It all started when I decided to rebuild my life.

I had been thinking and working solely for others for years. That made me happy. But in that process of giving, I lost myself. There came a time when I became so completely depersonalized that I no longer knew who I was when I looked in the mirror.

I wanted to live and feel and vibrate with my great and banal passions. I went out of my comfort zone and only took what I wanted the most. My daughter. But it came empty, lifeless, opaque.

It was necessary to review my history to be able to recognize me. I had to reassemble it according to my truths so that I could find myself again. This is a reflection of that arduous process.

Now I treasure who I am and what I was and I have desire and illusion of what I will be.

This series of photos comes from the same period as “I Am She”. Again, it explores ideas of female identity and emancipation. The mirror represents “the other me”. The one where I worry about how I look, how people see me, if I am attractive or ageing? I wanted to produce photos where I am jumping away from that. Literally! Jumping into clean, white, minimal, distraction-free space.

I wanted to create a sense of escape, freedom, of not caring about decorum.

And the fun of doing and feeling this!

This project was born from the participation in a photo contest with the theme: “the feet”. In my opinion, both the feet and the face are endowed with expressiveness. With just looking at the feet, it is possible to distinguish the essence of the person.

I wanted to make a representation of the outline of this part of the human body simulating the Japanese art technique: “Sumi-E”, which means ink painting. With this method, only the shadows derived from the ink, the entire spectrum from full black to white are used. One stroke leads effortlessly to the next. The effects achieved with simple brushstrokes represent the shapes.

Second Place, ADDAX photography contest – OUTBACK 2006 (theme: The feet). Bogotá Colombia. Digital photography. 3 photographs of 70 x 50 CMS. Matte cotton paper. Series 3

It was curious, adventurous Eve who dared to pluck the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Not subservient, fearful Adam.

Women have rebellion and irreverence at the core of their essential, free, self-determined self. They either choose rebellion or live in slavery and service to men.

Irreverence is about being confident enough to question,

confront and say ‘no’. It’s about being experienced and wise enough not to live in fear or self-doubt.

Women are objectified into products of desire. Women

see themselves in a mirror of how others see them. Their youth and beauty are made into fetishes.

I am not an object to be looked at. I am a human being to be contemplated, to be engaged with, to be enriched by.

The onset of menopause made me reflect about myself and what it means to be a woman. I became fascinated by the portrayal of women in history and in current society. I saw how women were simultaneously admired for their beauty, stigmatised for their biology, desired, insulted, commoditisation and ridiculed.

Rarely did I see real women living real situations, their problems and doubts, their courage and rebellion. But I did see a lot of female models, with their sexy poses and pouting, their stylised bodies, selling products or selling themselves.

I didn’t see what I wanted to see.

Am I what you see? Or what I see? Or am I something that no-one sees, something without gender or biology, something without form or definition?

Who am I really?

The menopause announces the end of biology, the end of function, menstruation and child-bearing. The menopause signifies the end of youth. The end of beauty, too?

Biology and Society: one defines me, the other pins me: a kind of entrapment.