Eight months of daily self-portraits

Each month I sort of decide how I might take photographs. The aim is to to be casual, intuitive and not match my first series of self-portraits taken in 1972-1973. Though I'd like to combine photographs from the two series, it's important not to think about what makes the most relevant combinations. What would 'look best' together.

     In May Krissy allowed to me take self-portraits with her as my birthday present. I'd actually finished my first series by taking photographs with her when she was a small girl and then by handing it over to her so that she was posing alone. That was a conscious decision, like passing a baton. I'd planned to take photographs for a year, but some of those photographs were being published with the "Krissy Photographs" in a portfolio in Camera 35 Annual. That fact made me very self-conscious. And I stopped the series.

     This June I thought that I would take close-ups and had taken the first day of images of my skin. I'm very curious about being inside a body that seemed like mine for all these years only to find that it's become quite different. The changes in skin are fascinating, if a bit frightening. Whose exterior do I inhabit? Though I find these images a bit repellant, they are interesting and very different from a group of body images that I took five years ago. Those were black-and-white and more refined. 

     However, Krissy said, "Why don't the three of us take pictures this month?" Her ex had arrived that afternoon. They are really close friends who laugh a lot and talk on the phone all the time. I find him very endearing. Why not jump for her idea? 

     But she is leaving, moving to New York on the 15th. Now I am in the middle of this unexpected direction (why not, since I didn't want to be burdened by conscious choice?) that is far more fun than the skin meditations would be. Will I use my beloved dog for the second half of the month?