Photographer Jelena Kintero is an Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the series ‘Self-Portraits’. To see Jelena’s body of work, click on any photograph.

This is my Self-Portraits series, created mostly throughout 2025. It’s not about capturing what I look like. It’s about capturing what it feels like to be human—the confusion, the fragmentation, the parts of ourselves we hide.

Photography became part of my life about two years ago. What started as an escape quickly became something I needed. As a doctor, I spend my days being professional, neutral, composed. But inside, there’s a whole other person—emotions I can’t show, thoughts I can’t speak. Photography became the place where all of that finally comes out.

What fascinates me most is this strange paradox I see everywhere: we show one face to the world, but we’re completely different in private. I see it in my patients—people who seem fine, put-together, normal. Then in a moment of vulnerability, they reveal something entirely different. That gap between who we pretend to be and who we actually are—that’s what drives my work.

So these images play with distortion, fragmentation, inversion. Sometimes you see my face multiplied or broken apart. Sometimes the face disappears entirely, and all that’s left is a body turned upside down, disoriented, lost. It’s surreal, yes, but it’s also deeply real. It’s what happens inside when the mask comes off.

About Me

I'm a doctor and a photographer. Medicine taught me discipline and how to really see people. Photography taught me how to show what I see.

Over the past two years, I've created over a hundred published images and thousands more on my hard drive. This series represents selected moments—the ones that cut deepest, that say the most about what it means to be caught between two versions of yourself.

All images and text © Jelena Kintero