Cristina Nuñez lays bare her deepest emotions in a series of uncompromising, revealing self-portraits titled Someone to Love, currently on show at Skol as part of the Mois de la photo. Over the last twenty years Nuñez has turned the camera on herself to capture key moments of her life. It all began as a sort of therapy after a personal crisis, when Nuñez realized that she could use self-portraiture as a tool for both healing as well as creating art. Her subjects are intimate: the relationship with herself, with her past, with members of her family, with her lover. As we gaze at the photographs we are met with her earnest, penetrating stare. Nuñez seems to be a chameleon as she morphs from a young rock-star to a blonde soldier, a demure Muslim to a curly-haired Bohemian. Sometimes she’s in disguise. Sometimes she is “going through a phase”. But it’s always her.

One of the most striking elements in this series is her raw display of emotion. Nuñez doesn’t pose for flattering pictures, nor does she smile for the camera. Instead her shots bristle with rage, drown in despair, pause for reflection. For her, self-portraiture is therapy, and it is a process which forms the basis for all her work.

Part of this work is to teach others her method, and last Saturday I had the privilege of spending 45 minutes with Nuñez for a self-portraiture session. We met in Skol’s small exhibition room, closed off to visitors during the session. Her instructions were to choose between four emotional states – rage, despair, horror, and euphoria – and to generate this feeling in myself. I would be acting it out at first, but then the real emotions would set in. This method would give me access to my deepest emotions, and this is what I would document. I had a camera facing me, a black curtain behind me, and a remote shutter-release on the chair next to me. I’m no actress, but let me tell you this: the method works, and I was amazed at how easily I accessed my emotions. After the shots were taken, Nuñez and I sat together and looked at the results. It was fascinating and disturbing to look at these images of myself. I had never seen this woman who was also me: furious, crying, pensive. This review and selection of images is also part of the exercise.

What this session taught me was more than a new way of looking at self-portraiture (and myself), but it also demonstrated the honest emotional investment Nuñez makes in her work. Through her photographs and her method she is making a significant contribution to the field of photography and visual art.

Centre des arts actuels Skol, space 314
Cristina Nuñez
Someone to Love
September 9 – October 15, 2011
www.skol.ca