Group Shoots

I have been posting group shoot photos here and there on instagram, but they really deserve to be seen bigger, i.e. they should be printed but a computer screen is going to have to do.

I did 3 of these this summer, and still have one coming, and they have quickly become one of my favorite things to photograph, not because of the photos (although those are amazing), but because of the experience that they create.

The images we see of women in our everyday lives are photoshopped. Breasts are made to be perky. Rolls are erased. Skin texture smoothened over. But when you do a group shoot, you get to see women and nonbinary folks simply being. You get to see bodies moving. It’s not edited, it just is.  The way it looks to see real bodies sit on trees and rocks. The way real bodies look when we are picking our way up a steam. The whole thing becomes incredibly normal and that is beautiful.

Recently I was reading The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolfe and she talks all about the ways that the patriarchy has used a standard of beauty to control women and keep us distracted and pliable. And as I got towards the end, she starts to give suggestions of ways to push back against it. And one of those ways is spending time naked with other women. Because in being able to spend time with other women naked, we both create community and also we are given the chance to see bodies just being bodies. Not the photoshopped and filters versions in ads and on instagram, not ai bullshit, just bodies in all of their bumps and rolls and beautiful textures, moving around.

So I hope that these group shoots do that. I hope that they give each participant the beautiful experience of looking around and thinking “holy shit what a beautiful group of people” and then realizing that their body is also beautiful just the way it is.