Posts Tagged ‘photos of me’
Do you remember the Impossible Couture series, where Najva Sol took portraits and Molly Crabapple added embellishments? Najva did another series of portraits, this time genderqueer (mostly) nudes, and Molly did another series of drawings over them.
The result is Transmography: Thirteen Fairytale Portraits of Queers Beyond the Gender Binary, and I’m one of the models in the show. I might have gotten naked on my rooftop in Brooklyn. Maybe. Just sayin’.
The show opens next week, Thursday June 7th, from 6-9pm in New York and San Francisco Lomography stores.
Transmography: Thirteen Fairytale Portraits of Queers Beyond the Gender Binary
by Molly Crabapple and Najva Sol
Transmogrify, Verb: To transform, esp. in a surprising or magical mannerFrom poets to porn-stars, computer nerds to community gardeners, artists to activists: these portraits capture some of the real gender warriors today. They are trans, genderqueer, or just gender-fabulous, and they deserve their own magical realm.
Each portrait was shot by Najva Sol with a lomo camera, then embellished by Molly Crabapple. Show sponsored by Lomography.
Show Opens At Lomography stores in New York AND San Francisco
June 7th, 6-9pmNew York Lomography Store
41 West 8th Street
Manhattan, NY 10011
212-529-4351San Fran Lomography Store
309 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-248-0096
I’m going to do my best to at least stop by the New York show, though it does make me a little nervous to see myself (naked!) on a wall. But the shots I’ve seen so far are stunning, I love that one above. Can’t wait to see them all.
In prep for my trip, I had to of course go get cleaned up. Doesn’t Joey at Tomcats do an amazing job? I have never had a bad haircut there. I only wish I could recreate the height after I wash it … though I suspect in part it is because of the handfulls of product he adds to my hair.
I’ve been trying to grow it out a bit, let it get a little longer on top so I can go back to the pomp I’ve had in the past. Winter seems like a good time to do that. The length has been driving me nuts the past few weeks, but I put it off long enough so that it’ll be fresh and clean for my trip out West.
What trip out west, you ask? Well, the one where I’ll be starting a tantra training, the first of five weekends in Seattle over the next year, and then I head to San Francisco for the Outside the Boxes queer Body Electric workshop that has been in the works for the last six or so months. It is definitely happening and probably going to be full, in fact! We might even have a waiting list! And—good news—we are planning to do it twice in 2012, once in New York City and once in Toronto. I’ll let you know the exact dates as soon as I have them.
I’m doing a couple more things out west while I’m visiting—no wait, scratch that, it’ll just be one other event, a Talking Dirty workshop at Seattle’s Center for Sex Positive Culture, known in my day as the Wet Spot. I was going to have a workshop in Oakland but that looks like it’s fallen through, though I’m hoping to do it in the spring.
So I’ve turned on my vacation auto-responder, and my flight to Seattle leaves tomorrow afternoon. I may have some time to write while I’m gone, but things may be a bit quiet over here while I’m traveling. You can always follow me on Twitter or on Facebook if you want to know what I’m up to on a slightly more daily basis.
Somehow in May I had two beautiful photographs of me, both taken by professional photographers, published. And in case you aren’t following me in the regular social media places, or by my RSS feed on mrsexsmith.com, I figured I’d share ‘em here.
Photo by Bil Wadman, ontakingphotos.com
The first is by Bill Wadman who first took my photo for 365Portraits.com in 2007. (I wasn’t ‘out’ as Sinclair then so I kept it under my other name.) A few weeks ago, he tweeted that he was bored and wanted to take portraits, and I replied, how about me? And it was on. He came over and we chatted about what I was planning to do that weekend, which was to attend a BDSM erotic energy retreat. He paused a second: “You’re into that?” Me: “Yep. In fact, I have some good equipment if you’d like to see it …” and out came my flogger. After he saw my new (since his last shot of me, anyway) tattoo, the shot soon made itself.
Speaking of the tattoo: many people have asked me what it is. It’s a ruler, it measures 6″, and if you measure from the flat palm of my hand, it measures 8″. There are numerous meanings to it (as with all the best tattoos, don’t you think?): I’m a graphic designer, for one. I’ll always have 6″ with me (ha ha) and I can measure high heels a lot easier this way. I can now measure how far into you I can reach. I’ve been thinking about this tattoo for a while, since I saw a photo of someone who had one on Flickr years ago, but the thing that made me go and do it was taking the Buddhist Refuge Vow in spring 2010. During the meditations, it came to me that this path, the Buddhist path, is actually incredibly linear, and has been walked hundreds of thousands of times for thousands of years. Considering that so, so much of my life is about forging my own path, making my own direction, this felt so incredibly comforting and I knew it was time to get the tattoo.
Photo by Yi Ching Lin, www.yichinglin.com
This next shot was for the DapperQ He Said/We Said May edition, the shoot for which happened in April, with photos by Yi Ching Lin. I was there with four other models, all of whom were reinterpreting a current high-fashion men’s runway look in our own way. The photos turned out beautifully. Susan Herr, DapperQ hirself, has called this photo “the best butch photo of all time,” and I am very pleased with how it turned out.
There are others over at DapperQ.com from this shoot, and there’s a video of all 5 of us models talking about our fashion inspiration as well.
It arrived! My “Prom Is So Gay” tee shirt from Just Like Jesse James. I feel a little weird wearing it, I feel the need to explain the use of “gay” pejoratively around people I don’t know especially. But I did wear it to The Bulldyke Chronicles (and pimp it when I read a quick poem), and it seemed like the audience understood that it is a reference to Candace McMillan.
And while I’m taking photographs, here’s a shot that caught my new tattoo in it too. It’s a 6″ ruler, positioned 2″ from my palm which means I can measure things to 8″ when I place my palm flat against something. I’ve been thinking about this one for a long time (it even made an appearance in a poem from last year, which was one of three I read at Bulldyke Chronicles).
It’s actually a lot straighter than how it appears in this photo. One could even say it’s the straightest thing about me (ha ha). It is, as I’ve been calling it, an artist’s rendition of a ruler, so it’s not 100% accurate or straight, but it is damn close. Close enough for anything I’d need to measure, certainly. I don’t need to count the picas.
There are a lot of layers of meaning to this, not the least of which is that I’m a graphic designer. Any other guesses as to what it just possibly might symbolize?
Jacks on 
Lenore on 
Shereen on 
