Delfina Carmona makes photographs that behave like diary pages, though the comparison risks making them sound more private than they are. The self-portraits gathered here are acts of self-inquiry and play: dressing up, performing for a bedroom mirror, letting the camera record what the body and face cannot say directly. When Carmona steps out of the frame, the same temperament persists in a tabletop composition, a shadow reaching toward a flower, a nocturnal gesture that turns sensual and slightly dark. These are not portraits of a single person so much as studies in how a self might be assembled from light, colour and objects.

Published by Setanta Books in 2022, 013 – Delfina Carmona is the thirteenth title in an ongoing bi-monthly series devoted to emerging photographers. The book is a 48-page softcover, 21 by 16 centimetres, with a card wraparound cover, and its compact format suits the intimacy of the work. The sequence does not simply document a practice; it uses the rhythm of the page to let images accumulate, so that recurring motifs and shifts in mood become legible across the whole. Carmona’s statement provides the clearest guide to her intentions: the photographs are a necessary exercise, a trace left behind, a visual compass. That language is unusually apt for a body of work in which orientation and self-knowledge are the real subjects.

For collectors attuned to contemporary photography’s more diaristic strains, this book offers a concentrated introduction to an artist working in that register with unusual consistency. Its placement within a numbered series gives it a clear context: it belongs to a sustained publishing project rather than a one-off catalogue, and the series format allows the work to be read alongside other emerging voices without diluting Carmona’s particular sensibility. The edition is limited to 350 copies, but the more durable reason to pay attention is the way these photographs turn private rituals into something shared and precise.