Robbie Kaye

Cracked: Reflections of Imperfection - Robbie Kaye Trilogy, Vol. I

In 2011, when iPhone selfies were on the rise, Robbie Kaye stood in front of her bedroom mirror, poised to take a photograph of herself. She noticed a crack on the bottom left corner. "I can't take this picture," was her first reaction. The mirror wasn't perfect. She took the photograph anyway. She took it because it brought to mind the imperfections of life, of relationships and the learning to love her deeper self - cracks were a way in... As the days and weeks went by that little crack in the bottom corner grew. It stretched half way up the mirror. Time passed and another crack appeared. Soon there were lines across both mirrored doors, reminding her of the lines on her face. The mirror, with all its cracks and veins, held up despite the constancy of use. Robbie Kaye observed how it mirrored her self-acceptance, or lack therof.

In her self-portraits, and photographs of her family, she could see how the distortion worked with these images. She became more brave, more willing to see and love the way the mirror's continuing cracks allowed more freedom in herself. To see her own face and naked body across the cracked mirror stood as a metaphor for her growing self-acceptance during the course of over two years of this project. She continued taking 'selfies, ' sometimes of her dogs, family members and friends. Robbie Kaye took them in the summer, the winter, after a shower, in the middle of the day, when getting ready to go out, to go away until finally, she took the very last photograph on the day she moved. She left that mirror behind. She left behind the shimmery surface whose cracks had invited her into herself. Her life unfolded in front of that cracked mirror. She left the object behind, but the journey had only begun.