(or — thoughts on coming out during a global pandemic)
I straightened my back. Inhaled a bit. Exhaled. Threw the black smock on and lined my shoulders up to create a series of angles with the soft filtered Seattle winter light coming through the window. One of these pictures will work. With a camera on a tripod, I wouldn’t know for certain which would turn out.
I haven’t practiced portrait work in a while. Not since what started out as being called in jest The Before Times. I haven’t had anyone to practice with besides myself in over a year.
The Seattle talent gigs are full of photographers begging for new models to give up time in exchange for portfolio refresher pieces. But we’re still in the middle of a global pandemic. Being the one taking pictures, I somehow rarely end up with many of me. I’m not a daily selfie taker. Humans are rarely my subject work.
The last time I posed as a model, I accidentally became stock photography available for purchase on Getty Images. For the fourth time. I worked as a model from 2009–2014 and still find my own face sometimes. Which is hilarious, because most computers seem to struggle with uneven melanocyte destruction caused by vitiligo. I’ve been a challenge for my photography classmates and an undesirable model historically — Winnie Harlow being the first mainstream model to help a world see our skin variation as anything other than disfiguring.
I don’t know if that’s because I don’t understand what I look like to myself — constantly creating my own mental Photoshop over my own skin. Or is it that I have always hated being the one in front of the camera unless it was for work?
In April 2020, when we still lived in Montana, zero active COVID 19 cases was an achievable dream. We did achieve it in our imaginations for almost a week before we had accurate reporting. The reason Montana achieved it was because of state border restrictions, masking guidelines, a low, diffuse-density population, a strong early intervention response, and by keeping everyone at home. And that previous thing I mentioned.
And around a small fire in our backyard I proposed two types of photographers and/or artists: those focused on sharp pointed vertices and those focused on rounded edges. I think my actual phrasing may have been, “are you attracted to angles or curves?”
My partner carried the conversation a bit further in his lighthearted way. We chatted, tying this concept to sexual orientations, architectural periods, and eventually various design movements of the Twentieth century.
Quite a bit has changed for me since then. My style in portraiture and evolution as a photographer have changed immensely since I began my journey as a professional photographer in 2018.
Historically, a portrait is a document. Photography allowed a privilege once promised to the few to be available to the masses. Each picture became a documentation of our surrounding lives and as such, photography is used as evidence of what was.
In 2018, I played with a mirror. I did commercial event photography and documentation photography. I was completely unfamiliar with portraiture and wanted to play with using mirrors to hide the camera and show that make up struggles to cover vitiligo.
In 2020, I took an author photo for a book I published, in which I changed the pronouns in a poem because I was afraid. I lost 16 lbs over the month of April 2020.
I failed to keep weight on.
In 2021, my world changed. Coming out publicly meant that some individuals stopped speaking to me. Others betrayed my trust around this information, and their decision stripped me of control around this disclosure. I decided those pronouns would change back to those accurate to my existence. I knew this meant updating more key features of my book, so I pulled it from the printer.
I’m thinner now than I was a year ago. Two years ago. I wasn’t big to start with.
My driver’s license represents my gender thanks to nonbinary status recognition in the state of Washington.
I can’t hide forever. I need a new author photo. It needs to represent everything I am in its rawest, most exposed, vulnerable state. I don’t care about makeup and I don’t care about my hair color. These aren’t what I need to capture, and I have never been able to do a portrait of another human, let alone myself, that hit deeper than the surface. This is what everyone wants, right? Especially now, in a time when we see each other so rarely.
So, in 2022, here’s my challenge to everyone who takes pictures of themselves: try to take a picture of yourself that makes you uncomfortable. Then learn from it.
Tips for capturing a portrait in 2022 that goes beyond the surface:
Tip #1:
Catch yourself off guard by using a light meter to wait for perfect conditions on that eggshell white wall.
Tip #2:
Don’t hide anything. Whatever you were feeling right when that picture was made is valid. Same as it always was.
Tip #3:
Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable looking at yourself, and instead focus on mechanics.
Tip #4:
Post processing is for failing again and again. Makes lots of copies. Keep an original. Have fun!
Tip #5:
Try to do everything you can before post processing. You can only enhance what you’ve captured aesthetically, while accepting that post processing is a subtractive process.
Tip #6:
Don’t force yourself to make eye contact if it’s uncomfortable — give yourself someone else to look at.
Tip #7:
Don’t force a facial expression — use whichever one happens in the moment.
Tip #8:
Just be.
This is me. I haven’t used henna and/or indigo on my hair to cover vitiligo since December 2021. I am wearing no makeup. I am 32 years old. I am what the world has decided to call in English “nonbinary” and always have been.
How will you pose for your most authentic portrait in 2022?
