Woman who spent 11 years photographing her overweight body - PHOTO

A photographer's exploration of her own insecurities, ideals of beauty and love and intimacy in the form of a series of self-portraits taken over 11 years eventually inspired her to lose 110lb.The photographs Jen Davis began taking of herself in 2002 have been gathered in a new book, 11 Years, which shows her journey in the form of deeply intimate self-portraits. The images will also go on show at the ClampArt gallery in New York City from Thursday.It was after her series had received critical acclaim and had been showcased around the world in 2011 that Davis realized that her body had not really changed over the years - and neither had she.'In ten years, my body hadn't really changed, and I hadn't changed, either,' she told Oprah magazine in 2012 following her surgery. 'The problem was that I was making myself vulnerable only for the camera. What I really wanted was to be vulnerable for another person.'Davis's first shot was taken when she was an undergraduate at Columbia College in Chicago during spring break.A clearly uncomfortable Davis sits on a towel on the beach, wearing shots and a top over her swimsuit as friends around her sun themselves in skimpy swimwear. 'I had never really photographed myself but that beach shot made me realize that I had to step in front of the camera,' Davis told the New York Daily News. 'I need to look at myself.'The portraits, raw and void of any pretension, are scenes from Davis's everyday life.In one, she sits on her bed and stares square at the camera, as if trying to look into her own soul.As the book progresses, Davis introduces male subjects into her self-portraits. She was craving intimacy, she says, but found it only in a camera lens.She explains, 'In the work what I kept returning to is: What is love? Am I loveable? Can someone find me attractive?'After her revelation in 2011, Davis underwent lap-band surgery and rapidly lost 110lb.(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.az