One Year of Lisa Blair was a personal exploration of self-expression and my inner life; my growing and evolving identity as a woman and artist; my then-potent wrestle over my own sense of beauty; and, my search for a meaningful life path. On another level, the project hoped to speak to elements of our shared humanity: What does it mean to express oneself, to feel one's own beauty (or not), and to feel alive? Some days were filled with inspiration, hope, and the freedom to follow my creative spirit and flow rather than any prescribed ideas of “what to do” and “who to be.” Other days consisted of a constant struggle with inner and outer demons and if I was lucky, with death—death of my identity so that something new could be born.

 

The project was originally inspired by the movie “Julie and Julia” in which a young woman cooks a recipe every day for one year from the cookbook of the legendary chef Julia Childs. I wanted to do something similar, but didn’t know what it would be. Then it dawned on me—I would take a self-portrait every day for one year.

 

Each day I selected one image out of a series of self-portraits I shot that day, uploaded it to a website I titled One Year of Lisa Blair (no longer online), and added a few brief lines of text to capture my feelings, experiences, and inspirations of that day. The result was a blog with one photograph and a short line of text for each of 365 days from March 1, 2010 to February 28, 2011. Here is a selection of images from that year.