“I see you too”

 

Hi, I’m Kat, and I’d like to share a series of self-portraits. 

 

None of these images contain me, yet every single one does. Through my love of photography and nature, I found a creative outlet to bare my soul — to love, cry, grieve, and channel emotion into creating a visual feeling. My hope is that these images offer a stripped-back sense of rawness, warmth, and calm, and that somewhere within them you might feel, “I see you too.”

These images are captured near my home in Ocean Grove on the Bellarine Peninsula, and from the beach where I grew up in New Zealand.

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In my most difficult times, I would always find solace on the beach and in nature. I would walk for hours — fossicking for leaves, shells, feathers — sweeping my hands through grasses and shrubs, noticing patterns in the tides and the ever-changing ebb and flow of the waves, the cloud systems, the shifting light. Sunshine and darkness. The more I looked, the more I saw.

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I began noticing shrubs and weeds in the starkest of places, trees bent from ocean winds and constant exposure. I saw how humans build paths and structures, yet nature still finds a way — small, resilient plant life holding on in the tiniest slither of dirt between a fence and a track. In those moments, I started connecting with the part of myself that didn’t feel seen.

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There is, of course, undeniable beauty in a beach at sunset — but I believe there is equal beauty in the quiet persistence of life. In a creeper winding its way up a fence post, or grasses and weeds sprouting in barren, unlikely places, standing tall just to feel the sun. They may not be the obvious kind of beauty, but they redefine it.

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Is beauty what we see? Or is it something deeper — shaped by what someone has endured to still show up, to grow, to quietly say, I matter, while holding onto a gentle heart?

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Through the naked eye, these scenes are often just a wild winter beach, roadside weeds, or native plants easily passed by. But I care about the blade of grass. I was shaped to be tough — to not show emotion, to just get on with it. I didn’t quite fit that mold, though I tried to hide it for a long time.

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When my mind and body broke, these images began to take form. They are an expression of that truth — that beneath it all, I am deeply sensitive, and simply wanted to be seen as I am.

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There is beauty in the mundane.
There is beauty in you.
There is beauty all around us.

There is also struggle, pain, and loneliness.

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And I hope that, even just for today, these images might gently say:
I feel you.

I see you.

You matter.

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Kat x

 

Photos: 

Insta: @katcayleyphotography 

Insta: @salty_tales_

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visual storyteller and mental health advocate

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