Photographer Darby Routtenberg Has Discovered a New Kind of Self-Portraiture

AGE: 29
BASED IN: New York
NOMINATED BY: Elle Pérez

My connection to the camera was really based in necessity. I tried going away for school, I came back, and none of my friends were left in the city. I thought, Where is my community?

I picked up a camera and just started messaging everyone in Montreal, like, "Can we work together?" I also started photographing my grandmother and her friends. I took a picture of my grandmother in a bed with a bunch of men, and another of her and her friends dressed all in Gucci—those got picked up by Hypebae and L’Officiel. We would shoot twice a year together; I realized that I was more amazed by what could happen on set and the feeling people could get from making one image than I was by the image itself.

I got to a point, around 21, where I was like, "Wait, I could self-explore." It wasn’t until then that I started taking self-portraiture seriously. I had such a high comfort level in my private life, and I said to myself, "Why can’t I bring that outside?" I just wanted to be naked in front of the camera and see what that felt like. I could be feminine and have my tits out, I could be smoking cigarettes and have my legs wide open, or I could have a mustache. I experimented with what felt right through these characters.