Feb 17, 2020

Roving Mars

This set was a daylong shoot done out at Little Sahara sand dunes in Southern Utah with my talented friend, Alyssa Torres. Alyssa reached out wanting to do a quick trip down to the dunes to shoot and adventure, and I was more than happy to help model and do a bit of exploring of my own. During the hour and a half drive there, we talked a lot about the work we do and why, as well as what we were hoping to accomplish with the day ahead. We loosely planned on shooting a sandy nude set with both digital and Polaroid images.

Keeping a loose concept is something I personally find really important in my modeling because it leaves the shoot open to ideas and experimenting. It gives both parties enough room to make some mistakes, make some magic, and grow in the process. It’s a fun and exciting (as if running around naked in the desert isn’t exciting enough) way to push each other artistically. I wanted to shoot the set naked because that’s the state I feel most free and comfortable in, and I knew that Alyssa being the wonderful human she is, would help provide a safe space to make that happen.

Shooting the Polaroids was important to both of us because the confines of social media can be quite suffocating at times for our lines of work. A lot of popular social platforms such as Facebook or Instagram not only frown upon posting uncensored content celebrating the female body-- showing a female’s breast in any manner is actually against their policies, meaning that our work as artists is constantly at risk on there.

It’s the tragedy of art living in the digital age.

And while tangible art seems to be becoming more and more outdated, the feeling of actually holding a commemorative piece of time together was really something else. The Polaroids helped keep an authentic feel in what we were doing, and it was fun watching them slowly develop. One of a kind pieces of us that were ours to share.