Myself in Objects

A few months ago I saw that the National Galleries of Scotland had a project called Myself In Objects. Inspired by a c.1666 painting called Trompe l’oeil Still Life by Samuel van Hoogstaten, which shows lots of items behind leather strips on a pinboard, they had asked various people to take photographs of groupings of objects that would act as self-portraits, and they wanted the public to get involved by using the #myselfinobjects hashtag.

When I saw the #myselfinobjects project, I was about to put some items together to take a photograph. Then I realised that I already had them together in this little wooden house on my bedroom wall! Included in it are items representing my many interests – science, crafts, dolls, books, jewellery, and sci-fi, as well as items from my travels to Japan, China and Peru. One of the most important nostalgic items is a tiny micro-mosaic box that was in my gran’s glass cabinet of treasures. I think I take after her a lot in wanting to have all my most treasured and meaningful items on display together. So I submitted the photo at the top of this post as my entry.

I was really delighted to be one of the winners of the competition, and the prize was a copy of the book of the Facing The World exhibition of self-portraits. This turned out to be a fascinating book that I’ll need to spend a lot of time reading – it’s not just pretty pictures but has a lot of background information about the meanings and uses of self portraits, a topic that I find really interesting.

I really liked the very creative entry by woollyoriginals which was all colour coded and in a Venn diagram – it’s a shame she was not one of the winners!

I was going to write a bit here about how I got into taking self-portraits, what they mean to me, and what my feelings are about selfies in general, but I realised that this is a huge topic so I will leave that for another day!