Hey Film Fam, welcome back!
June is a difficult time of year for me as midway through the month a ‘survival’ trauma anniversary sets in. I have to prepare in advance and make sure I take time away to recover and recalibrate. ‘Body Memories’ are just one of the many joys of living with Complex-PTSD.
As a result of this yearly routine I haven't had any desire to pick up a camera, let alone edit new photos, or talk about film - and I hadn’t even given a single thought to what my next newsletter should be about if I’m being completely honest. Everything just became a fog as I found myself re-entering survival mode, and I’m still clawing my way out of it. So bare with me here while I get back to baseline again. This newsletter might be a tad chaotic.
While wondering what I should tell you about, it suddenly clicked - I should let you get to really know me and in turn maybe understand my art a bit better.
I hope for this newsletter to spark a little bit of discussion, I’d really like it if you could join in and leave a comment, maybe let me know just one fact about yourself, or if anything resonated. Hopefully we feel a little less like strangers after this.
As always these newsletters tend to be quite rambly, photo heavy, and have the vibe of catching up with that one friend you haven’t seen in a while who’s just very passionate about all things film. So if that’s your kind of jam, you’re in the right place!
Grab a coffee, settle in, and let’s get into it!
That’s the thing about artists and creatives isn’t it?
Those of us who are creatively inclined - whether you’re a written and spoken word poet, photographer, painter, knitter, dressmaker, and so on - seem to be able to talk endlessly about our art. We obsess over sharing every though that pops into our head about the process of bringing it to life, the ins and outs of every little nuance, bragging about the niches we’ve boxed ourselves into - justifying all the why’s and how’s of what we do.
We can dabble in long conversations about the specific techniques - like push/pulling film, the scanning process, how to create the perfect content to get enough eyes on your photos, how to make people see you as an authority in your field of choice, etc. We write essays about the knowledge and skills involved in our passions, and describe exactly how we created this glorious thing we have shared openly with the world. We try to teach others and spark passion in a new generation of artists, a deeper validation that we’re good enough to be seen as mentors.
We can do all of this, focus entirely on the actions and the art itself - yet the second someone asks us a simple question like “So…who are you?”- we freeze.
Why is that? Why are we so afraid to be known deeply? Why are we scared that others will learn the truth of who we really are underneath the persona we feel we have to put on? How did we become so wrapped up in the decorative fancy fluff and the things we actually create that we forget that simply being who we are is also huge part of our art?
Does anyone else feel disconnected and lost at times? I’d like to think I’m not entirely alone in this. To try to remedy this discomfort, I’ve spent a lot of time with artists in all kinds of fields discussing why collectively we feel a need to remove ourselves from our work rather than diving deeper into integrating it into our very being.
Your art doesn’t exist without you.
Have you ever really thought about it? I know I haven’t and it was kind of a shock to realize that if I weren’t here (*coughs* looking at you 17 year old me!), neither would any of my photography… or even these words you’re reading right now.
You are ultimately gifting others little pieces of yourself that have been woven into every crack and crevice - in every flick of the shutter, in every dunking of the film into chemicals, in every careful curation of your portfolio, in every photo you deliver to a client, or a gallery, or submit to a journal - there exists a small particle of you.
You’re sprinkling in and drawing from your life experiences, your ideas, your hopes and dreams, your fears, your struggles, your triumphs - everything that makes you uniquely you - and transforming it all with some sort of apparatus that will magically project that tiny little idea that first sparked as nothing more than a neural pathway. You’re performing actual magic to bring it out into the world in a tangible way. Your art is you, and you are your art.
So now that I hope you’ve made the connection and had the same realization that I did, I must ask you… who are you, truly? I want to know.
I want you to know me as well.
I have always had a deep desire to be known inside and out by every soul that enters my life. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to both Photography and Spoken Word Poetry - so not only can you see the world I exist within through my eyes, but you get to hear my voice speak that reality to life and hopefully understand me beyond surface level.
Of course I know that everything I say will be interpreted differently by each person that stumbles across my work - but I know that you’ll get the gist of the main themes and anything else can always be clarified through cultivating a deeper relationship through being in community.
This is something I learned through my poetry practice and actively growing and learning about myself in group settings. You learn to hold space for both yourself and others. You acknowledge that you have to know yourself to some degree before expecting others to be able to sink just as deeply into it - and that requires both understanding of lived experiences, and a little bit of soul searching too.
So, if you don’t mind, I want to tell you what I know of myself so far…
A celebration of sorts.
I mentioned briefly earlier that June is a difficult time for me. Without getting into details, I survived my teenage self. Or should I say, 17 year old me survived her mental illness lying to her about not wanting to be here anymore.
