Lighting Matches
2024 Self Portrait Series - February
I read a version of “The Little Match Girl” this summer that’s been on my mind ever since. In the story, an orphan girl tries to sell matches so she can afford to buy bread. When nobody buys them, she ends up outside in the unbearable cold with nothing but her matches. So she lights them and gets pulled into dreams of warm fireplaces and delectable dinners and the arms of loved ones. When the matches go out, the dreams disappear. So the girl lights them one by one until her dreams carry her into death.
I don’t know why it stuck with me, but it did.
In it, the author relates being entranced by the burning matches to the fantasies we build around what we’ll do “one day.” But instead of doing it, we keep lighting matches. Letting the dream warm us superficially, instead of doing the work to start a real fire.
I’ve felt like the match girl a few times in my life. I understand, so I can’t be too hard on her. I have to remind myself… Sometimes you genuinely can’t do more than light a match. And perhaps it’s even miraculous you can light a match at all. This photo set is inspired by that feeling.
It’s also my attempt at doing more than “light matches.” (it took me 8 months of thinking about this photo shoot to actually do it lol) Hopefully speaking that out into the ether will keep me more accountable.
How it was made
A video light with a red gel up front with a flash with a blue gel covered in saran wrap between the subject and camera to light up the shower water droplets.
