Commentaries and Love Letters:A Photographer's Journal

Amanda told me this

 

The first time I bound my breasts I was saved -- that simple act pulled me out of a deep depression, and away from self-injury. A very close friend had been savagely beaten returning home from a gay dance on Prince Edward Island. The images of her battered and bruised face posted to the internet were heart-wrenching. Not only did they show what had happened to her, but they were also a stark reminder of the hateful experiences many of us face in the Queer community. I found myself tormented by memories of the constant physical and emotional abuse I suffered as an adolescent at the hands of my 'peers'.

I was in New Brunswick at the time, and confided in a wise and caring friend. Before the beating, we had been having lively discussions about life and gender, about happiness and identity, and about the idea of androgyny. After the beating, she saw me falling into anger and silence, a darker side of myself that I hesitated to share with others.

Not one to sit back and let the wrong thing happen, she offered me a remedy in the shape of panty hose. I joined her in ransacking the local Salvation Army for 'little boy clothes', and then we hacked off most of my hair while listening to Regina Spektor. With some arts and crafts instructions from the internet, we cut the legs off the panty hose for my arms and a hole in the crotch for my head. Pull that down tight, and there go the breasts. Put on a comfortable shirt, a little mousse in the hair for some punk, and there goes Amanda and here comes Lou.

As time has gone on, I've become aware that binding has strengthened my ability to admire myself as an individual. It is empowering in that it allows me the freedom to feel genderless. The idea that someone watching me walk down the street can't know if I am a boy or a girl thrills me because I know I'm the one with the answer. Make no mistake, though -- I do deeply love my female body, and often my clothes or my composure reflect that. But I don't let it define me. When I do bind or dress like a boy it is simply another conversation between my spirit and the physical world. Long flowing skirts and button up plaid are both expressions of who I am.

 

This is Jay

 
 

 

When you're young and you start to understand that the body you've been living in doesn't fit right, the world as you know it gets a little shaky underfoot. When that awareness doesn't go away, self-doubt and distrust become constant and troubling companions. There aren't any guidelines or protocols available to help sort this out. There aren't many adults who might take this mistake seriously, or even see it as more than just a phase or a child's funny whim. So you do your best to be who you are. You hide some things, and play up others. You discover that while girls are much more interesting than boys, your own outer shell is a problem. Before too long, the other kids notice that you don't fit the same mold that spawned them. Acne flairs and, while you can hide your body, you can't hide your face. With the solicitude and understanding of the young, you're singled out for the special attention that only the ignorant can offer.

You can't define yourself. How you fit into the world around you becomes an impossibility to manage. You torture yourself about what you did to make yourself go this wrong. And worse than that, you're deeply afraid of your own future.

Yes, eventually people were found who weren't judgmental and who didn't care about sexual orientation. And that offered some relief, for awhile. But those friends weren't able to help with the quagmire that surrounded Jay's need to reconcile the thoughts and emotions and ideas that made up her internal person with the clear fact of the flesh and blood body that surrounded them. This determination to understand herself and accept that she didn't fit into society's 'norms' sent Jay into almost constant emotional upheaval, as well as long struggles with anorexia. Hospitalizations and residential programs did little to raise any level of self-esteem -- especially since no one recognized or wanted to deal with questions about sexual identity and understanding.

 

But when Jay was 20, an eating disorder counsellor finally acknowledged out loud that there was another part to Jay's real life and suggested trying out a nearby drop-in center for people with sexual identity issues. Jay walked by the building a good number of times before pushing herself through the door -- and found what had been missing for such a long time.

There's a sense of incomplete serenity around Jay. She's clearly on the upside of self-acceptance and self-assurance, but the struggles have left their marks. She's somewhat at peace with this physical body, and she's engaging and kind and has a depth of understanding about who she is and what she has done for herself. When I think about her, I see perserverance and bravery, and I admire her willingness to step into the public eye to offer her story to others who might take comfort from it.

 

 

Secrets of a Woman-with-a-penis

 
 
I am a woman-with-a-penis. That's one word: woman-with-a-penis. And as a woman-with-a-penis, I know secrets that you probably think you know, too -- but trust me, you don't. So I'll tell some of them to you, and you'll better understand.

First of all, I am a woman-with-a-penis who does not want her penis, thank you very much. While this is true for me, you should know it's not true for everyone in the transgender community. Some who identify themselves as cross dressers and no-op transsexuals do in fact want to keep their penises, and certainly should. Others undergo orchiectomies ('orchies' for short), which is the removal of the testicles only, leaving the penis itself intact. Some do this as a preliminary step to Gender Re-assignment Surgery, but others do it as a procedure unto itself. And some transgender women who undergo breast augmentation and feminizing facial surgeries will take no hormones so they can retain the ability to have erections and ejaculations. If that is their path, then I say brava. The courage it takes to follow one's course should always be applauded.

My experience is not theirs, however. I am a woman of transsexual experience who would rather not have these inches between her thighs, nor any of those so over celebrated accompanying abilities. And I haven't for a while now -- like since childhood. I won't bore you with any adolescent traumas -- those sorts of things have been rehashed again and again on CNN and in Barbara Walters specials, where cashing in on all the lurid drama for easy ratings seems to be the true order of business. I will say, though, that in the present tense I am a late onset transsexual (someone who began transition in mid-life as opposed to the more optimal adolescent years when hormones would have had a greater effect), whose pre-op status is not by choice.

 
 
Want another secret worthy of a Fox pseudo newscast? That look of pain you see in Richard's picture of me holding the knives? -- that is real sadness in my face and real pain etched into my eyes. Pain and sadness not because I am holding sharpened blades between my legs, but because I cannot bring myself to actually use them.

Here's another one. Did you know that during Gender Reassignment Surgery, penile skin is inverted to make the neo-vagina? And that to make one's new vagina as potentially orgasmic as possible, you need to keep the nerve endings of your penis invigorated? That's because an atrophied penis may end up a deadened vagina. So you are encouraged to keep those synapses sparking as much as possible -- with masturbation as the preferred method. So the way to make sure you have the most viable vagina is to play with the one part of your body you'd rather never touch or see again.

