Photo taken by contributor Carrie Hilgert, a photographer and portrait artist in her thirties from Northeast Kansas. After venturing into digital photography, she became interested in documenting her life with self portraits. This became particularly helpful when her life started to fall apart due to depression. All her other creative outlets left her, but she could always process her very dark feelings with self portraits. While she is doing much better now, she maintains compassion for those going through these hard things and hopes that her photography can give an honest insight into something that makes most people feel very isolated and alone.

About this photo: “The photograph is called ‘you never look like this in real life.’ It’s a jab at people who don’t understand self portraits. It’s about dressing up as a character and channeling different personalities. We’re all multifaceted people, deep and complex. This is a look into those many sides we don’t always let out, but somehow the camera can catch.”

Find more from Carrie at her blog or flickr.

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