Musings
The photography studio didn’t look promising.
We’d booked it on Peerspace — essentially AirBnb for artists — because it was reasonable. But when we got there, the graffitied front door led to the creepiest stairwell I’d ever seen. Creaky metal and crumbling brick.
Thankfully, all the codes worked, and the studio itself was nice. Large windows overlooked a mostly deserted East Williamsburg street. Spools of colorful paper hung from the walls.
However, the experience set me slightly on edge. But I may have also been nervous because it was my first time posing nude.
I’d met Sara Hinterlong through a family friend who’d hosted her during a Fine Arts Work Center workshop with Jess Dugan. I’d just moved to New York City; Sara was doing an internship at Aperture.
Over dumplings in Chinatown, we hit it off, discussing TV shows, queerness, and artistic influences. Somehow, the conversation turned to Surrealism, Claude Cahun, and Gillian Wearing.
Sometime afterward, I shared with her my essay-in-progress, “F-Hole,” which is, essentially, a long and heady answer to the question, “What does your tattoo mean?”
The essay is about Alice Prin — the subject of Man Ray’s Le Violon D’Ingres — but also the experience of getting my tattoo. Over the course of the essay, it becomes unclear whether it is, instead, describing an instrument being carved.
“F-Hole” is also, as the name suggests, about being, er, penetrated. As well was dissolving dichotomies between artist and muse, musician and instrument.
I asked Sara if she’d be willing to take some photographs of me inspired by the essay.
I was less nervous about the “nude” part than the “posing” part. I’d discovered, during Harvard’s infamous “primal scream,” a penchant for being unclothed.
I feel less dysphoric in this state. And besides, Sara and I are friends. I was, instead, worried that I would hold my body awkwardly.
We did some clothed, warm-up shots of me playing the cello. My back still hurt from carrying my case downtown, especially hoisting it over the subway turnstiles.
Then, we tried to faithfully reproduce Man Ray’s original. (Except for the turban, which I abandoned for reasons of cultural appropriation.)
The pose is surprisingly uncomfortable. In order to emulate the cello’s curves, you must raise your shoulders, arms crossed tightly in front of you, everything strapped in.
You don’t see this in the static original, of course. So, Sara took a photo from the front. In it, my breasts, as well as the tattoos on my inner arms, are covered. My gender is ambiguous.
We also took some photos where I was wearing my binder, which cuts off the top of my f-holes. In other photos, Sara suggested I lean back and stretch.
The photos of me playing the cello while nude, which I most worried about being tacky (but aren’t, thanks to Sara), are nods to Charlotte Moorman.
Sara also took some photos of the back of my head, in homage of Catherine Opie’s Dyke, on which she hopes to use Man Ray’s namesake “rayograph” technique.
Having forgotten to turn on the heat, we suddenly realized it was 58 degrees in the studio. In some of the photos, you can see my goosebumps.
The next day, Sara and I went to Dugan’s CLAMP show, “Look at me like you love me,” right before it closed.
Dugan is a master of little details. The raindrops in Vanessa in the water, Provincetown. The water’s surface in Jamie (bath).
It occurred to me that Dugan’s signature pose, hands over head — which can also be seen in their Self-portrait (reaching) and Alix at sunset — is the opposite of that in Le Violon D’Ingres.
It’s as if you took those arms and unfolded them, taking up all the space in the frame.