If you missed part one of this series, you can read it here.
I keep thinking about LA in 2016. It was the height of Instagram photographers and models, do you remember? It was the height of Jorden Keith and Kesler Tran and Caillin Russo and Lucky Smith. It was the beginning of Hailey Beiber and Kendall Jenner and that generation of nepo babies taking over IG. It was before Victoria’s Secret was canceled. It was before a lot of things were canceled. It was when super high-contrast photos were in. And barely retouched photos were out. It was the time everyone wanted to be a photographer or a model on Instagram. I also wanted to make it like them. I keep trying to go back to those moments and untangle them. How did I end up wanting to be like these photographers and models?
A few years into my career I decided to do a photography workshop in LA with Kesler Tran. I didn’t love how he shot necessarily, but I was obsessed with how he edited his work in Photoshop. It was the time when the majority of Instagram photographers were male and liked to shoot women, mainly naked or in provocative ways, which got old after a while. But I felt I had hit a wall in my photography and wanted to know his tricks. It was a one-day workshop somewhere in Venice. When I arrived I counted twelve photographers there, and only two were female, me and another girl who didn’t care to talk to me. We were in some sort of warehouse-turned-studio with black and white boards as backdrops to play with. I had with me my usual camera get-up, my Canon DSLR 60D, and my 80-200mm lens, and my 50mm lens. We met Kesler and his assistant and I instantly felt uncomfortable and wanted to go home. There were a lot of unsavory comments and jokes throughout the day. The models trickled in and my insecurity deepened. They all seemed so grown up, I wanted to be like them. I was 24, what did I know? I remember not really wanting to make eye contact with the models, staying in the back as all the male photographers swarmed them, desperate and eager, sweating with nerves. I shot around them, wanting to stay invisible, not just for me but because I wanted to get to the core of the model’s souls on camera, which was impossible with the film of admirers swarming them like paparazzi. Each girl brought a bag of clothes to play with. They all stood motionless like dolls until someone told them what to wear or not wear, where they wanted them, etc. Which is pretty normal in a model/photographer relationship but something about seeing it in this context made me feel eerie. I remember the end when Kesler wrapped and gave us a pow-wow talk. He went around the room and asked where we were from. When I told him I was from Houston, he started to laugh and told me that there was nothing in Texas but strippers, alluding that maybe I was one too. Everyone in the room grew silent and I could feel my heart beat faster in embarrassment and anger. I didn’t stay to mingle after, and quickly unfollowed him on Instagram. I wanted to forget the whole experience like it never happened. I was beginning to realize I hated this industry and these people.
The beginning was easy. It was pure. I was a few years out of high school but that feeling hadn’t dissipated yet. It was easy to follow in the footsteps of Tumblr and high school photoshoots, soaking up what my friend learned in her photography class, always being around for my other friend during her photoshoots, acting as stylist and director, and taking fake editorials with my phone until I met Hayden and he saw my eye and gave me his canon 30D. Maybe that added something to the feeling of the beginning. Hope, lust, dreams, not yet realizing the limits to ourselves, or refusing to believe in limits, the world was ours, it felt like we were all shouting. All these images were coded in the music I was listening to, music colored every living experience then. I was so lonely in Boston. I only had Hayden, and he had his friends and school and music. I wanted to find my own place within this new world. The camera has saved me so many times.
The beginning was uninhibited freedom, none of us were thinking about likes and followers and all of the bullshit that is relevant today. I don’t know if any of us had a grand plan for these photoshoots. All we knew was the present: standing on top of a striped blue couch after painting glitter onto Julie’s face, turning to the sun to make them sparkle, walking until we found a spot to shoot with Chase, shooting in whatever random home Reilly was crashing at for a few weeks, opening all of their drawers to see what was in them, jumping in a taxi to a dance studio in Cambridge and asking if we could borrow a room to shoot in, Anna always charming her way in with her inability to take no for an answer. It was shooting in the basement of my apartment complex where the laundry room was, shooting in the mailbox room, shooting in the middle of the street not caring about everyone wandering in and out. We were making art, that was all that mattered.
There is a thread in these images, that remains today (I hope), this quality of nostalgia and movie-making. I always wanted my photos to feel like stills from a movie. There were mishaps, yes, like when I discovered I could layer fake sunflares on Photoshop, and sloppy skin editing before I figured it out. But I still love all of these images, they feel more like self-portraits than portraits.
