Self Portrait Service

Sam + V are interested in taking a photo of you that you want to be taken.

We are engaging in a photo portrait practice with its roots anchored in the ethics and protocols of BDSM, informed consent.

This project is ongoing and open to anyone within the LGBTQIA spectrum: whatever that means to you. Our project is called “Self-Portrait Service” as we work in the service of our collaborators: their needs, desires, and visions for imaging themselves are paramount. We work to empower LGBTQIA+ people in creating our own images who have historically been denied access, power, and control of narrative.

In this project each subject is a collaborator: you determine the way you are depicted. You choose any and every aspect of this portrait. All are welcome to develop ideas with us if you are interested in collaborating on the vision of your depiction. We aspire to create an archive of sorts through a collaborative public that de-centers and shares power, rather than a proprietary lens. Collective ownership and collaborative authorship are essential.

We intend to continue providing this service for free. We hope to provide this service to as many people as possible and to help celebrate, document, heal, and support through this practice.

We are writing a contract or bill of rights determined by and for each person for their image and its future use, by us and by them, rather than a legalese release form. The person depicted continues to hold power after the image is created; they have full access to their images, control of their image-afterlife and in their image-future.

Prior to creating these images, the participants speak with us about their vision around the what, why, and how. These portraits can be any range of style or concept: utilitarian (headshot, glamour shot), art directed, documentary; solo, with friends, family, lovers, etc. We take whatever steps
necessary and possible to create their vision.

Art emerges as a utilitarian act of care.

We will ask that after the photographs have been taken each collaborator writes in response describing their experience.These responses can be expressed in any form, as poems, prose, contracts, analysis, etc. These verbal responses are meant to be a continuation for our collaborators to determine their own narrative and story. They may be processing their experience with us, of image, of photographs, of being denied power in the past or perhaps traumatic or empowering experiences of identity and imaging.

We have begun this portrait practice through the incidental links born out of our chosen families, lovers, and queer community but are interested in the visual records or documentation (historical and contemporary) of queer community in a wider sense.

We hope to be able to collaborate with folx to make portraits that are whatever you want them to be – sexy, sweet, strong, quiet, confident, gender affirming, playful, anonymous, loud, confrontational, subtle, vulnerable, complicated and so on.

Self Portrait Service was the recipient of the 2021 Dorothea Lange — Paul Taylor Prize from The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.