I felt it was time to explore myself through portrait photography. Most of the time in portrait photography, we make images to show a person’s physical appearance. These portraits display emotions consciously selected by the subjects, and the emotions they choose to convey can be revealing. But the real story is in the many things hidden beneath these surface projections—in the invisible emotions that reflect the hidden, psychological existences we rarely show clearly and openly to the world. I created these images—these posed illusions—to reveal aspects of my wider existence and expose deeper emotions I so often keep hidden from the public.