Maëva's Self-love Session

Soulac-sur-Mer, FR

I originally wanted to write about the beautiful self-love session I had with Maëva. I was about to tell you about the project behind her shoot, and why she contacted me to take photos of her in the first place, because this subject is very close to my heart.

I then thought it was better that the story came from her directly, so I give her the chance to speak about it.

So I asked Maëva to recount the 'why' behind her session, and she also spoke about how she felt during our time together.

Maëva's answer came in the form of audio messages, which I tried my best to transcribe as authentically as possible... Enjoy <3

TW: eating disorder

"I'm someone who tends to put myself down a lot and I have no confidence in myself. I booked the session with you to rebuild my self-confidence, which I'd lost a bit. It really helped me to accept myself again, with this body that changes every day. It also helped me learn to let go. You always had such impressive words of confidence-building to help people feel better. You really helped me throughout the session to let go and tell myself that all bodies are beautiful, and that really helped me for my future shoots too, because you learn something new every day! And that also goes for everything afterwards, so that's great!

What pushed me to book this session was the fact that eating disorders are lifelong problems, and so I said to myself that you have to learn to live with them and learn to love your body as it is. Even if that's not the case yet, I'm not 'totally' in love with my body either, it's about learning to respect it, to say that it is what it is. When I saw the photos I said to myself: "I've got to stop saying I'm enormous", because I'm not. It helped me to get back in touch with my body and to say to myself that it's not as bad as I thought.

When you have beautiful photos of yourself, you regain some self-confidence and you say to yourself 'I'm actually not that ugly' *laughs*.