My Life in Pink
Nothing like a naked isolation portrait to lift your spirits
At a certain point a few weeks into my self-isolation, I saw that photographer Nikola Tamindzic was creating “coronavirus portraits.” For his ongoing series, “I Am Here, and You Are Where You Are,” he’s photographing people in isolation around the world from his New York City apartment, using the miracle that is technology. I’ve internet-known Nikola for years, but we’ve never met. In any case, I jumped at the chance. Nikola is a great photographer; I mean, just look at his Fucking New York project.
I said let’s do it, he said great, and we picked a date.
The question became where in my apartment the shoot would take place. I live in a complex that was built in the sixties. It’s in the Magnolia Park neighborhood of Burbank, a city in the San Fernando Valley. My place has two unique features: a retro pale pink stove and a retro baby pink tiled bathroom. Since me standing next to an oven didn’t seem very on brand, I decided on the bathroom. In my mind, the best shot would be in the baby pink tiled bathtub. But that meant I should probably be naked. I wasn’t sure about posing nude in front of a camera. I mean, I am not 21. I’d also gained some quarantine weight. And I’d never met Nikola.
Then I thought: YOLO.
When the day arrived for the shoot, I was wondering why I had decided this was a good idea. Beforehand, I thought maybe I would keep my underwear on. Who would know? (I would.) I thought maybe I would point out to Nikola that I’d gained some weight. (Which would put him in the lame position of having to expend the emotional labor of being my emotional babysitter.) I thought maybe I would change my mind and go back to eating organic brown rice crackers and obsessively watching “The First 48.”
Instead, I went for it. Because you only regret the photos that you don’t take. Because you only regret the questions that you don’t ask. Because you only regret the times that you didn’t pose nude. (Right?) To begin, I called Nikola on Skype. Then I set my laptop up on a chair that was facing the tub. After that, I used my iPhone 11 Pro Max to show him what the shot looked like by setting the phone so it was shooting video and then turning the camera so it was facing him and propped up against the laptop screen so he could see it. Finally, I took off my clothes and got in the tub.
I should probably add that I’m 6’1”, and the bathtub is way too small for me. (Were people smaller in the sixties?) And the bubble bath suds were a little underwhelming. We tried a few different things. Me with my arms wrapped around my legs. Me leaning back and submerging myself. Me looking at the camera. Me not looking at the camera. Nikola coached me gently, and I did whatever he said and stared into the black eye of the camera. After a while, it seemed like no big deal. I thought about what it was like to be hidden away from the world, and then I tried to show that. That it was lonely, but it was also kind of freeing, and maybe being by myself was making me more myself.
Eventually, the session came to an end. I have no idea what Nikola did on his end, but probably some sort of photographic magic, and a scene from the video we shot became this portrait of me. I like it very much. It seems very me. Of course, even though I’m technically naked, you can’t really see anything. But maybe being naked made me feel more brave about being emotionally naked. It looks like me: My Life in Pink.
Recently, I came across a Richard Avedon quote on @__Nitch:
“A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks. He’s implicated in what’s happened, and he has a certain real power over the result.”
I like that idea—that the subject is a creator who works in collaboration with the artist to make something that until that moment has never existed and never will again.
BTW, if you’re interested in posing for Nikola, he’s looking for more subjects. And you can keep your clothes on! You can contact him through his website or on Instagram.
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