As a way to heal from the trauma I inflicted upon myself and my loved ones, my therapist once told me to reframe the experience. I cannot undo the past, and I can never really erase the memories, but I can actively choose to change the narrative moving forward each time that date comes around to haunt me… so I did.
Every year on the 19th of June I relive the experience as if its happening all over again, right up until the exact time that I acted - and like magic, the flashbacks and body memories disappear and suddenly my brain is able to be convinced that we’re really okay. This is not something I can fix, it’ll always linger in some capacity. And while spending a decade in therapy has certainly taught me ways to process and handle the trauma - sometimes it’s still just as painful as it was for that sweet young girl I was in that moment.
Once I started celebrating my survival rather than sinking deeper into shame and guilt - I felt everything shift. I celebrate being here every day, especially on the really shitty ones. I celebrate my successes no matter how big or small. I make sure I allow myself to feel proud of the goals I have achieved, the person I have become, and my ability to overcome all the struggles along the way. I celebrate that I actively choose to be here and continue to fight for this life that I want to live, and that I know is absolutely worth living.
Each year I pick a lovely location, set up a bunch of activities, and I load up a film camera to take with me. I keep myself occupied with the help of loved ones, and we create new happy memories together and have fun. It’s been a game changer!
I started dabbling in doing an empowering photoshoot (full Digital set can be found here - 1 , 2, 3, ) each year if I feel like it as well. This year I didn’t because I really struggled but I might revisit the idea in a month or so. If I do decide to plan a photoshoot, I like to go into it with zero expectations and absolutely no pressure to produce anything for anyone other than myself. I don’t have to share it if I get a bit self conscious, but most of the time I try to push through the fears I have of ‘oh god, someone who’s hurt me will see that I’m doing okay all these years later, what will they think of me?’ and just fucking enjoy both the experience and the end result.
A lot of my traumas are linked to a sense of stolen innocence and lost femininity, so it became really helpful for me to find a safe space to be able to explore that. (This is obviously something I’ve also worked through with the help of trauma therapists, and I wouldn’t push myself to do anything without making sure I’m in the right mindset.)
It’s actually really fun to be able to book a gorgeous little cottage, pick out a cute outfit, play with makeup and hair, and let myself step in front of the camera lens for a change.
I let myself be seen, I let myself be loved through the eyes of others, I let myself unravel and be safe, be free, reclaim all that I have lost. I let myself cry and grieve and scream if I need to. I let it course through rather than resist it. I just go with the flow, and usually come out the other end feeling better for doing it.
I highly recommend finding some sort of ritual that brings you a sense of coming back home to yourself - regardless if its for a specific occasion like mine or not. It’s super cathartic!
Coming home to myself
It’s a lot easier said than done I know - so I won’t bore you with self-care tips or ‘10 ways to stop being an asshole to yourself’ because I am the wrong person to ask for advice on those subjects.
I’m still learning to give myself grace, and maybe that’ll be a lifelong journey for me - I’m okay with that. I’m still learning to feel safe within my body and to know that this weird bag of flesh and bones is my home - so I might as well learn to love it.
I spent so many years yearning and searching for the concept of “home” too - thinking I’d find it at the bottom of a beer bottle, or at the end of the last drag of a cigarette.
Maybe I’d find it briefly in a bookstore I spent a few hours every month writing and performing poetry in. I’d catch a glimpse of it through the viewfinder, a spark of something hiding in the frames before losing sight of it again. Occasionally I’d search for it in the arms of the wrong people who would harm me, only to leave and never go back.
Sometimes I get a little whiff of it when making Vegan Amaretti, and remembering my Nonna’s home - the kitchen in the afternoon sun, her standing there smiling. Other times I sink into it when I’m around a campfire with the back of a camping chair digging uncomfortably into my spine but the flickering of the amber glow makes it worth it for a moment longer.
Eventually I’d find it more regularly in the safety of a three ton steel shell - my chunky 4WD you all know by now – Scorpion. And she and I would travel far and wide in search for this elusive permanent version of ‘home’ only to realize time and time again the closest I feel to it is when I catch myself sitting in silence with nothing but the clunking of a mechanical shutter - and I’m just in the moment, sinking into it all… oh shit, hang on a sec… it’s me.
I am my own home. Oh, fuck. That then means my art is an extension of me…Which also makes my art an extension of my home. And my art is me sharing my inner world with others and saying - you are always welcome here, I hope you can find a soft place to rest until you too find a way back to your own home again.
Fucking wild. But also super cool to think about how deeply parts of myself are scattered throughout my artworks, and how it’s absolutely a necessary part of my personality and who I am as a person.
Letting people in.
One thing I find so bizarre and almost funny is that despite being a Photographer myself, I really hate having photos of me taken unless I can control and direct them to make sure no bad photos will ever show up anywhere on the internet ever again. That’s definitely my certifiable perfectionism shining through too.
