How I Created Remote Portraits of Musician Penelope Trappes — and Had a Breakthrough with Hands
Behind the scenes of a virtual photoshoot.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about hands in portraits — how to maneuver them into the frame without making the photo awkward. Few photographers are able to exploit hands as a unique visual layer without resorting to stiff stock poses like the pensive hand under chin. Hands can be eloquent and revealing, adding complexity to the image, but they are also hard to direct. When I shoot someone, I always ask them to bring hands to their face, just to see what happens. Many subjects get frazzled and become uncomfortable, so I just move on. But every now and then, the person has hands that are fluid and expressive, with a kind of proprioceptive elegance. In these cases, I can direct the hands with precision, allowing the subject to move on their own while guiding them into the world I want to create. Penelope Trappes is one of those people, so when I realized that, I went hand-crazy. And unlike the usual failed experiments doing so, a few of these portraits came out exactly the way I envisioned.
This work is the result of a collaboration with one of my favorite music writers, and fellow Substacker, Phillip Sherburne. Music has been the love of my life, so I teamed up with Philip to make remote portraits to accompany his interviews in Futurism Restated. It's partly an experiment in forging a visual language through portraiture, partly an excuse to meet some of my favorite musicians.
Most of my recent work has been on assignment, which is rewarding, but inevitably shaped by someone else’s tastes, deadlines, and the low-flying panic attack of not being hired again. Carving out time for personal shoots is essential to keep myself from stagnating and keep my work from becoming too neutered and too slick. It’s a safe space where I can play with odd, sometimes terrible, ideas without the fear of public failure. But along with epic mistakes, that’s also where breakthroughs can happen. With Penelope, the breakthrough was hands.
Penelope Trappes is an Australian, UK-based experimental musician. Her music is, in Philip’s words, swaddled in dusk, presenting “a sumptuously gloomy fusion of ambient, folk, and goth.” One of my favorite tracks, Hair Shirt is dream pop at its most spectral, less of a song than a Lynchian space where melody hovers at the threshold of disappearance. I wanted to echo the ritualistic, textured unease of the music, and, inspired by Penelope’s style, to channel the haunting theatricality of Kate Bush.
Here is how I’ve created these portraits remotely.