POSER
2020-2022
In Poser, I use the language of portraiture to amplify the contrast between masculine
and feminine in my body’s appearance. The nature of portraiture is to empower its
subjects and these images do so as I “play myself”. This phrase comes from the book “Halsted Plays Himself” by William E Jones about Fred Halsted, a gay porn film
maker from the 70’s. Halsted made “L.A. Plays Itself”, a film that Jones described as
an ironic inversion of porn that hardly functions as porn. For this reason, the film is
seen as a masterpiece of gay porn and cinema itself. This inversion is my inspiration to
play myself, layer my face and body with makeup and disguise to upend my
appearance. “Poser” is a deragatory slang term that describes someone who is pretending
to be something they are not. My purpose is to use the language of self-portraiture
to reverse, twist, invert and mold this definition into something empowering.