When I started posting nude photos of myself on Instagram, dozens of people had unsubscribed from me, among who were my good friends. “Did you decide to try yourself in homoerotic?”, “Feminine self-portraits?”, “Are you promoting your body?”, “Who would like such a thing?” they asked me. I just shrugged and kept shooting. I didn’t expect it to be more than my body pictures. 

I hadn’t been shooting for more than six months, experiencing a breakup with a loved one and the middle age crisis. It’s still not over — I’ve just accepted it as inevitable, something you need to go through to mature for something new, to reborn. 

I had made self-portraits very rarely — they literally could be counted on the fingers. I don’t suffer from narcissism, and like many others, I don’t consider myself photogenic. I had put anything but myself on profile pictures in social networks before. 

I often use the most typical poses in my self-portraits, both masculine and feminine. At some point, somebody decided that women must pose this way and men — the other. Nude portraits of heterosexuals differ from the portraits of homosexuals. People are under control of certain stereotypes: left step, right step — and you are on the “other side”. 

I remember in my youth when my body was just forming, my father gave me notes that I protrude my chin too hard, or hold my hands “wrongly”. One day, in adulthood, the passerby bawled at me because I was wiggling my bum. When I had long hair, I was mistaken for a woman from the back, and homosexuals cautiously showed interest in me. These only amuse me. 

I’ve noticed my body has become more flexible than it was, let’s say, 15 years ago. I can form almost anything out of it. And I can afford myself to swing back from any pattern relating to the body, a posture, a gesture, compared to me at twenty when my mind was still blinkered by traditional (patriarchal), soviet style education.