I quit doing fashion photography in 2018, I dabbled in it again in 2019, but mostly I stopped. I had grown my Instagram to 6,000 followers and started to have people seek me out to photograph them. I was growing my name I guess. But I was burnt out, and my heart wasn’t in it anymore, so I quit. I haven’t been able to pinpoint why exactly, even after all these years. I sometimes have a physical aversion to fashion photography, but then when I look at my images my heart sinks. What did I do? What did I give up? Sometimes I want to take fashion shoots again, but then I start the spiral of thinking, what is the point, who is this for? A model-turned-friend told me she thinks it might be something to do with the lie of immortality fashion presents. But I don’t think that’s what it is for me. When I see these images I see myself. Almost all of the clothes I put on the models were my own, from my own closet, or from scowering thrift stores to find something to layer on models. I dressed them as I would myself. I made them pose as I would myself. There were times when I would see the model and try to bring out their inner cores, and there were times when that seemed impossible, they were too shy, too quiet, or too guarded and so I replaced them with me, ignoring their collaborative efforts to make my vision come true. When I look at these images I see all the times the models would tell me how hungry they were or how their agent told them to “shave” an inch off their hips, or drop a few pounds. I would feel anger for them, shouting at them that they were beautiful as they were. They all gave me a weak smile like what does this chick know? Being around them and that industry affected the way I saw myself too. I started working out every day, I started looking at my body differently. I wanted to be them too, the star, the center of attention. But my favorite models were never concerned with that. They were always free, only doing this until something else came along, or had jaded pasts with it and were doing it for art’s sake, or maybe they secretly did want the fame but never mentioned it. And maybe all of this is just because my impulsive instincts didn’t lend to this craft that involved more than just myself. I had models tell me to submit my work to online publications, but for some reason doing that would taint the images for me. I wanted the photos to exist between us, without as much of a shred of capitalism as possible. And yet, like everyone else I wanted to be discovered. It was a cycle I was afraid of getting stuck in.
There’s a theme here in these images. I wanted to pluck out a constructed memory as if it were a real memory. A memory I made up in my head. A fantasy. There were real aspects to these photos, the walking endlessly until I found the right light or spot I wanted to shoot in, all of the randomly deep conversations you find yourself having with strangers, sharing dreams and fears, knowing we probably won’t ever connect again unless I’m in town or they are in town and want to shoot. A string of connections that are only relevant based on what we can offer each other.
Looking back now, I might’ve chosen different photos to edit. I didn’t see the timelessness in the pictures I took. Sometimes I think I put too much of myself in these photos, I am clouded by the prominent “I” in them. I wish I would’ve let things lie more. I can see how I tried to mold the models into someone they weren’t. Or there was the disappointment in their disappointment when they didn’t like the photos of themselves. They wanted to be more sexy, or hot, or appear to the male gaze in some capacity, not realizing how beautiful they were as they are. The worst was when I got it right and shot them as I saw them and they rejected the perspective altogether. It’s hard to see yourself. It’s hard to see yourself in your early 20s, in your mid and late 20s, and even now in my early 30s, it can be hard to see myself. I wonder if it ever changes. I wonder if we can only see ourselves when we look back. What is it about the past that allows this freedom?
I found the engagement, wedding, and maternity photos I did while looking through my archives. I strangely still love them all (even if I hated them then.) There is so much weight to shooting portraits. I carried everyone I shot. I held their stories as sacred while fighting for my creative image. Sometimes it would take me weeks to edit work, I couldn’t bear to look at them and enter that portal again. Perhaps the weight was a little bit of projection and pressure and wanting to please the receiver. But it’s something I don’t take lightly. I’ve been going around about this for years, will I or won’t I return? I find myself swaying towards returning one day, maybe when I’m older, or — baby steps. Photographing someone is such a vulnerable thing, on both sides. It takes trust on both sides. It takes courage to have someone take your picture and possibly see you or worse not see you. It takes courage to ask someone, can I take your photo?
I truly love and appreciate you sharing your artistic practice and art with us! "When I see these images I see myself." This made me think of the photographer Siân Davey who mainly does portraiture. This video is excellent, and I thought you might enjoy it; she talks about being a psychotherapist in the past and how she understands herself more through other people, that she is always trying to discover something about herself by photographing others. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5-oSwtrLXM/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==