sinner (2023) (Patreon)

I recently learned about the photographer Cindy Sherman, whose work Untitled Film Stills—a collection of 70 self-portraits posed as publicity shots for fictional B-movies of the 60s and 70s—is considered a seminal work of the Pictures Generation (and for good reason; it's incredible work). It made me think about my own relationship to self-portraiture and the increasingly complicated manner I set them up in. I was convinced for a long time that my self-portraiture could never be conceived of as artistic. At best, it is very high-quality selfies; at worst, it is a hidden eighth deadly sin of vanity, or so I thought. Looking through Untitled Film Stills made me consider otherwise.

So yesterday, even though I don't quite have the Camry all dialed in, I drove out for photos anyway and I decided I would make self-portraiture the main goal. I went to Bannack, Montana. It is a ghost town now with 30-something well-preserved buildings dating as far back to the town's original settling in 1862. No one has lived there in nearly a century, but the state of Montana bought the land in the 50s and turned it into a park. Park staff have preserved (but not restored) all of the original buildings. 

This park is genuinely in the middle of bumfuck nowhere; I drove probably 90 miles of dirt and gravel roads getting there and back yesterday. This also means it's very empty, and I could turn the place into my own private photo studio.

The rangers at the park were quite excited for me and totally fine with it, so I took my favorite dress and shot for a couple hours on a tripod and tried to get increasingly-more-complex self-portraits, just to see what I'm actually capable of with the form when given enough time and space. (I also tried to shoot square compositions more, which was largely successful.) 

This is my favorite shot from yesterday, and possibly ever, of myself. It took 15 or so tries to actually get this to come out the way I was hoping it would; catching your own eye with light you can't look at while 25 feet away from the camera is challenging, but it was worth it. 

It's begun to make me think about the artistic impact/joy of potentially working on a small series of myself dressed and styled in different eras; everyone subscribed to me likely knows my relationship to portraiture of queer life and vividly imagining a past with us represented in it is actually more enjoyable than I thought. Plus, it feels so good to nail shots like this. It adds something similar to the mysterious joy of film to shooting digital; I have to visualize everything so heavily at every stage of the photo, it feels magic when I get it right. I kinda want to do it more often.

(There will likely be a few more shots from this series in the coming days, but I will try to intersperse them with other work so it's not overwhelmingly my face in your inboxes, lol)