Trevor Christensen Talks About Vulnerability in Photographing Portrait Subjects in the Nude [RF Video of the Week]

January 30, 2015

By Laura Brauer

Trevor Christensen‘s unusual take on nude portraits (unsurprisingly) made the viral rounds a few months ago — a project that we briefly covered here, shrewdly called “Nude Portraits” in which he, the photographer, is the one who is nude while shooting fully-clothed subjects, resulting in sometimes light-hearted, sometimes tense portraits that turn out to be quite revealing (in more ways than one, if you catch our drift).

The Utah-based photographer spends about 40 minutes with his portrait subjects, who are made explicitly aware beforehand that Christensen will be nude, that this may make them feel uncomfortable but that they shouldn’t feel unsafe. Of the project’s concept, he writes in his artist statement:

“Despite my best efforts, subjects often feel vulnerable during the process. No matter the scenario, this power imbalance is almost inescapable part of the experience. The photographer/subject paradigm is one of inequality. ‘Nude Portraits’ is about leveling the playing field in an unorthodox way. Instead of focusing on bringing the subject to a place of ease—where I am, this project brings me to a place of vulnerability.”

Creative agency The Good Line made an interesting video of Christensen explaining his project more, particularly from his intriguing point of view. Though viewers likely wonder at first what it would be like to be photographed by someone who is nude, Christensen delves into his motivations and — perhaps unexpectedly, given the bravery it would take to do this project — his internal struggle about it.

Take, for example, the moment just after he’s undressed in the bathroom and checked his gear, and just before he’s about to go out and meet his subject to begin their session. “That’s the moment that I say, ‘What am I doing?’,” Christensen says in the video. “That’s always the moment that I think, ‘This is stupid, and this is dangerous. And I need to put my pants on and apologize and leave.'”

But he goes through with them, answering his self-imposed question “Am I taking something that’s too personal from someone?,” as he says in the video, with, “I want to show people something that they’ve seen before in a new way. And I would like to show people something that’s worth seeing again that they thought they already knew about.”

(And don’t worry — this video is SFW.)

Check out more Videos of the Week, and email Libby Peterson with submissions.

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