by Shelley S. Smith (Author)
"The Dead Girl Diaries" is a collection of photographs and poetry by Shelley Smith relating to the topic of death, her own death. Shelley has "collected" over 30 "self portraits" of both serious and humorous depictions of her demise. There are images of murder, suicide, and accidental deaths, some serious, others humorous. There is the picture, for example, of the bottom half of a woman hanging from a tree, one shiny shoe on the ground having fallen from the swinging corpse. The piece is entitled "All I Wanted to do was Hang With You", inferring that the cause of death was suicide due to unrequited love. These portraits are accompanied by "pathological"poems she has written over time that perfectly pair with the images, some equally disturbing in their angst and portrayal of death. While some might find the portrayals morbid or an attempt to poke fun at death. Shelley assures us that this is a study of her own demise, an attempt to come to terms with her own fears and morbid curiosity about when "her time is up", even wondering at times throughout the project, "Have I already photographed my own death"?