Beautiful Self Portrait Photography by Nádia Santos

Nádia, 22 years old (soon to be 23), Portuguese. I’ve started photographing when I was 17 years old. I guess my major influence at the time was a close friend of mine who happened to have a Deviant Art account. I remember seeing her pictures and immediately wanting to experiment with my camera (my old Olympus). That crave grew even stronger when I started college. I had another friend with a thing for photography, and I remember being dazzled by her work. I bought a Fujifilm S1700, which was just fine at the time. I started off with some still life photos, and I would always post them on my Deviant Art account. When I started getting more feedback, my interest grew even stronger. My pictures were mainly details; pink, girly, silly things, though pretty on the eye. But that was how I learned the basics.

Somewhere along the way, my work took an overturn; still life photography just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I wanted something more meaningful, something that would have ‘me’ written all over it. I would still take pretty pictures, but I was longing for darker ones. I was a bit too ‘camera-shy’ at first, but I overcame that. I started taking expressive self-portraits. The one that really changed it for me, the breaking point, if you will, was ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

I was taking my Criminology degree at the time, and I’ve always had a keen interest in psychology, so I started working around certain psychological concepts. People actually responded to that. More followed – dissociative identity disorder, capgras syndrome, schizophrenia (the black swan series), and so on. Most of my other photos revolve around concepts like depression and anxiety; they’re melancholic, they indulge nostalgia. Still life photos are almost non-existent now.

My emotions affect me immensely, and it’s usually at the darkest of times I find inspiration to photograph. So I face difficult times with open arms; they’re an opportunity for me to create, to let go, to mend. That’s what photography means to me; it’s a way of putting up with whatever life throws at me.

Where did Nádia find her Inspiration:

My creative process usually starts with words. It happens all the time: when I’m listening to music, watching a movie or a show. A certain word (or phrase) will strike a nerve, and a concept is born. When that happens, I immediately feel the urge to write about it. I work around the words, around the feelings those words raise, and suddenly I have an image. My photos are nothing more than a blend of the music I listen to, the movies I watch, and what happens in my day-to-day life. Well, with a dark twist, obviously.

Here are few of her amazing past work which will really inspire you to take some great self-portraits:

We sincerely thank Nádia’s for letting us feature her past work, in order to see more of her amazing self-portrait images check out her Deviant Art profile @EneKiedis.