Free portrait sessions for trans, gender diverse, queer or BIPOC individuals are being offered at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre as an extension of the To Be Continued: Troubling the Queer Archive exhibition at the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG).
Photographer Adrienne Row-Smith and exhibition curators Anna Shah Hoque and Cara Tierney designed the sessions to cultivate a safe space for trans, queer and racialized individuals.
Shah Hoque, a queer, brown femme, said the portraits were about sharing joy and not dwelling on challenges.
“We already know what it’s like to live in our bodies and … to be in spaces that often see us as an anomaly or something that needs to somehow contort,” she said. “This is a moment to celebrate queer, trans and racialized joy.”
The first session was held March 6 and the second session will take place on April 20. Each session has 10 slots and according to Fiona Wright, public programs co-ordinator at the art gallery, CUAG had no trouble finding 20 interested individuals.
“We put the call out on Instagram and I sent it around to a few people that we’ve worked with before to help spread the word, and it was full in less than 24 hours,” Wright said.
Wright added all COVID-19 protocols are in place to keep everyone safe during each individual session. Participants only remove their masks when they’re being photographed.
The portraits taken by Row-Smith are part of her own mission to bring marginalized individuals the representation and inclusion they’re often denied.
“There are negative people in this world who would rather that these people didn’t exist, who act like they don’t exist and erase them from society,” Row-Smith said.
Row-Smith said it was important to her that the sessions be free because she said portraiture can be inaccessible due to financial barriers.
“I want people to feel beautiful and have photos that they’re proud of, but I don’t think that should be an arm-and-a-leg cost,” she said.
Additionally, Row-Smith said that portraiture can be a gendered, uncomfortable and assuming practice.
“There are masculine and feminine poses. I try to get rid of that and just capture people as they authentically are without having this kind of gendered posing,” she said.
Her goal for these sessions was to turn the occasionally uncomfortable act of having your picture taken into an activity in which individuals are represented in the way they want to be seen.
“I want them to feel like you are beautiful, you are valid, you’re whatever you’re going for, and I want you to see it reflected back at you in these pictures,” Row-Smith said.
Featured image by Adrienne Row-Smith.