I wish I could tell you I was either kidding or dreaming.

Here's another uncomfortable truth you can think about,  and that's just how maddening this process can be. How frustrating and infuriating it is to know you are unable to continue in your transition, your process, your spiritual journey (because its impact really does reach that far down into you, touching your very core), not due to a lack of will or want or need or real-life experience or support, but because of something as mundane as money. Money! Dollars and cents, Benjamins and pennies! Knowing that you have come all this way, jumped through all the hoops the therapists and medical providers have forced on you just so you can even start on hormones -- only to find that the insurance companies have set up brick walls against you because they want to define your surgeries as 'cosmetic' and 'elective'. Oh really? -- cosmetic? Let them tell me of someone, anyone, who in any god's name would have 'elected' to make this their life. Who chooses to wake up every day in a body stuck in this half-transition between sexes. Who would choose to go out and face a world hostile to trans-folk.

 
 
But I don't want to leave you with the dull impression that this journey has been anything but incredible., or that I would rather go back to a pre-transition time when wearing the wrong gender was akin to slow suffocation. No matter how tough the toughest days have been, they are nothing compared to all those days that went by before I got my first Estradial perscription. In fact, these are empowered days when every step of my heel leaves a spark on the street behind me. But I won't lie to you either: there are infuriating facets about this journey that have nothing to do with being transsexual and have everything to do with someone else's interpretation of it. And that brings me to my final not-so-secret: I'm going to survive their ignorance.

 

hannah

We decided to do a series of shots that looked at tragedy, comedy, and the possibility that in a previous life Hannah might have at least known some ladies of the Parisian night. We did them in two sessions, and what you see here are some of the results.

 

It's easy to explain what a pleasure it is to work with Hannah. She has determination, imagination, and an understanding of who she is that she brings not just to the studio, but to the stage as well. She is fearless and funny and always willing to see herself as someone new. 

 
   

Hannah's nature is to offer more than she asks for. Her curiosity and ability to pursue her desires touches all around her, and makes them more able to fulfill their own. When she tells you something, you can take it for gospel. What's better than that? -- nothing.

Being Dan

Imagine having been raised Pagan in a flyspeck town in rural New Hampshire -- and being smart enough to skip two grades in your early schooling. Imagine being a very late bloomer and finding yourself socially and physically always four years behind your classmates... who know you're from another planet, and treat you accordingly. Ostracism and exile will be the hallmark of your life. With the exception of a specific tree found during third grade, all your friends were your parent's adult friends, or the artists in a local collective who taught you the ins and out of jewelry making and collage. No matter how smart you are, or what sage advice those around you might give, how would you define your self? What place would you put your self in? How do you determine your role when all the people surrounding you are so different?

Not simple questions to answer -- especially when your female body holds within it a developing male core.

 
This very young and very naive girl came to college in Boston and found herself thrown into a world populated by unsupervised and hormonally deranged teenagers. The physical and emotional bubble she had been living in immediately exploded. For the first time people near her own age noticed her, let her know she might be a person worthy of interest and not at all as strange as she thought. Of course, her immediate and most pressing need was to start learning how to socialize herself -- and within three weeks of this new and unfettered freedom, she found she was bisexual. There are joys in freedom and in sex and in learning how to be a person amongst people for the first time, and she started to blossom. She shaped herself mostly for the eyes of others. As inexperienced and hungry as she was, she needed the people who made up her life to tell her who to be. Their lives became hers, their sex became hers, their understandings defined hers. She moved from friend to friend, lover to lover, took on new hair and clothes and names, all in an effort to make a real self.

But then there was the stranger she caught looking back at herself from window reflections and unexpected mirrors. She had come to accept that he was there, even though she didn't understand why. Answers come with time though, and as her life opened out so did her awareness of who he was. By nineteen, the stranger in the mirror had become so constant in her life and so insistent for recognition that she sought out an older transman and asked for council. She was warned to find every happiness she could in being the person she was, and not to consider transitioning into being male until she had explored every other option she could find. So she looked at them all. For six more years she sought to be a comfortable woman. She struggled with an impossible and agonizing relationship, and with the everyday-ness of living a role that became less and less hospitable. Six years is an eternity -- and at 25 she began the process of becoming Dan.

 
 
 

I knew Dan was a transman before we met -- he answered a request I put out for gay, lesbian and transgendered folk to sit for portraits. The person who showed up looked more like a mature teenager than a thirty year old woman. With mannerisms more masculine than feminine, he's a blend of male confidence and a female desire to please. He has frequently colorful and interesting hair that sits over rock steady eyes over an ever-expressive mouth over a good chin sprouting hair that falls somewhere between peach fuzz and whiskers. The time Dan has spent looking for himself, and shaping the self he found, make him the ideal subject for someone like me. He's fully invested in his transition from female to male, and the man who came to have his picture taken brought none of the self-protective masks I had expected. Instead he talks without hesitation about his life's journey, and his sense of where he is now. He invites you in, gives you everything you ask for, and asks for next to nothing in return. He's also an adept photographer, and understands the camera as a recording device that is neither friend nor foe, but will give back to you as much or more than you give it. He doesn't pose, he lets himself be; he doesn't hide his emotions, he lets them come through his face; he talks and listens and lets the session follow itself.

He has a comfortably intellectual approach to what he does -- leavened with sarcasm and wit. His appreciation for life is filtered through the knowledge that it can be changed, for the better or the worse, should needs be. Usually he knows himself to be a gay male, and when I asked him about why, he told me, "Men have a playfulness about them that I don't find in women as much. I love that men never stop being goofy. Being a man is about play-acting. I don't know any man who isn't playing at being a man, in one way or another. Gender is performance, and one thing I've noticed since I started living full time as a male is that I didn't need to be on stage so much any more. My life has become a performance I can live in, and one I no longer need to escape."

When I asked him what thoughts our photographs sparked in him, he told me, "I don't think I expected to turn into Brad Pitt by any means, but somedays I'm dissatisfied with my body -- just like most queer men. I'm certainly more at home in it than I was before transition.... My body isn't perfect, but it's mine and it's what I made it. My body is more my purposed creation than most people's, and that gives me a deeper ownership than most people have. Sometimes in one picture or another, instead of seeing a delicate man (which is what I usually see), I'll see the fierce woman I could have been instead, and that's always sort of a shock. But, honestly, I don't know if I really think of myself as male or female most of the time. I just think of myself as Dan -- and I am what I am."

 
 
 

 

I asked Dan if he wanted to add something to the  piece I did about him. He agreed, and here it is.

When I tried to consider how to talk about the portraits we took together, I found it easy to pull out a few shots that I found visually or emotionally interesting, but hard to figure out how to talk about why. I decided my best bet was to try to name them.

"Too tired to save the world". I love the lines in this one. The continued angle between my raised elbow and the arm behind my back is an interesting contrast to the rounded lines of my stomach and back. The look on my face interests me, too. I look drained, but like I'm keeping a secret reserve of energy, just in case something exciting happens.

 

 

"Offending myself". I know that look. I'm sure my friends recognize it, too. I can't resist a straight line, and I have to follow the joke through. Unfortunately, I'm also extremely cautious about offending people, and usually, I'm the first one offended. I often end up wincing at my own insensitivity before I even reach the punchline, but I almost always finish.

 

 

"Gluteaphobia". I think what's probably my biggest body image issue left is an obsession with how big my ass is. I love how in this picture, you can actually see the fear, or at least nervousness, in my eyes at letting someone look directly at my ass. I know we were trying to photograph my mole (hi, mole!) but I always get very self-conscious when I'm naked with my back to someone, and it looks like I'm trying to say something funny to distract you. There's a bit of nervous desperation in this shot that I find kind of cute.

 

"I'm still right". This is a look that I don't think I get very often. What I see on my face here is "I think you're wrong, but I'm not going to try to convince you". Normally, I either change my mind (that happens a LOT) or I keep after people to change theirs. I wish I could remember what you said when we took this one, but it really looks like I pulled back in for a minute here -- normally my protective walls are diversions, jokes and insults. This is me just deciding to stop. I wish I could do that more often.

 

 

                                        ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

 

Dan told me he kept his girly clothes and that one day he might be willing to try them on again. Not necessarily happy to try them on again, mind you, but interested in what it would be like. These photographs are an experiment in visiting a life gone by in order to see what place it has in the life now present.

It wasn't easy. Not only has testosterone lowered his voice and given him chin whiskers, but it also has changed his body. Clothes don't fit the way they used to -- either physically or psychically. Answers were found to his curiosity about dressing as a woman, and the answers satisfied his interest about his bodily changes. But he was uneasy -- partly, I think, for the fact that he still has the clothes, and partly because he didn't feel he looked male enough to carry off the visual contradiction. I was struck by my own reaction to the session. I've talked with Dan a fair amount and taken hundreds of pictures of him. Despite physical evidence to the contrary, I cannot grasp that he was once a woman. I felt like we were playing cross dress up rather than looking at the things he wore as an expression of his sexuality. To me, lingerie is seduction, mini-skirts and thigh high boots are the in-your-face 'I've got it and you want me' statement. A purple gown is for tea or a soiree. The Dan I know is jeans and a t shirt, and looking at him in his female attire doesn't make a lot of sense.

 
Dan didn't understand himself to be lesbian, bi-sexual or heterosexual until he was nineteen. He knew himself to be female -- breasts, lovers and menstrual cycles proved that. But there were too many cross currents, and his restlessness wouldn't let them go. He might have remained female had the world he was in and the people he knew been just a little different. But they weren't and that drove him to finally settle this internal confusion over his natural gender. When he looked at the roles assigned to women, the roles they chose for themselves, the way they habitually responded to the men in their lives, he found little he could relate to. In fact, the more  women he got to know and the more deeply he got to know women, the less he found in common with them at all. There was never a single 'aha' moment, but one evening he was part of an all-girl discussion about the advantages of being a woman -- and the answers came back as small cliches. Feeling feelings, not being a threat to each other, the uniqueness of female bonding, having babies, the ability to make men stupid. All of it offended him.

 
Simultaneously, Dan had this revelation: he didn't want men to have sex with him anymore. It was the wrong construct. In it's place he understood he had to be the man having sex -- and it wouldn't be otherwise were he to be true to himself. So he set about assembling an exclusively male persona, cobbled together from the long list of odd attributes he found so entertaining in the men he knew. His sense of irony took the macho swagger, the boys-will-be-boys crudeness, the insensitivity they believed manly and turned them into an over-the-top character role for himself. Many couldn't adjust to the new Dan, and the changes cost him friends. He tempered the role, shifted things here and there, strengthened some parts and calmed others. He made new friends, lost many of those as he grew, made more friends and kept them as the real Dan emerged.

 
Testosterone requires careful dose management. Too much or too little creates mania and depression, deeply black moods, the sense that everything is more important than anyone can understand. For Dan it was like the worst part of being a teenager again, but now the highs and lows were magnified a hundred fold. He had little room for thought and none for introspection, everything had to be responded to and taken care of immediately, and every decision was final. Life was only black and white.

Properly administered, testosterone brings assurance and balance, focus, and the ability to say yes or no. It lowers the voice, grows hair, thickens the waist, and lets that be okay. And it allows Dan a singular look at gender and a more nuanced understanding of the socially engineered male/female divide.

 
 
 
There are many more roles available to women than men. Butch or femme or anything in between is acceptable and unremarkable. But not for men. Their roles are narrow and closed. And they have penises which make them dangerous. They are rapists, either in fact or in theory, they are violent and unemotional, constrained and a threat. Male bashing is socially approved, and a correspondent culture of victimhood flourishes. Men are in straight jackets. There is a fragility to them because acceptable means of expression are so few. But if you look and look openly, you'll find a far richer emotional life and a much more complete communication than commonly believed -- it's just in another language. Nevertheless, if a man is unable to conform to the prevailing social standards, he will be buried under more trouble than he might have imagined.

 
Transgenders find themselves outside this arena. Gender is less a question than a fact -- and as a fact it's not worth much. A feminine man is no more remarkable than a masculine woman. Who you sleep with is your business, and so is why you made that choice. There seems to be little that is categorically right or wrong. There's room for bias, for acceptance, and a self-expressive freedom the dominant social structure cannot allow itself. But it's not always a pretty place. There's the fright and intolerance aimed at those who are born different. There is pain and ache and self-hatred. There is a deep confusion and hostility in the social majority that makes an offer of help impossible. And that's pathetic.

Dan has lived this in all its ugliness and beauty. His sense of the absurd and his ability to laugh are central to his character. He undertakes these photographs and conversations as a way of looking in while speaking out about his carefully chosen life. My hat is off to him -- he offers himself and his experiences freely, and with nothing riding on what you might do with them.

**************

After I posted the above, Dan made these comments:

There's a couple of points that aren't *quite* accurate, but they're "true" (that is to say, they're believable and express the story, but they aren't the way things happened to me). 1. I came out as bi-sexual (to myself and anyone who would listen) at 16. I tried to be a lesbian (again, out loud) at 19, which led to the gender questioning that I was hiding as deep as I could by 21. I don't know if what I was going through could ever accurately be described as confusion (at least not about gender). 2. the "taking bits of masculine persona" from my lovers wasn't as conscious as I think it comes off in this post. I realized years later that I'd been doing it, but I'd been doing it as a woman. Once I started living as a man, I was able to let go of my ex-lovers' affectations. 3. I suppose gender is a different construct when you have to live it consciously. I think people in the transgender spectrum (who I'm never really comfortable referring to as "transgenders" - it's an adjective, not a noun) experience the same things as everyone else does. We experience some things that other people don't, but we have to live within the same society that effects everyone else AS WELL. Again, that's just my experience. I can't, shouldn't, and won't speak for all transgendered people.

Recent Portaits

I usually start a portrait session by asking my subject to stand in front of a simple backdrop and move a little. Side to side, hands in pockets or not, arms crossed, head up or down, profile and full on. I might move the light now and again. We refine our approach by looking at the images and agreeing on good angles, right lighting, too much this or too little that. With those things in mind if the session is designed to be an exploration, we continue in a similar way. Or we start in on the images we have already chosen to do. My preference is for a simple set up -- a muted background, usually a single light and little else. I avoid giving more than a few basic directions so the person I'm working with will have the freedom to let themselves be. Sometimes we have music, we have conversation when it doesn't interfere, and there is always a lot of room to experiment.

 

Stacey is beautiful. It's as simple as that. She's funny, sarcastic, smart and a little bit angry, too, and that makes her satisfying to work with. Every part of a conversation flows across her face in dozens of fleeting, subtle expressions. At first I felt like I was trying to catch the perfect shot of a perfect bit of sunlight reflecting perfectly on the ocean. Then I realized I was best off letting the conversation flow and simply recording everything that happened.  Light loves her skin. My original intent was to present these portraits only in black and white because the smoothness of her skin translates as if it were alabaster. But just like she is, the original images are golden and warm, so I've included them as well.

 
More than anyone I know, Michael's images speak for him. He has grace and beauty, his movements are precise and he laughs easily the way a satisfied person will. I asked that he vogue while I photographed him because I wanted the way he uses his hands to be seen, and to have them be frames for his face. Years of rigorous dance training have given him a physical carriage that is hard to ignore, so I worked in close for these shots to avoid distractions.

 
Esra is a delightful enigma. She is easily open about herself and happy to share her thoughts, but I sense there is an entirely separate life that is hers alone, and she's not about to share. I like that -- I'm intrigued by those who know not everything should be open to public consumption. And dancing around a person's secrets makes the photographing process, with it's chatter and questions and persistent but gentle efforts to satisfy my curiosities all the more fascinating. It adds more layers to the portraits, as well. Looking at these images makes me wonder what causes a bit of a smile, and what's behind the way she's set her shoulder. I like the way these four show Esra's moods -- she can be quite forceful, and a little shy, open to what surrounds her, but not one for much nonsense.

 
 
  

I was looking for a black female dancer to complement the pictures I recently did of Michael Crawford. Asia appeared a little while ago, and I put her images up earlier this month. She's not an accomplished dancer, but simple movement makes her happy and she enjoyed that part of the session. Not so when we started concentrating on her portraits, though. If I have to ask someone to stop smiling all the time, its because they're feeling unsure of themselves and apprehensive about the process they've agreed to take part in. For some people, holding still and posing clothed can be a more difficult thing than posing nude. Naked movement allows the person to disappear into the music, but being still and confronting the camera leaves very few places to hide. And so it was for Asia, until we managed to ease her through her concerns. I chose these four images because they show who she is: a young woman interested in herself and the ways she can show her sensuality to the world around her.

 

 

 ************ 

What I want from the work I do is a group of images that best describe the person I've photographed. I want some of the variety that makes them unique -- happy at times and perhaps not so much so, present in the moment or lost somewhere far outside the studio, loving and open or closed and protected. I like the people I work with to wear as little as comfort will allow since clothing can be as much a mask as is turning off the lights. In my experience most people are more at ease being photographed while nude or nearly so, and able to give over more of their inner selves to the camera because of it. I like to work with people more then once, and over and over again with those who are able to let themselves be seen. There's an intimacy to this work that makes my studio a safe and easy place where people can be themselves without fear or embarrassment, and where they can see themselves through their own eyes.

Working Girl

Her father never called her by name. She was his Sweetheart or his Princess or his Pumpkin, but never Delphine. That was made her middle name after a bitter row with her mother and, even though Delphine was his choice, he never said it. He loved her and she went everywhere with him -- even to the fights at the Garden. He'd dress her up in her nicest outfits and they sat in the front row, and she'd come home stained with sweat and blood. It didn't matter to him how angry that made her mother -- it was one of the few things he didn't bend on. He died when Delphine was maybe seven, and when it happened his Sweetheart's life all but stopped. Her aunt accused her more then once of being a cold and heartless child because she didn't cry for him, and for a long time she believed the aunt was right.

He was calm and gentle. Her mother was high strung and delicate. She had always been so, and when Delphine's father died, she crumbled. He was fifteen years older than she was and his purpose had always been to take care of her and to make her life easier. After he was gone, she was too. The police would find her in her best clothes, wandering the streets and listening to his voice calling her. She was institutionalized over and again. It was the Fifties and shock treatment was the vogue, as was submersion in ice water and other so called behavior modification techniques. She'd seem better for awhile, but always ended up going back.

It fell to Delphine's brother to look after her. He had enough difficulty looking after himself, let alone his little sister, and she pretty much grew up wild. When her mother was home, they'd fight tooth and nail to win control over the other. Mother wanted her to be a good Catholic girl who crossed her legs just so and never thought about boys, but Delphine wanted to be left alone and for her mother to go away again. They never looked for a peace between them -- and certainly not after her mother started seducing her boyfriends.

Delphine told me: I left college after a fight with the dean over my openly dating a black boy. I didn't care. I was smart and quick and I could keep things organized. I took a job that taught me how to manage a legitimate spa and Swedish massage business for a blond goddess I'll call Gigi. She was six feet two of North European magnificence -- a crown of golden hair over creamy skin and perpetually glittery blue eyes and soft, always moist lips. Gigi looked like those soft focus Hollywood star photographs from the thirties, only she moved and spoke, went barefoot and wore lime green mini skirts. She had long legs, perfect hips, and breasts that had no care about gravity. We were a sight to see -- the dark Sicilian girl from short and dark Sicilian parents, and Gigi who walked on clouds and shone like the sun. She took me to dinner at a fancy French restaurant one evening. I knew something was going to happen when our food was prepared table-side and different wines started to appear. She glowed and shimmered, a Nordic angel doting on the dark haired hippy chick. She purred and laughed and whispered, and later that night she took my clothes and then she took me. I was happy to be in her arms and in her bed.

Of course after that she had little use for me sexually, but I became even more her confidante and protector. She made bad marriages and had difficult boyfriends. I'd drive her to their houses, and then away from their wives or to the hospital after the men beat her. Even so, it was a good life for a time -- Gigi the owner of the spa, me running it and being her puppy. I learned massage and I learned men and things had a comfortable rhythm. Until the day she told me she'd sold it all. Without warning, without consultation, without a word. The new owners immediately turned the spa into a brothel and brought in their own girls. They offered, but I wasn't having any of it. I had no desire to either be a prostitute or part of a sex business, so I left.

I learned early on to look at things from different angles, to work out consequences, to plan a safe course for myself. I never got into situations in which I didn't already know how to keep control, no matter what happened. Though it wasn't the business I built, I knew how to run it, so eventually I went back to the spa. While I was away, I had given the issues a lot of thought and come to realized that not only was I missing what had literally been my home, but that deep down I was curious to see what being a working girl was like. I found I missed a certain basic intimacy that comes from physical contact with strangers. And anyway, I love sex -- be it lust or rebellion or spur of the moment, or love and admiration or the most intimate surrender, it's something I'm very, very good at.

My first was a businessman who talked about his work and his disappointment with his wife while I massaged the tension out of his muscles. He talked until I told him not to. I found his rhythm right away, and finished him by hand. I remember he had perfect teeth, and he gave me a big tip.

I love men -- I really do. I love their games and their macho-ness, the lost little boy sense so many of them have, their vision of themselves as white knights. I feel bad for them, too. Men are designed to be protectors and providers and warriors and sex obsessives spreading their genes everywhere they can to keep the strain strong and various and healthy. But they're almost all without a place, now. Their lives are bound by mortgages and houses and work that ignores their physical nature. My clients are white collar -- lawyers, businessmen, doctors -- and they've got these jobs and careers that give them only a shadow of what they need. They fight in court or close big deals or fix broken bodies, but so what? And they know it, too, either consciously or deep inside -- so what? Where's the satisfaction in doing the same thing over and over and over?

The men who come to see me are almost all married and dying from it. They were all crazy in love once, fucking morning, noon and night, and starting their careers and picking their battles and establishing their positions in whatever power structure they chose. They made money, got power, got recognition -- they were men and could point directly at the things that made them so. But how long does that last? How long does love last, or how long before money isn't enough, power over others isn't enough? How long before everything -- everything -- becomes the same old thing, the usual thing, the completely predictable thing? What happens to their primal nature? What happens when the warrior has no battles save within his own house? Has no way to spread his genetic wealth? When everything he's established tells him he's done, used up, and there's nothing more?

I'll tell you what happens. Some of them drink, some find religion, some start wars, some preach genocide. A few decide to save the whales or pick up trash along the highway. And many come to me. I give them attention, I listen and we talk. Most of my clients are interesting and cultured, and they happily let me take control of them for an hour or two. I let them be the hungry male again, the leader and warrior, and make them the absolute center. I touch them and caress them and make them feel stronger then they have in a long time. I let them know they are still men.

++++++++++++++++++

As part of all this I wanted to know what testosterone was like, so I took it for a while. It's a difficult companion. The physical effects were immediate. I put on eight pounds of mass, my abilities in the weight room were off the charts, and so was my sex drive. I couldn't keep my hands off myself, even though my orgasms no longer satisfied me the way they used to. Even in the midst of climax, I was already thinking about what came next. Testosterone demands your attention, gives you a sense of need that must be satisfied without telling you what the need is. It's like stepping on an accelerator at the same time you close your eyes -- you'll go forward, but toward what you won't know until you arrive.

I wasn't able to find a balance with it. It was either on or off. When it was on, I was male. I had the push of brute strength, I had a powerful sense of focus, and there wasn't anything that could prevent me from reaching my goals. I felt stripped down to the essentials, had little concern for the consequences of what I wanted to do, and there was little room for wavering or multidimensional thought. It felt truly dangerous because all it kept saying was, 'Stop fucking around, and get this done now!'

I tried it because I wanted some sense of what it is like to be male. What I found out is that it's very different from what I know. My female hormones allow me to be caring and to stay in one place long enough to learn something, and to not feel a sort of wanderlust that would prevent the impulse for nesting. I came away from it wondering how it's possible for men to function in the social structure that owns them. So much of what they have to do, day in and day out, is in direct contradiction with what their bodies and minds are demanding of them.

I think a lot of girls try out this life because they are fascinated with what society tells them is illicit and immoral. Most all of them come from seriously dysfunctional families and broken homes. The closer they get to trying out the trade, the more interesting and alluring it seems. There's a sense of the mysterious and of sisterhood that draws them -- they see a kind of family thing going on. It's not that way at all, but it's what they need to see, so they do. And there's the flattery of being sexually attractive that builds all kinds of illusions, and then there's the money. With so much money coming in right now, there's no need to think about tomorrow -- and very few of them do.

I chose this path for myself, and I've never regretted it. I've been doing this for a long time. Long enough to mentor some of the girls. Most of them come into this business knowing nothing, and that makes them terribly vulnerable. While a sort of innocence can be charming, it won't last. I've learned to be quite direct with them about simple things like hygiene, and how to keep a condom hidden in your cheek while you're talking with a client, and how to unroll it on him at just the right moment without using your hands and breaking the mood. Few of the girls talk about what actually happens behind closed doors, but I will. I guess I'm old school because I think part of what I do should be more personal than just sex. I try to make the girls understand how important it is to not get involved with a client, but also to know how much the client needs from them. I tell them to not get involved with pimps because they'll end up broken, broke and discarded the minute their attention strays from him. Yes, the pimp's girls are pampered and always kept beautiful and dressed in diamonds and furs, but nothing their work earns belongs to anyone but the man who runs them. I want the girls to absolutely understand the difference between sex and the business of sex.

I tell them to not go into business with men even as partners because men are territorial, possessive, prone to testosterone-fueled stupidity, nonobjective and without finesse. I tell them that if they need to work with a man, before they start or agree to anything they must look at the situation, figure out where the various paths that come to them will lead and what the consequences might be with the choices they are tempted to make. I tell them that if they do try this life, they must first set a goal they want to achieve through it. They always have to be prepared for anything that might happen and, most importantly, they must always have an escape plan. I tell them to talk to the men they are dealing with and to learn from what they hear. And from what they don't hear. I tell them to listen to the ache and frustration, to see what happens when you subject yourself to so many outside restrictions and obligations. I tell them to ask themselves where's the happiness and where's the pleasure? And I tell them to not be afraid to say, 'I need more.' To say, 'We'll settle the business first and then we'll do what we'll do. If you want this and this from me, then I want this and this from you. If anything changes, then everything changes. When that's out of the way, we'll do what we'll do.' 

I guess I want them to see life as I do. I've seen so many girls ruined by their own simple mistakes that it breaks my heart. I've lost good friends and seen good people come to terrible ends. In this business a girl has to see her life as a test of what she can do, what she is willing to do, and how she will live with the consequences. To succeed as a working girl you need to know what your convictions are and that you can live by them. If you can, you are invincible -- no matter what happens, no matter who does what, you will always have yourself.

Sara

Spend a little time with Sara, and you quickly feel you've known her for a long time. Maybe  because she's one of those people who seems irrepressibly up-beat and interested. Maybe it's her smile and her curiosity about all the things that are around her. She's a painter, so maybe it's her concern for physical and emotional detail. She's impulsive in her fashion sense, making it impossible to know who's going to appear at the door. She had a pair of enormous, hairy white boots -- until one evening when she stood too close to the fire. She describes herself as both a nerd and a geek -- I have no real idea what that means, but I do know she can belch loudly enough to re-arrange the furniture, and that's cool by me.

For someone with her feet so firmly on the ground, Sara gets her hair cut a lot. And shaped. And colored. Then re-cut, re-shaped and re-colored. Probably because her natural state of being is in flux. She's constantly moving forward, consciously shaping her life, avoiding the pitfalls of stagnation. She's not belligerent about it, and she doesn't wear it as a statement of worth -- it's just who she is. Which can be disconcerting to those of us who find themselves happily embracing stagnation every now and again....

I brought this up to her several times. I was getting the sense that part of what drove the flux was some need to stay protected... to use it as a coping mechanism. I had the feeling that part of her forthrightness was a learned response, and had taken more than a little work to get comfortable with. It wasn't that there was any sort of falseness about her, but rather I had the sense that somewhere along the line she had come to a point where she had to choose to be open to the people around her, and had to decide that the life around her was also of interest -- and had to teach herself how to respond to it.

                                        +++++++++++++++++++++

 
 
 

This is part of what she told me:

I grew up in a constant cloud of toxic perfume: titanium, cadmium, cerulean, zinc -- the colors of my mother's palette. Years of stunted cellular growth was a small price to pay to witness her creativity, and to learn from her. I was her prized pupil. Unfortunately, she was also certified insane more then once and in more ways than one -- but unlike most infamous and crazy artists, her work was actually brilliant. And yet her brilliance as a painter was ruined by her failures as an artist. Her uncontrolled emotions kept her chained to the fringes of the art world. She lived in shifting episodes of blinding angers and paralytic fears that stopped her cold from ever functioning in or becoming a noted member of ant art world. Of course, the demons and turmoils that ruled her love and her hatred for her work made selling it an impossibility. I suppose my mother might be one of those artists to whom fame comes only after death, when her furies and paranoia are forgotten. But that won't be for a long time, I suspect -- and not at all, if she decides to destroy the few paintings she has left.

Even as a young child I believed I could be an excellent painter, just like she was. But watching how many different ways she found to insure her failures inspired me to not even try. I knew she had given me the genes and talent to make myself really good -- but I was too close at too early an age to the 'constant inpatient' to be willing to make the gamble. Early on I began to know I would not waste my days painting work that came from my heart but would never sell. And after all that I had seen and all that had been thrown at me, I was certainly not going to waste my sanity.

When my father finally won custody of me, I felt a maelstrom had been lifted from my shoulders -- but the unexpected agony of losing her was almost beyond belief. As a child will, I loved my mother completely. For years I was lost in the conflict between the relief of being rid of her and the despair of having lost her, and I stopped painting. As I grew and matured, I came to understand that my passion for color and canvas was the only true connection to my childhood and to the one person who had always been my icon and my idol. It's true my mother never was a parent to me. And yet, without the persuasion of her oils poisoning my airways, I was quite lost -- and frequently missed the chaos she lived in and the physical awareness of her hands gripping my heart.

Not until high school (ironically enough, hers and mine the same), did paint once again paste my hands and waft into my bloodstream. And it was in this very same high school that I fell in love -- not only with my painting again, but with the teacher assigned to oversee the school's literary and arts magazine. It was during the first editorial board meeting that my obsession with him burrowed its roots and started to grow. He took possession of my thoughts, became omnipresent, was never absent from me for more than a moment. He sank deeply into the fertility of my 15 year old's emotions, and grew steadily throughout freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years.  It was because he was handsome and charismatic, unpredictable, and he loved words and art. He made both Hamlet and Lewis Carroll sublime to me. Maybe I should have been concerned -- but I wasn't, and he became the heart beat at the center of my life.

 

 
 

In senior year and as a joke, he brought us an invisible rabbit named Art to be our mascot. To the other girls who also admired him so, it was all good natured fun. But for me, Art became something much deeper, quite feminine, and we settled her permanently into my being. Nothing was ever said between this teacher and me, and we never touched except by accident. Our conversations were about school and writing and art, but his eyes spoke his words to my soul, and his smile was something that only I could understand. To someone looking in at us, all was as it should be -- but to me, looking outward, very little was balanced at all. Moving time fueled my rising passions and my hormones until a fierce compulsion and need for something both familiar and chaotic exploded. I wanted the taboo, the fantastic, the illicit.

What I got was something I had no idea I wanted: to fall back into my childhood, to return to the nightmare, but this time with me in control. Blind to what I was doing, I challenged myself to survive what to open eyes was a predestined disaster. I didn't care. I knew it was crazy, but that this time I would be brilliant. I would do something that even my mother would be proud of. I would graduate, then come back pretending I needed submissions for an arts magazine. And I did just that. First semester into college, I returned to high school and got just what I was asking for.

It was good, for a while. We were happy, for a while. And then we weren't. And it became ugly -- for a long while.

What is it that happens as time flows? Eventually the wounds stopped bleeding and the ground underneath me became more sure of itself. And the darkness that trapped me thinned enough to allow some definition to what surrounded me. It came as a surprise when the descent finally ended. I knew it was over when I took to the easel again. I kept the rabbit -- both in spite of, and because of the chaos her creator and I set loose. I started a series of self-portraits in which I was searching for myself through my reflection. I worked with a mirror, and every time I looked into it I knew I was facing my mother. But now she was the first one to blink. The success of that work let me know with absolute clarity that I am not her. Though I look a lot like her and I paint with passion and experience, I am me -- and I have chosen not to fall and not to fail.

 Sometimes the rabbit tells me I am Alice, sometimes I know I am the rabbit. It doesn't matter because the rabbit is mine, and I have the tattoos to prove it. I am the tempted, and I am the temptress. At times I can also be the Mad Hatter -- bewildered and completely obscured from society's understanding. In these ways, much like my mother, I have been quite unbalanced. Unlike her, however, I have found my way back from the other side of the looking glass. I have seen Wonderland, and it is only a place to visit.

During these past few years I have developed more into a successful artist and become less a fictional character. As I have become more real I have played my fears and confusions, joys and desires out on canvas. The rabbit has come to life in my paint, and I have been able to capture her there, manipulate her to serve my needs in intriguing ways. To the casual observer, her apparent meaning may seem obvious and plain. But to me she will always be my lost innocence, and about my blind and impossible need to get that innocence back. And perhaps that is where her irony lies -- I know her experiences and suspect she may have even grown a little jaded, while outwardly she still seems unscathed and pure. 

                                     +++++++++++++++++++++++

    

 
 

You can see the emotional complexity in Sara's work, from the hard eyed and unflinching exactness of the self-portraits to the fantastical sensibility of her most recent pieces. A journey has been made away from the mirror and into an eruption of personal release. That dark and angry face has been replaced by a hot chick riding the rabbit. Her work and her life are about survival. They are not about life and death -- but about growth and change and seeking. Not about repeating a safe formula -- but about always breaking the formula apart and re-assembling it in new ways. She is about looking at her work with fresh eyes and following change... not for it's own sake, but change for growth and a willingness for new experience.

  

 
 

                                                          +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

I've worked with Sara quite a few times over the last 5 or 6 years. We did the following images in August of 2007.

 

Sara is, first and foremost, a talented painter. And, as you might suspect, she's always been something of a wild child. She's younger than I am, and I wonder what life would be like were I responsible for her. Mostly I'd be proud of her artistry and intellect, her character, in her forthrightness and love for adventure. What was left of me would be in a constant but mild state of anxiety over what she might cause to happen next. 

Taking portraits of Sara is looking at who she is right now. There's no concern about where the images might fit in with what we've done before, or about what they mean. Instead it's a chance for her to see more parts of who she is, and for me to figure out how best to show them. What we create is a document of a specific moment in her life that she uses to talk to herself about herself. She uses the images in her artwork, and she uses them to inform her conduct -- and she uses them with clarity and style.

What I love about Sara is her fearless curiosity about who she is, and the way that curiosity allows her to be pretty much anything she wishes. In these most recent photographs she's alive with the exuberance of having cast off what's expected and with the embracing of what is not. She's alive to what happens when she frees herself, and alive to being excited, concerned, intrigued and beguiled.

Frankie

What I know about Frankie are the things she's told me, filtered through what I came to understand about her. Of necessity and habit, she is protective and compelled to obscure details by always making both subtle and grand changes to her stories. But that's okay -- we all do the best we can. I met her 4 years ago when she was clerking in the local liquor store. I had noticed her before -- her left arm sleeved in tattoos and her ever changing hair colors made her hard to miss. But she spoke in a very quiet voice and seemed young, and I was caught by the contradiction. It's out of character for me to ask strangers if I can photograph them, but one day she was sporting a red-tipped mohawk and I couldn't let her pass by again. She told me she was going to say no, but when the person in line behind me blurted out 'yes', she surprised herself and agreed.

