December 2014. I came home one day, decided to get naked. Though maybe it wasn’t that simple. I can’t remember whether I’d planned to or decided to do it on the spot, but I was naked. On the street and in the rain. Taking photos of myself. Outside of my house.

Somewhat embarrassing. Somewhat reaffirming, somehow.

I was living in Glebe at the time and there was something in me that compelled me to do this thing. It was, if I remember correctly, an incredibly stressful and anxiety-inducing time. I was quite on edge and frazzled and trying to keep it together, and I mostly was. Just trying to deal with things, get through them and keep getting on with my life however I could.

So I got home, and the weather wasn’t great, and I got my camera and propped it up on someone’s car, made sure no one was around. It began raining at one point, and I stood there, in the middle of the road and took photos. I stood there, went through it, went back inside.

I have a vague recollection of wanting to do a frank look at the self, but the photos didn’t turn out too well. However, even if they did, I don’t think I’d share them. There’s a vulnerability in them, but they’re also incredibly amateur. I had taken plenty of photos of people at that point, but not quite photographed them, so to speak. I know I hadn’t thought enough about form and expression, and so it comes through. Beyond that, I’m not quite in focus and they don’t really offer anything, but they do mean something to me.

In a way it felt uncomfortable to be there, in public, naked. There wasn’t anyone around and I stopped caring at a point, but there was some sort of relief. You know, that sort of “maybe things are okay”. I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done if someone showed up, because it would’ve been pretty confrontational to see someone standing there, naked in the rain, taking photos.

Perhaps those photos explore the idea of the self in an urban environment, and how artificial that environment is. How, whilst the urban environment presents a truth, it’s as honest as it is dishonest, and the human body is one of the few honest things remaining in the urban. But I know that I was looking at the self, and I was more looking at what I was rather than anything external. And the rain made it all the more typically dramatic, even though it was a matter of fact moment in time.

Would I do this again? Maybe. The circumstances that led to my standing there, naked, are not something I want to replicate. I’d have to find a way to be honest about it, because I could probably do it for the sake of it, but I don’t know if I could stand behind the result of that. The human body is a thing, but a lot of people find it confrontational, and sometimes I still do. But it is something worth trying to understand, though perhaps with more consideration.