Kismet Arts Tangent

In my scrolling of social media consumption, I saw a photo of an acquaintance that was an artist portrait that looked authentic and accessible and I wanted that. I booked the photographer and she was really easy to communicate with and establish the logistics for our photoshoot. Check out her website here, highly recommend for hi res portrait photography website.

I reached out to collaborators for participating and Andrew was available and interested. We brought props and costumes to the location and Kayleigh was punctual and ready to photograph. We took photos for a bit over an hour. 

What I like about the photo shoot is what you see is what happened. I like this about documentary style photography is the underlying paradigm that the thing you are witnessing in the photograph is real. It feels so important and meaningful to have that style of media where it feels like a promise that we didn’t doctor this or make it up wholesale, but it’s a historical moment in the tapestry of ordinary/artistic life.

I connect with this a lot and I made one of the photos my profile picture because I felt good about being captured doing something I love and with full feeling, not performing for my selfie, but allowing myself to drop in and relax in my body.

Andrew was a comforting and inspiring presence and I liked that Kayleigh captured him in a way that I also see him which maybe validates the way that I was captured. Sometimes with photos, one can think that there’s some distortion of perception based on the fact that you see yourself all the time in the mirror, so there’s a familiarity and so a portrait of oneself sometimes doesn’t always feel like a portrait, but a mirror. So to see someone else looking like themself in an image makes it all work in my opinion.

I’m also really intrigued about “orange work.” We did some duo authentic movement with props and engaged with two oranges. The feeling of the prop being a food, a fruit, there’s a feeling of familiarity and novelty and I’m looking forward to incorporating more in future authentic movement explorations.