My Daily Self-Portrait Valentine project began when I saw a show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in early February of 2024, by the artist Melissa Shook, who during the 1970's did a project where she took a photograph of herself every day for a year. Many of these were nudes, all black and white, mostly shot in her New York City apartment against a blank wall, sometimes with a plant, and sometimes including her young daughter.
I found the work incredibly moving, and on the spot decided that I'd create a self-portrait every day for a year, and that I would begin on valentine's day, 2024 and finish on valentines day, 2025. My intention was a commitment to myself—to a durational project that was a love letter to the essential invisible inner being, and the hope to approach, draw near, make and stay in contact—with those ineffable aspects of "Self."
I also wondered why it was that I did not only dislike the idea of creating a self-portrait, but felt a strong aversion to the project, even revulsion or disgust. The concept, to me, was shameful. But what exactly was shameful? An image of a woman, myself, or the idea of confronting one's reflection in a series of writings, drawings, collages, paintings and photographs? I wondered why I could not think of many examples of female poets who created self-portraits in writing. I wondered what I might learn through this process. I thought about the classic Buddhist meditation technique of mirror gazing. I remembered one teacher telling me that women she'd worked with who were victims of abuse had violent reactions when she gave them mirrors for this practice. The women flung them to the floor in anger and frustration. They did not want to see themselves.
What was it exactly I had been avoiding? The imperative to find out was suddenly urgent. My resistance to the act of self-portraiture was my catalyst and prompt. What was underneath this nearly paralyzing dread? I vowed to investigate through daily practice. Every day for one year I created self-portraits in writing and in visual mediums. All of the writing, collage, drawing and painting was made in notebooks in the early morning. Mostly, I was attempting to contact that essence of "Self" which is beyond the physical, beyond thought, the changeless unnamable aspects of being. This timeless spiritual question—"who am I"—is one which I am endlessly attracted to—the exact opposite of the idea of "what do I look like."
The act is to finally look at what I've been avoiding, possibly avoiding for all of my life. To approach the question: why the idea of rendering oneself in one's art appeared to me abhorrent. And then, to turn that into its opposite. An attempt at self-acceptance, self-love. To say the word valentine softens the premise. To reflect on what's actually there, is a "pre" "face" to what is not visible in the physical form but defines us nonetheless—the face we present before having a face. Not what has happened to me, not how many years I've revolved around the sun, but what do I make of this self, here, and now.
Later when I read more about Melissa Shook, and a statement she wrote about her daily self-portraits I was struck by what she wrote about her mother:
"Having forgotten my mother, what she looked like, what she was like, how she treated me before she died when I was twelve, has been an abiding concern. Not remembering meant, to some extent, having to create a self without the foundation of remembering much about those first twelve years and trying to raise a daughter without remembering having been a child."
Also much later, I realized that of course I'd been inspired by Bernadette Mayer's important work Memory. Mayer's work Memory is not "self-portraits," yet the durational nature of the work, the vast quantity of photographs and writing, and the audio recording played in a gallery where the photographs were displayed—are all important influences, as is her entire oeuvre.
In my own self-portraits, I quickly learned that though I'd always hated being photographed, that when I photographed myself, that impediment was removed. It was only me behind the camera, so what did I have to fear? For the first time, I relaxed. Wanting to share this experience, I began to photograph friends, always beginning with a conversation in which I asked these friends, primarily female poets, what was the photograph they'd always wanted of themselves. I wanted to know how these women wanted to be seen—and to create the photographs for them based on their visions. This collaborative process is one I am continuing beyond the year-long durational project.
Currently Daily Self-Portrait Valentine exists as more than four hundred pages of writing, thousands of photographs, and hundreds of drawings and collages. My hope is to create an audio recording of the writing to be played in various settings where selections of the artwork will be displayed, as well as print versions of this work.
Laynie Browne’s recent books of poetry include: Apprentice to a Breathing Hand (Omnidawn, 2025), Everyone & Her Resemblances (Pamenar, 2024), Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books, 2022). She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
