Can we call it EMPOWERMENT PHOTOGRAPHY already?
People love boxes and consistency and reliability - it makes our brain feels safe, which in turn makes us feel safe - but it can also slow progress and halt necessary movement from happening. I see this in the photography industry where we have people (myself included) where we feel we HAVE to use the term boudoir because “that’s what our clients know it as” yet boudoir does not own copyright to empowerment. I would guess that now there are more than enough photographers wanting to empower humans through photography, yet we convince ourselves that there aren’t enough clients and potential clients that search for “empowerment photography” so we fall back in to the label of boudoir or intimate portraits. I’ve talked about the expectations that BOUDOIR PHOTOGRAPHY comes with in a previous post, but I want to delve a little deeper into WHY I think we need to consider creating a new genre of photography called EMPOWERMENT PHOTOGRAPHY.
DIFFERENT PEOPLE ARE EMPOWERED BY DIFFERENT THINGS.
Boudoir photography is great for empowering people to own their sexuality, feel sexy and rock lingerie like no one’s business - THIS is the expectation of a BOUDOIR session. Sensual poses designed to entice, sexy lingerie or baring it all, channeling feelings of sex, sensual, and passion.
But as someone who is asexual, I can tell you that wearing lacy lingerie with strappy bits and arching my ass to high heaven doesn’t ACTUALLY empower me. Previously, it gave me the sense of “LOOK, YOU CAN ALSO LOOK LIKE A CENTERFOLD” which felt like empowerment/confidence, but upon further reflection, I realized it was actually validation to know that I COULD fit into society’s definition of beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this is an important part to self discovery.
I needed to show myself that I COULD step outside of my comfort zone and become confident - it just happened to involve lingerie & heels.
But empowerment via photography truly came for me when I showed up to a photoshoot with outfits I would wear around my house.
I stopped buying things I THOUGHT I needed for a boudoir shoot and started to explore confidence and stepping outside the comfort zone in the form of what I would wear if I didn’t give a shit what people thought.
THAT felt like true empowerment to me.
Previously with sessions, I would require that every client get naked (letting them know ahead of time of course) and I thought I was doing a service to people. I explained that it was important to me that people learn to accept their body as it is and the best way to do that was to be nudie - which I still think is true, but it is not up to me to decide how YOU should accept your body. Knowing what I know now, I will advise on what has worked for others and empower you to make your own decision - I am here to simply collaborate WITH you, to give you a safe space to explore different parts of yourself on any given day with 0 judgement from me. We will talk about HOW you want to show up and HOW you want to feel when you look at your images, and if the answer isn’t “SEXY” or “SENSUAL” then BOUDOIR photography is not what you need and I don’t want you to feel like the only way for you to feel empowered is by doing a BOUDOIR session.
Portrait photography, in my experience, is more about documenting people as they are or how they want to be. Where Boudoir photography eludes to sexy time and butts, Portrait photography brings with it the idea of headshots, cropped images of the face, magazine styled images, and fashion photography. The images you see in this post are portraits. For people that don’t feel empowered through sexy or sensual styles (typically born from the male gaze), portraits are a fantastic alternative. You can still wear lingerie or nothing at all, but the context is significantly different. Instead it’s about showing up and being who you want to be in that particular moment. For people that want to feel empowered to exist as themselves in ANY form (similar to how powerfully Ms. H showed up in a previous post), portraits are a great way to make that happen. Whether you want to don a floofy ball gown, a button up polo, a pair of jeans and a sports bra, or nothing at all - portraits give you a bit more flexibility to play and move beyond JUST being sexy.
You can feel the difference of intent when you look at a portrait as opposed to a boudoir photo.
Both have their place and both are fantastic forms of empowerment - but each one is not right for all.
And as far as the photographer piece of this goes, it can limit our creativity.
We might be tempted to try something “out of the box” but if it doesn’t fit the boudoir narrative we are going to be less likely to give it a go! If we think a pose isn’t sexy or sensual we probably won’t show it to a client. If we think the body doesn’t look akin to a centerfold of playboy, we toss it out of the lineup. Overtime, our brain collects “evidence” of what boudoir photography is and isn’t by being in Facebook groups and on social media and this can harsh our creative mellow, simply by making us think our work is “weird” or “different” if we even think of something outside of that evidence. So many times I have seen photographers post work that is perhaps not in line with the expectations of BOUDOIR and they post it with a self depricating “Anyone else like creating WEIRD stuff?” instead of a “I am proud of this.”
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO INTENT.
Which is why I like the idea of EMPOWERMENT PHOTOGRAPHY.
It’s about the intended outcome of the FEELING more than the outcome of how someone looks.
It focuses on the experience and less on the images.
It encourages photographers to collaborate with their clients, to dig deeper into the meaning behind having the images taken to begin with, and to create an experience that will leave the client FEELING something in addition to HAVING something.
It fosters liberation in the form of freedom of expression.
It might look like a boudoir session.
It might look like a portrait session.
It might look like a fine art nude session.
It might look like an exciting music video inspired styled shoot.
Whatever it looks like doesn’t matter.
All that matters
Is that we are delivering the main thing we keep talking about delivering:
