OFFICIOUS.
Workplaces are like airports, they’re always somewhere, but feel like nowhere. Each nowhere is somehow unique, while being the same drain. We have the opportunity to bring some of our selves to work, while concealing other parts at home. In these shots, I was auditioning to portray a professional class woman, someone who was in the professional purgatory of the the office, waiting to be discovered for who she was.
EMERGENT.
What I brought to this was the idea that my characters would have the natural power of their true selves shining through, always, everywhere, like sunlight, inescapable, warming, healing and life giving authenticity. Any part of what was without was to reveal and express what was within, nothing would be random; there are no accidents, only revelations. To emphasize the duality of the sunlight, we chose the lighting to resemble both sunlight and sunset, is the woman emerging in power and might or gladly seeking rest after tending to her labor? My acting would reveal both.
CHROMATIZE.
Greyscale is an intimate way to present yourself, so intimate, it’s almost like a nude. Color can draw the eye away, the shadows created by blacks and white dancing accentuate everything and draw the eye in. For this presentation, I wanted directors to see how comfortable I was presenting myself without the traditional armor of feminine presentation, my otherwise long, luxurious hair was gone, and I had a boyish cut, my makeup was austere and my clothing was timeless, simple, and loose, rather than on trend, intricate and form accentuating. I was revealing myself in shadow, and my true self was so vivid that it would force your eyes to chromatize. That’s what I would bring to my characters.
ARRESTED.
This was my first headshot, in a time when the custom was that headshots were only greyscale. I’ve described modeling for the camera as creating micro-moments of stillness while being constantly in motion, and this headshot came out of something very similar. The photographer and I were waiting till the moment stopped us both, it felt correct, and the picture just came. This moment was unforced, it came to us and arrested us where we were. This was what I was going to bring to my characters, a natural, unforced flow, an organic understanding of who they were that would express itself moment by moment, arresting you as you saw it.
GROUNDED.
For this expression, I was intrigued by the interplay of psychology and symbolic alchemy. The processes of turning lead into gold and curating mercury could describe processes with flasks and fires, but they were complex encodings of understandings of the human soul and how we could guide our own transformation over time. The alchemical elements , Earth, Air, Fire, Water, accordingly, don’t represent physical things as much as they represent tendencies in the human personality, who we can be, expressed in composition. Some systems add a fifth element, Ether, but all agree on the four. I wanted to express the element of Earth, to show how my characters could receive damaging energy, Fire and be unchanged by it, dampening it out, could receive torrents, Water, and channel it away, could be battered by gusts, Air, yet, unmoved. I wanted to show how they could sustain and grow life. But, duality is powerful. I wanted to also show how they could be stuck, incapable of moving. My natural complexion is in tones of champagne, to connote the Earth, we shot in sepia.
SURPRISE.
When we developed in greyscale, I didn’t expect to like the chromatic shots, but they showed us something unexpected, so we kept them. That same woman who showed herself so intimately in black and white was suddenly dancing through the room in color, a different development brought an entirely new understanding to the shoot. The clothes were simple, loose and timeless, but the woman within was eternal, radiant in her environment. What we exude isn’t always joy, sometimes it is indecision, confusion or sorrow, what I wanted to show directors was that my characters were always expressing who they were, and nothing could hide that.
