selfportraits

Late last year, photographer Cheyne Gallarde turned to Kickstarter to raise funds for an ambitious series of self-portraits titled Universe of One. Inspired by the work of Cindy Sherman, the project features Gallarde posing as a wide range of people, both male and female, of different ethnicities, and from different walks of life. The transformations are done using only makeup, wardrobe, and lighting tricks.

To drum up interest for the series, Gallarde came up with an interesting incentive: contribute to the book, and have a portrait of yours recreated humorously with Gallarde posing as you.

Memphis-based photographer Haley Morris-Cafiero has long been aware of strangers making fun of her behind her back due to her size. So aware, in fact, that she has turned the whole concept into a full-blown photography project. Titled Wait Watchers, the series consists of Morris-Cafiero's self-portraits in public in which strangers can be seen in the background giving her strange looks and/or laughing.

Photographer and photography professor Kerry Skarbakka photographs himself falling. The concept sounds simple and straightforward enough, but when you lay eyes on the photographs themselves, you find yourself worrying about Skarbakka health... and sanity.

Canadian photographer Joel Robison regularly creates surreal self-portraits that show what his life might be like if he found himself on the receiving end of a shrink ray. The conceptual photo-manipulations show him interacting with objects that are suddenly the size of trucks. In one image he is seen sitting on a Christmas tree next to some body-sized ornaments. In another, he's exploring a globe while perched on top of a bottle of Coke.

UK-based photographer Caulton Morris is a dude with a very strong head and neck. At least that's the conclusion we came to after seeing his photo series titled Upside, which consists of photo after quirky photo of Morris standing on his head -- literally. The "trick" behind these surreal images is that there is no trick -- Morris actually did the precarious poses you see in each one.

David Talley is a 19-year-old fine art photographer who has attracted a sizable following on Flickr through his dreamlike portraits and self-portraits. He often spends a good deal of time and energy setting up his shots. For the photograph above, Talley and his buddy hauled a huge door nearly a mile to the beach.

Stranger Tourist Self-Portraits is an experimental photo project by photographer Benoit Paillé that consists of photos of strangers encountered on a beach in Mexico. What's different about the series is that the photographs are captured by the subjects themselves, as evidenced by the remote shutter release cable seen approaching the camera from the strangers' hands.

Best known for his iconic V-J Day in Times Square image, photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped some of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century's most famous faces. LIFE writes that the photographer had an interesting habit: jumping into the frame for self-portraits with his subjects.

21-year-old Kylie Woon hasn't been doing photography for very long, but in the two short years since she started dabbling in the medium, her surreal images have already become widely popular online. Her project Surreal-ity features beautiful dreamlike self-portraits in which she is seen floating and flying in all kinds of beautiful locations.

Earlier this month, Noah Kalina released an updated version of his everyday self-portrait time-lapse video, showing how …

Back in March, we wrote about photographer Bob Carey's Tutu Project, which consists of self-portraits Carey created while wearing only a pink tutu. The project started out as a fun image made for a non-profit ballet organization, but soon transformed into something much more after Carey's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. The folks over at PocketWizard recently interviewed Carey, creating the touching short film above that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the project came about (warning: you might want to have some Kleenex nearby).

On August 27, 2006, photographer Noah Kalina uploaded a highly influential video to YouTube. Titled everyday, the video was a time-lapse spanning six years of self-portraits showing Kalina staring expressionlessly into the camera. The video has since amassed tens of millions of views, and has spawned countless copycat projects and videos.

Luckily for the Internet, Noah has kept up his daily picture taking, and today he uploaded an updated version of the video spanning 12 years and 5 months. It contains over 4500 daily portraits and runs a little less than 8 minutes in length. This translates to roughly 10 frames every second, and 1 month every three seconds.

In 2000, photographer Noah Kalina started his …

If you're human then you've probably looked at a portrait of yourself at some point and been dissatisfied for one specific reason or another. Most of the time, though, it just comes down to an unexplainable "I don't like it" or "I never look good in pictures" or, in extreme cases, a sound effect similar to gagging. But according to this short TED audition, the problem isn't with your expression or your looks, it's in your head.

Last October, Portland-based 17-year-old photographer Brendon Burton began an ambitious project in which he committed to creating one self-portrait every day for a year. Now, half a year later, Burton is still going strong and his Flickr photostream is full of beautiful and creative images that document his development as a photographer.

Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style is a spontaneous portrait project that photographer Nina Katchadourian started while traveling by plane in 2010.

For her project titled Learning to Love the State I Am In, photographer Sam Schubert takes planking to a new level by putting her body in bizarre positions and locations in order to "integrate" herself into the materials and environments found in Baltimore.

Photographer and makeup artist Nadia Wicker has a beautiful series of abstract photographs titled Ursides in which she captures self-portraits in which her face looks like exploding fireworks. While her method is secret, Wicker says that she uses her experience with makeup -- rather than Photoshop -- to create the photos.

French artist Philippe Ramette captures surreal self-portraits in which he appears to be defying gravity. Rather than use digital trickery, Ramette -- who started his career as a sculptor -- builds metal support structures that allow him to stand or sit at impossible angles.

Toronto-based photographer Jeff Harris started a photo-a-day project back in 1999 in an …

Enda O’Donoghue finds photographs of people taking self-portraits through social networks and blogs, and recreates them as paintings after finding the owners and requesting permission.

Remember the contact sheet art we shared a while back? Photographer Karl Baden does something similar -- he creates strange contact sheet self-portraits. These images were all created back in 1980. How a roll of film is exposed needs to be carefully planned out in order to know exactly where each shot will appear on the resulting contact sheet.

Each photo is a pretty normal shot of some area of Baden's face or hands, but when combined into a contact sheet, the resulting image is quite... unique.