thoughts mostly by my self and can think the best if nothing distracts me. I do it a lot of times that I just sit somewhere and think about the now the past and how my future should look like. The Ocean is a symbol, because you can see the ocean as really beautiful and happy places, but at the same time the ocean can be really bad. It has no end you can just see the horizont. This is like my feelings and thoughts they are not ending you always have to make a new decision and go on in life.


Trail and error

For me it was not hard to form a concept, but I had difficulties to decide what I wanted to do. I had so many different ideas and aspects that I wanted to show in my portrait. But after I decided to make this idea I had problems to make my idea work. And what camera I have to use and if the weather should be good and all this things. My next problem was that I have never used Photo Shop before, so I first had to learn how to do this. But after that it worked out good.