There’s this brief pinch of deep shame I feel when candid photos of me are snapped. I hear that shutter sound, my head turns towards the offender, and I immediately panic. “Oh my god! Noooo! You should have told me! How embarassing! Quick… take a better one…”
I feel icky and cringe, and start picking apart my flaws before I even see the damn photo! Maybe if I got braces as a kid I’d actually like my smile - but then my partner says he loves that I have ‘fangs’ and I kind of learned to love them too. Or maybe if I take my glasses off again… sure I can’t see, but I’ll be a bit more attractive without them hanging off my nose like that… hmm.
And yet still despite absolutely hating photos - I wish people would take more… make it make sense!
I think I am just so used to being the one that everyone turns to when they need help to create memories and document life that it feels a bit awkward when it comes time to capture my own in some way.
I’ve been assigned the role of archiving family film from the 1950's onwards, I develop other people’s film, I create fantasy and fine art portraits of others so they can express their artistic side, and so on - but I don’t get anything like that in return. Not unless I specifically ask for it - but in asking for a photo I feel like I’m an imposter, that it’s not authentic because that person wasn’t even thinking of snapping one of me till I piped up.
Maybe that’s why I decided to explore self portraits instead… at least then if I don’t like the photos I have only myself to blame, heh.
Josie, On Film
I know this has kind of gone all over the place but I didn’t want to do another long winded “this is how I did XYZ” film blog. I thought sharing some candid’s + self portraits might be more fun to understand me a little better, and who knows, maybe you’ll see something in them that I can’t?
Either way, here’s a bunch of film photos of me for once, along with some fun facts about myself. Don’t forget to leave a comment and let me know a little about yourself to, if you dare!
- I always need to be ‘keeping busy’ to help calm my anxiety so I tend to pick up a lot of random crafts. I have perfectionist issues so I start a lot of projects but struggle to finish them because they won’t be ‘right’ oops?
- I own two spinning wheels, both I found on the side of the road and decided to just… learn randomly because they were free? I really don’t know why exactly I was drawn to spinning but it’s very calming and quite fun actually!
- I used to process raw wool fleeces, and dye my own yarn. I spin extremely fine cobweb to lace weight yarn, but I haven’t knitted anything with them yet (because of course, “special occasion yarn” is never used lol) and I even grow my own cotton plants!
- I own 5 Knitting Machines from 1960 - 1980, all fully or semi manual. I used to have a custom homewares business, and had joined a local club where I’d haul my Singer 321 across Sydney once a month to create blankets and clothes with the most amazing group of crafters. I’m finally getting back into it after a long break.
- I learned to hand knit when I was 8 by reading a book about it, I learned to crochet at 13, I used to get bullied at school and called “Grandma Josie” because I sat in the courtyard and crafted to deal with anxiety and not having any friends… not so great but hey I learned a really cool skill that keeps me warm in winter!
- I collect fountain pens as they’re easier to write with due to nerve damage, and have since 2014. I have at least 20 inked up at any given time, and yes I can recall perfectly what ink is in which pen and just tell you the ink name by scribbling it on some paper. TWSBI’s 580’s are my favourite pens.
- I have a really weirdly technical and mechanically minded brain. I obsess over how things work. Anything mechanical? I’ll pull it apart just to see how it works over and over again till I master it for funzies - Typewriters, Knitting Machines, Sewing Machines, Vintage Fountain Pens, Mechanical Cameras, Lenses, Computers, - you name it, I’ll tinker with it!
- I’ve been plant based for 8 years now due to being allergic to consuming animal products, and yes I eat the same boring “safe” meals to make sure I don’t get sick.
- Yes, I’m aware that there’s gelatin in film… I choose to ignore it because it’s not like I’m eating the film, heh.
- I have two special needs cats, Cyren and Lilly. I’ve had them for nearly 10 years. Both of them are Virgo’s - just like me! I love them with all my heart.
- I’m a Published Poet - ‘Preposition’ the Undercurrent Anthology by Desiree Dallagiacomo was my first official publication. I’m currently working on a full length poetry book, and have been submitting my work to just about everything I can in the meantime.
- I got into spoken word poetry after leaving an abusive relationship in 2018. I’ve been obsessed with writing ever since. Poetry has been one of the most incredible trauma healing tools I’ve found so far.
- I attend weekly poetry classes online, but do miss in person Slams and events. I’m hoping to test the waters again soon with local events although the thought of public speaking after a 3 year break is nerve wracking!
- I’ve never left the country, let alone the state of NSW. I hope to travel across Australia in my 4WD one day soon. She’s almost fully upgraded and will soon be ready for my first test! I plan to drive to Melbourne and see how I go.
