Trying Again

Today Alyssa Siegel and I met again to see if we could incorporate the advice we got from Blip after our first attempt to collaborate on a portrait she can use for web publications in the field of sex therapy.

In an article she wrote for a new cutting-edge psychology journal that starts publishing in July (and you can subscribe to it now, for free), she writes, "I've come to feel that how I look and who I am should neither be feared nor neutered, but instead embraced for its individuality and authenticity, qualities that I hope to convey so that my clients can also come to honor and respect themselves."

We talked about what that individuality and authenticity means to her, and how to represent it in a portrait: it's not the standard vanilla "professional" look of ten thousand other therapists. It's open, compassionate, intelligent, and whole--grounded, sensitive, playful, and at the same time competent and professional. She says some of her advisors recommended that she hide her own sexual energy and beauty behind a kind of "potato sack" outfit. But she sees that as an abuse of power: "That says, 'I'm the therapist, so I get to mask myself behind a potato sack. You're the one who has to hang out in all your vulnerable humanity'." Alyssa is willing to hang out with her clients in her own humanity. She blogs about it, too.

We decided to take her favorite chair outside, put it on the sidewalk, and shoot her barefoot. We also tried a couple of other locations--visibly urban, but keeping the portrait focused on her, so it's about the woman, not the location. We aren't entirely decided, even after all this. We also like 53 and 36, and we are also considering 55, 129, 85, and 76. If you have time to take a look and venture an opinion, we'd both like to hear what you have to say about our choice and our other possible choices. Which one works best for you and why?