Through the Looking Glass
*Article originally published in Photo Dojo - available on Medium.
Photographer: Alexander Oleynikov
“We meet people twice. Once as strangers and again mirrored in our reflections. And so you, my secret confidant, become my captor, and I, your Echo.”
Photography is the art of creating the shadow of life. One plays God in a two-dimensional dollhouse where their every whim and wishful fancy moves, bends, and breaks their shadow puppets.
I posed a relatively innocuous question to the photographers I collaborate with: What do you believe you are accomplishing with photography? Their responses - “capturing the soul” are the inspiration for this discourse. These responses beget the philosophical question of whose soul. Is it fathomable to assume one can ‘capture’ a soul? Or is that the epitome of a Sisyphean journey, a journey taken in vain by the modern-day Narcissist masquerading as an auteur?
As the shadow puppet on the other side of the looking glass, I have come to understand photography differently from my collaborators.
When I enter a creative collaboration, I contemplate all elements of the proposed design. We are creating and conveying a narrative paralleling real-life and borrowing from the voyeuristic gaze of real subjects with real biases and real-life experiences.
Nothing holds a spotlight to your reflection like a photograph does. It is provocative. It elicits sentiments - both primal and unconscious - positive and negative, heavy, and light. Instinctually, preconceived notions and limiting beliefs become glaringly apparent the first time you peer into a photograph. We cast judgment onto the image illuminated by these conspiring colloids that feel invasively penetrating. Photography can be the harbinger of an introspective dive into one's personal mythology. Which is why it can feel pervasive. Nothing inspires ego death quite like vanity.
As a shadow puppet or ‘model,’ I am a tabula rasa. I am an element of the canvas, a human prop, working in unison with ancillary components to tell a story—your story. I am mutable. I become the manifestation of your fears and desires—a mirror. I am a piece of the canvas to which your life-laden eyes attribute meaning. I am a professional looking glass, or better still, a professional provocateur.
The Glass Ceiling
Most of my photoshoots intersect thematically with my participation in kink, shibari, and eroticism. I had to consider if I felt my collaborations in erotic and fetish photography were commoditizing. For any artistic endeavor to be realized, the intention needs to be clearly internalized. Often our motives are obscured even to ourselves. Positive sexuality and objectification are confounded more often than not.
Though nudity can be a prominent element in fetish and/or erotic photography, I do not believe I contribute to my own objectification or creating pornography.
Intention and execution matter. My collaborations' intention was never to exploit my body or my sexuality, but rather to create art and share an experience. The primary purpose of adult content is to capitalize. The primary purpose of photography is to create art. While I find nothing shameful or unethical regarding adult content, I am not for sale.
Admittedly, the line of intention is precarious and arguable. Does the motive behind the lens of the viewing eye degrade or change the nature of my artistic vision retroactively? I think not.
The experience of a woman being nude in front of a camera does not inherently involve exploitation. I would argue with the growing body positivity movement that erotic photography is a counter-culture to commoditization and the enduring ‘male gaze’. Women are breaking the glass ceiling and becoming comfortable sharing their bodies, sans photoshopping, crash diets, and toxic fitness culture. Women are claiming autonomy of their bodies with the advent of creator-driven platforms like Onlyfans and Patreon. If that autonomy involves sensationalizing or monetizing, let it be female imposed objectification. The power of having choice and consent are the pinnacle of feminism. If you are invited into that sphere by a woman, of her volition, then your ‘male gaze’ is consensual.
While I make a distinction between art and pornography, art lives in the gray of subjectivity.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
My photographic collaborations have been empowering experiences. Counterintuitive to what one might assume: belittling, embarrassing, exploiting, but no - it was the antithesis of those. There was only complete freedom of movement and ownership of my being.
In unapologetically inhabiting space, I experienced my own psychosomatic death. With each snap of the shutter, I shed my inhibitions, my fears, my preconceived notions like a molted skin. Tender and naked in this new flesh, I saw reflected through the blinking blades of the iris only love and acceptance, as mechanical as fact. And as Narcissist fell in love with his reflection, so too did I fall prey to my echo.
How does that translate into crafting two-dimensional fiction?
Photographer: Matt Sklar
Unadulterated vulnerability.
Emotional relatability is the connective tissue of humanity. If capturing the essence of a person’s soul is a surmountable feat, it could only happen during an ego-death - immortalized by the gelatinous emulsion of film.
By exposing my vulnerabilities to the lens, I invite my audience to see themselves through a mirrored lens. If with this acceptance, I become the vehicle that allows others to find perfection through imperfection, to love themselves by loving me, then the reflection cast would be one of self-love. If I can provoke love, lust, disgust, or shame with my uninhibited freedom, then I have accomplished something greater than myself. I too, the shadow puppet, am playing God in an echo chamber.
Xoxo,
Shibari Barbie