- I’m a bit of a hoarder to be totally honest. I like to “collect” things and have a trauma based fear mentality that I must “stock up” on things I like or forever miss out. I have piles of books, notebooks, cameras, film, yarn, etc all over the place. I’m working through using all my “stuff” or donating what I don’t need anymore. And yes, that means I will be finally shooting film I’ve had hidden away for years!
- I’m the middle child, and yes I’m fucking weirder than my siblings, they can vouch for that.
- I live with D.I.D and I’ve been professionally diagnosed for 10 years. I’m working on a Photography project exploring my lived experience with it and hope to hold an art exhibition once its completed.
- I was the emo/scene kid as a teenager, and then to this day I’m still a ‘goth girl’ but I don’t get nearly enough free time to dress up and do the whole getup which does make me sad. I’m more of a ‘casual goth’ nowdays.
- I really really love modelling for interesting editorials, and experimental photography is one of my favourite things to do! The more bizarre the better. I love working with other creatives who want to try new things and not care if it ‘fails’ or not. What matters most is if it was fun!
- I want to leave a legacy behind of some sort. I hope to be the cool ancestor that future generations look back on and are inspired by. I have nothing from my own grandparents except the film images I’m archiving, and even then I wish there was an explanation or journal about their journey with Photography… Its what actually inspired me to start this blog.
- I got the family pocket watch tattooed on my arm to cover up my scars, but jazzed it up with some spicy personal meaning, surrounded by flowers - and mum’s name is Rose so ya know, that makes it pretty obvious why I picked them. It’ll eventually be a complete sleeve down to my wrist.
- I’m Italian but I don’t really look like as I look a lot more like my dad than I do my mum- but I talk A LOT, loudly, and with my hands too.
- My best friend Julia and I have a strange obsession with Nicolas Cage. We get each other Nic Cage themed gifts, send memes to each other, and watch movies together. Specifically the movie Vampire’s Kiss. I can practically quote the entire movie at this point.
- My go-to spot when I want to “escape” is almost always Sandon Point at Bulli Beach. I don’t know why, it’s just the most calming spot to hang out in the car and have a good cry at.
- Despite enjoying the beach, I’m utterly in love with the Blue Mountains and I’m always trying to road trip there, or chase snow. I saw snow for the first time in 2020 and have been waiting for it to fall in Oberon again since.
- I truly don’t know how I do double exposures. Anytime I try to do them purposely they don’t work. I’m slowly learning but so far all my best ones have been accidental double or triple shot rolls.
- Yes, I’m chronically stressed and a little overdramatic, but that’s a given when you have a traumatized brain. I just learn to roll with the daily ups and downs. Meditation and Yoga helps, journaling too.
- My gender identity fluctuates a lot. I identify as Genderfluid & Queer. I have a strong desire to be more femme but don’t have the ability to keep up with the high maintenance involved for it to ‘feel right’. I default to being in a more masc energy and can always be spotted comfortable clothes like jeggings and plaid shirts instead of skin tight dresses because of Chronic Pain and nerve damage sensitivities. But it would be nice to incorporate some more femininity into my daily life so the dysphoria calms down a bit.
- My loved ones describe me as a “Gobblin” or a “Gremlin” at times when I get a bit tired and loopy and honestly they’re 100% correct.
- I still don’t know what I want to be when I “grow up” lol. Does anyone really?
There’s probably heaps more I could talk about but I promised myself I wouldn’t make another 30 minute long newsletter, so I’ll leave it there.
I hope you enjoyed some of my favourite photos as well as some cringey ones to prove I’m not as perfect as I may seem and I’m a bit of a strange human just like most of us artists out there.
In conclusion…
I’m still figuring out who I am, what I want my art to say about me, and where I’m going in life. All I know is that I don’t want to be separated from my art at all. I want both the art + artist within me to be intertwined and to shine through regardless of what 35mm Film project I take on. But of course have doubts and imposter syndrome often holds me back.
I think that’s what they call an existential crisis, right? But hey, turns out if you slap your face on some 35mm Film it’s immediately less vain and more authentic/artsy so why not give it a whirl yourself and see if that helps soothe your own inner critic! ;)
I’d love to know if you’re in the same boat at me too, navigating unknown territory and hoping to find somewhere soft to land - maybe we can support one another while building this lovely little Substack community.
Thanks again for tuning into this newsletter, I appreciate you taking time out of your day to get to know me and some of my quirks. I’ve got absolutely no idea what the next one will be about because I’m kind of just flying by the seat of my pants lately. I hope you have an amazing fortnight ahead as well.
As always, until the next roll - take care!
Xoxo, Josie
Wow. Can we be friends? I also struggle with finding "home" or where I belong... As an adopted kid, life has become a wild ride. Love your writing // thanks for sharing. 💚