To do a self-portrait well, one has to get past the layers of perceptual bias one has built up over an entire lifetime in association with his own face.
The mind uses these bias filters to protect itself from the sheer wattage of untempered reality. To get things done, we replace reality with a functional caricature that has the buttons and lenses we need to articulate ourselves over the landscape of life.
But to depict oneโs own face with visual accuracy, a subject which is deeply meaningful and encountered daily โ hence deeply covered in layers of this bias filtering โ one has to see through all that to the raw sensory data. This means giving up the stabilizing influence of the perceptual structure one has used to cushion reality.
So, at least for self portraits done in a mirror, the resulting portrait shows the subject in a particularly vulnerable state.
If he did this in a mirror, then the image shows him in a state of zenlike presence, in a state of surrender to his senses.