I was rarely sure who was going to show up at my studio when we were scheduled to get together. Frankie can be more than withdrawn. During our first several sessions, there were times when she was so unresponsive even to casual conversation that I had to wonder if she was alright. And when she became present again, she was defensive, manipulating, and angry -- or shy, unsure, and easily embarrassed. It took some getting used to, but I like roller coasters and very quickly among those many mood swings I found someone who became one of my most cherished subjects. She never came to the studio as anyone but herself, and she always let what her life at the moment was come through. It's not possible for me, as a person or as a photographer, to ask for more.

                                         *************************

 
 

Frankie wears large parts of her inner life on her skin. She carries Angelina Joli's initials high on her left shoulder, and the word 'truth' on the back of one upper arm and 'trust' on the back of the other. She has a rendering of a Helmut Newton photograph of Kate Moss on her right forearm that is framed with hearts and words of love. On her left forearm the word 'lithium' is surrounded with flowers and capped with a skull. I asked if it was for the band, and she said no. She said lithium was crushing her, but it let her be where she was.

After a short while I could tell by her posture when she was headed for trouble -- she would sit and stare at the floor, so hunched over as to make me wonder how she was able to breathe. She managed a few words at a time, but she flinched as if burned if I came too close. Then she'd disappear for weeks or months. No phone calls, no messages returned, no emails. The first time it happened, I was thrown off -- but when she came back she offered bits of tales about what her time was like in the hospital, and how she'd avoided her medications and how, as always and with a certain pride, she'd been finally forced to leave because she was too difficult to deal with.

                                             ***************************

Frankie sent an email saying she was going to try art school in Philadelphia. She said she had been at her mother's house, staying in her room, working on her collages, and healing herself. She said she was feeling ready. Often when we worked together we talked about the possibility of her leaving bad situations for the promises new ones offered, but nothing ever came of it, so I assumed nothing ever would. Her plan was unexpected and disconcerting because it was such a bold move on her part -- and because if it worked then this time she might truly not be coming back. That idea left me uncomfortable -- but I was pleased when she said she wanted to study photography because the work we had done together had been so important to her.

Unfortunately, nothing about the venture worked out very well.

                                               **************************

 
 

 

When I heard from her next, she wrote to say she wanted to be a Suicide Girl. She said being one was important enough to her so that she would pose nude, something she always refused to do before. In fact her refusal to pose without her pants on had been a periodic point of contention --I would cajole and she would refuse, I would push for an explanation and she would just say no. Her reticence didn't make sense to me because she was never anything but comfortable posing without her shirt on. When I saw the swastika cut into her right thigh, it made sense. I knew she was a cutter and a burner because she took some satisfaction in showing off what she considers to be part of her art, but I was surprised at the size of the scars on her thigh. She said it came from a different time in her life and that she was deeply embarrassed by it.

 
 

 

Something very interesting happened during the course of that shooting. Frankie started to open up, almost to expand in a way, and she allowed an unfamiliar enthusiasm for what we were doing start to show. She started the sessions with blue hair, and by the time she dyed it red she was standing up straight and posing like a pro. Even more interesting was that she was smiling and asked to make a couple of comical shots for a friend. This was uncharted territory for me -- I had grown so accustomed to the moods and the distance and seeming indifference that this brightening and shiny redhead was a complete and welcome stranger.

 

 
 

When she told me she was feeling better because she had been off her meds for awhile it was clear this new Frankie would soon be gone. I only saw her once after that and she had crumbled into her old self again. Her face was blank, and her eyes empty again. My emails to her asking how things were went unanswered until she finally replied that she wouldn't see me or work with me again. That was almost a year ago.

                                                ***********************

There's no doubt Frankie was important both to me and to my creative life. Not only was she an excellent and complex person to photograph, but she was also a one woman educational force about the intricacies of the human mind. It's an assumption on my part, but I think what she felt and what we accomplished in our last few sessions scared her into retreat again, and I regret that. But I don't regret the photographs, or the pleasure she seemed to get from doing them.

 
 

 

Some time went by, and then she called to say she'd met someone and wanted me to take some pictures. I was surprised -- I mean, the Frankie I thought I knew didn't feel comfortable with proximity let alone physical contact. Of course I said yes. The two of them started out shy with each other and in front of me, but love always ta kes over and I disappeared from their thoughts. They we tender and caring and gentle with each other, whispering back and forth.

 
  
It's a wonderful thing, this being in love. These two hadn't been together that long, but it was clear they were enjoying every bit of what life now had to offer. 
  
 
++++++++++++++

 

April 17, 2010

 

It's fascinating how these things work. Frankie disappeared again, and was gone for probably a year and a half -- and then there she was. We bumped into each other in the bank, and had a pleasant chat about nothing in particular. Then an email, and another, and we decided we were good to go.

She has changed a lot in that she seems more at ease with herself, and more comfortable with gentle teasing about posture and smiling, and posing with the assumption that she owns the world and she's very selective about who she lets in. You can see that there have been hard times, as well. We don't talk much about her scars -- probably because they are a fact, rather than an illusion.

 
 
It's hard for me to tell who she is. I ask her to talk about the person she sees in the photographs, and she says very little. Sometimes I get the feeling that she blocks who she is from herself. I ask her if she thinks of herself as beautiful, and she says she doesn't think she's ugly. I ask if she thinks of herself as sexy, and she ducks her head and won't answer. I tell her I think she is both, and I see a tiny smile.

 
 
I've started doing some side by side portraits. I like the idea that what you see on a person's outside can be so different from what's underneath. I like this one of Frankie because it touches so many aspects of the confident, fearful, self aware and troubled woman I know. In a way, these two images sum her up pretty well.

 
 

On the surface, this last image might seem to have more to do with me than it does with Frankie. Maybe that's even true. But I see it as a reach for freedom, a flight away from what holds her down -- so if it is more about me, then it's about what I would wish for her.