Self Portraits Examine the Disparity Between We Are When We Wake Up and The Person We Present to the World – Feature Shoot

Mel Keiser’s Becoming Mel is a series of paired self-portraits—one taken immediately upon waking, the other after she’s put herself together for the day—repeated each day for a month. The series resembles a before-and-after beauty feature, but Keiser, a brainy Chicago photographer and artist, has more on her mind than lip gloss and hair style. Her work asks you to look at the gap between sleep-blurred Mel and bright-eyed Mel and rethink what you know about identity and the self.