Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle Rackowski.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

Photography and art have always fascinated me from a young age. I liked to draw, sketch, paint, and take pictures. In community college, I took an Introductory Photography course and learned about self-portraiture as a genre. That idea really intrigued me, because I was still finding and developing my style within the photographic medium. Photography has become a major part of my healing journey. It is an act of catharsis. Photography helped me visualize how I felt about my childhood traumas and emotional wounds. Overtime, photography showed me a path toward spiritual resilience, perseverance, and transformation.

After I graduated from college, I had the desire to share more of my self-portrait creations on Instagram. I was happy to discover that there was and still is a huge self-portrait community and following within the photographic medium on Instagram. However, I was disappointed with the lack of representation for all photographic or lens-based styles within the self-portrait genre. That led me to create Self Portraits On Fire on October 2, 2020. It began as an Instagram account supporting and featuring the work of photo-based artists working in self-portraiture. Tens of thousands of self-portrait photo-based art submissions on Instagram led the niche platform to expand into a full-fledged online photo-based gallery for self-portrait photo-based artists in late 2021. The gallery has been running for nearly five years now and is proud to have worked with so many artists from all over the world!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

There has definitely been some struggles along the way. I contended with imposter syndrome on whether my self-portrait creations were “good enough.” I also had to pivot from being a feature account on Instagram to running an online gallery. I learned about how to set-up and run an online website. It was not an easy process, but I worked hard to realize that goal from conception to reality. I am grateful for the community I have built and for the artists who have supported me along the way. That fuels me to keep propelling my mission of supporting and working with self-portrait artists. I learned to define what success means to me as both an artist and curator.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

In addition to my role as a curator, I am also a self-portrait photo artist based in New Jersey.

I use digital photography, lens-based methods with my iPhone camera, and digital photo manipulation to create expressive and semi-pictorial digital fine art images. Bold and bright colors are transformed to attain a sense of inner clarity and to reveal subconscious truths. My images are grounded between reality and imagination (the familiar and the enigmatic), which create a stillness in motion.

My passion for swift surrealistic, impressionistic, and expressionistic styles transcend and empower my artworks into deeper narratives of self-reflection and observation. By compositing, layering, and abstracting digital imagery through a painterly aesthetic, I undergo a series of metamorphoses, and express subtle and complex intricacies on the surreality and duality of emotion.

My studio practice and photographic process also bring attention to the healing nature of confronting my own introspective and intuitive gaze before the gaze of the camera. My artworks create meaningful connections between the harmonious balance of color, nature, and spiritual growth. These visual and textural elements enrich my self portraits, which visualize the intangibility of emotion as a tangible and inevitable force that can live beneath and beyond the surface.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?

What matters most to me is growth. It is my desire and my goal to grow in my roles as curator, artist, and human being. These roles are connected. How I love, heal, and learn inspire my self-portrait creations and the ideas I have for new gallery projects and artist initiatives. Taking care of myself, allows me to meaningfully show up for loved ones and artist relationships.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.selfportraitsonfire.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/selfportraits_on_fire/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellerackowski
• Other: https://www.selfportraitsonfire.com/danielle-rackowski

Image Credits

©Danielle Rackowski