When I created the Tension & Shadow pack, I knew it felt different from my usual work, and that was on purpose.
A few days earlier I had read a comment online from an artist I admire. She wrote that she struggled to find stock images that showed real tension and intensity. That most references felt “too pretty” It stayed with me. Not as criticism, but as a challenge.
It is easy, after years in front of the camera, to fall into familiar shapes. Glamour poses, conventional polished beauty, to play it safe. This photoshoot I wanted to go in a different direction, to go out of my comfort zone. focus instead on showing deep emotion, for it to feel raw.
This collection of 190 studio portraits explores withdrawal and resistance. Twisted arms. Hands grasping. A body pushing against a wall and curled tightly on the floor. I hid my face in many frames, because tension in art is rarely about the face alone. It lives in the arms and the back. The way a body curls inward or pushes outward.
Self portrait posing at this level is physical, it feels less like modelling and more like a yoga class. I move into position, hold the pose, stretch, twist and breath, find the light. I remind myself that the body has to communicate resistance and protection. I am holding shapes long enough for the timer to go, then reviewing and adjusting.
The styling is simple a black silk dress, and wet hair. Retouching is minimal. Scratches, bruises, skin texture remain. I did not want to smooth anything away. These images are the result of concentrated, physical, and mental effort; they may look effortless, but they are not.
Self-portraiture feels deeply psychological. Spending so much time in front of a camera means watching yourself change. Seeing your skin age in high definition. Watching lines become permanent, seeing your body shift.
Sharing my image for others to use adds another layer, I need to be a canvas for others to impose ideas onto. seeing how people manipulate my image, sometimes my face is swapped out, my body is altered, sometimes I barely recognise myself in the final artwork. That is part of working as a stock model, I agreed to that exchange. But it does something to you over time. It makes you aware of how temporary and malleable your own image can be.
I have well over 100,000 images of myself online. That does not include the countless frames I have rejected or deleted along the way. You cannot do that without it affecting you. There are seasons where I want to change everything. To diet harder and invest in skin treatments, to correct what time is quietly changing. There are months I avoid the studio entirely because I feel fat, old and ugly and do not want to confront it with a lens. Our self perception is complicated and confusing, often brutal. what others see is not what we see.
That is the confronting reality of self-portrait work, and yet I keep returning to it. Because there is also power in witnessing your own evolution without turning away. In documenting the shifts instead of pretending they are not happening. Working on the Tension pack was also therapeutic, a way to release constriction, explore a intimate, deeper side of myself, and allow it to exist on camera without needing to be pretty or “fixed."
Offering my image for others to use does not mean losing myself. If anything, it has forced me to define what remains constant beneath the edits and reinterpretations, to remember that while the outside changes, the core stays the same.
I do not want to pretend this all is hardship. It is self imposed. It is creative work. It is a privilege to build a life around it, especially when the world feels unstable and heavy in ways far bigger than a studio shoot
To someone discovering this pose pack for the first time, I hope it reads as intentional. Not just decorative and not performative. Useful and authentic.
With care, Jessica