Gelatin silver print, printed in 2014 30 x 24 cm (11.8 x 9.4 in)
Signed, dated, numbered (neg. no.) and annotated by the photographer in pencil on the reverse
PROVENANCE directly from the photographer

Jane Evelyn Atwood’s Self-Portrait with Snake was taken the same year she bought her first camera and started to photograph prostitutes in night-time Paris. This series is considered the beginning of her career as a photographer, during the course of which she has won many awards for humanitarian and photo-journalistic achievements, including the Leica Oskar Barnack Prize. In her photographic work, Atwood, who cites Diane Arbus as one of her inspirations for reaching for the camera herself, turns into an advocate of those who are rejected and marginalised by society.
Over many years, she accompanied Paris prostitutes with her Leica, following them even to rooms in lowlit transient hotels. In remarkable long-term projects, she has documented the lives of incarcerated women in no less than 40 prisons, or has dedicated herself to the fate of blind children over the course of ten years. Her compassionate glance, her commitment and her honest interest in people characterise her work; together with her well-considered visual idiom, they form the backbone of her activist photography.
Self-Portrait with Snake is a shot full of compositional tension in which the 29-year-old photographed herself in full frontal view with a snake around her neck. The early portrait can be interpreted as a metaphor for Atwood’s working method as a whole: she has no fear of things of topics which are generally “frowned upon”, considered vile or frightening. Instead, she remains calm, exuding composure and passion – a basic attitude which is palpable in all the series that were to follow and in her treatment of her “models”.