Strength in All Things

I met with weight-lifter and trainer Gabby in her home back in March to take pictures of her tattoos as part of my ongoing tattoo stories series. In a brightly-lit corner of her bedroom, we started with a spooky black and grey piece on her right thigh that immediately took me back to the Southside tattoo shops I knew in the nineties.

“This is a little ship coming out of a demon mouth, and it was probably my fourth tattoo, something like that? I basically got it because I just wanted something that was black and grey, and I wanted something a little sinister looking,” she said, laughing. “’A lot of my tattoos are very floral or a little bit more floral and skeletal. Actually, my former stepdad has done the majority of my art. I got very lucky, I got to have a lot of free tattoos.”

On her opposite thigh is another large piece, also inked by her former stepfather.

“This I got in 2016 after my first Strongman Nationals, when I was competing in Strongman, because I mostly compete in power lifting now. The woman is actually modeled after a very famous old-timey circus strongwoman named Pudgy Stockton. We had the phrase ‘Strength in all Things’ because that’s my company motto and also just kind of the way I live my life. And then the little black piece underneath it is the gym that I go to, and that’s been a huge part of my athletic career, my coaching career, everything. So it felt kind of fitting to have that guy live next to my little strong lady.”

“We did this all in one shot, which I do not recommend. We just like sat in the studio on a Sunday for eight to ten hours, and just did the whole thing. It was terrible. That’s the longest I’ve ever sat, never again.”

“My first tattoo was my lower back because it was the early 2000s, as we do. This was actually done by my former stepdad before he was my stepdad. My mom had gotten a tattoo from him, and basically I was like, well if you get one, I’m getting one. Because I was a brat as a teenager. I think I got this when I was like sixteen? Seventeen? I went to an all-girls Catholic school, so I had to get it somewhere where you couldn’t see. And so lower back tribal piece it was.”

“That was also very painful and terrible, and I’m not sure why I picked such a painful spot, but you know. And a big piece. Small pieces really are not my thing apparently. I think the smallest piece I have is that logo from my gym, and it took like five minutes, and I was like, that’s it? Like, how wild?”

“And this is my second piece,” Gabby said, pulling her hair away from the large rose in the middle of her upper back. “I think I started this two days after graduating high school. This is like fifteen years old. My skin type is such that it’s like soft and stretchy, and holds color really well. There are some faded spots where the bar sits where I squat, which I actually kind of really like.”

“It’s something that’s really changed and grown with me, and feels very much like a living thing. Obviously your skin is like your biggest organ and stuff like that, but I feel like tattoos, especially when they get weathered and worn and faded, they really do tell the whole story about your life.”

“I wanted to do three roses. They were going to be like ‘sticking to my guns,’ because I have the pirate pistols, of love, knowledge, and justice. That’s what they’re supposed to symbolize there. I showed up to our little senior class activity thing post-graduation with like a full upper back tattoo and nobody was shocked.”

Like many of the people I’ve photographed for this series, family ties run deep in Gabby’s ink. “This is a memorial piece for my grandfather, who was a colonel in the Air Force,” she said of the eagle tattooed on her right hip. “He died and I wanted to get something as a tribute to him, and I couldn’t think of anything better than a tattoo. Although he’d probably lose his mind about it. They were not like the most conservative people, but they were definitely not full tatted-up people.”

“It’s funny, my grandparents, my mom’s parents, were just here, and I’m going to get my other hand done soon, and my grandma was like, ‘What are you going to get?’ And I was like, I don’t know, just something floral to go with the rest of my themes on my arms. And she was like, ‘You should get a gardenia, because it's my favorite flower, it's your great-grandmother’s favorite flower, it’s your great-great-grandmother’s favorite flower.’ And I’m very connected to that lineage. This will all actually be filled up with images from my great-grandmother’s tarot deck that I have from the seventies,” she said, lifting her right arm. “It was gifted to me, I was really lucky to have it.”

“This is like my tarot arm, because this is Lady Death but also representative of the hermit card, so very much a reminder that death and transformation is required for blooming.”

 “This was all one piece initially, and then I was like, well I want to do my hand. So we chose luna moths to add in there as further symbols of transformation, rebirth, stuff like that.”

Later in our conversation, Gabby showed me the tarot deck that belonged to her great-grandmother and will serve as inspiration for completing her tarot arm. “My grandma found these for me. It’s not a full complete deck, but it’s most of them. This was her original deck that she used. There’s some really cool art that I think is going to be super sick as a tattoo. The fact that I get to have them is such a neat thing because it was something that wasn’t really talked about in my family, in terms of like how spiritually-alternative most of my family is. I was raised Catholic, I went to Catholic school my entire life besides college. But my great-grandmother read tarot, and my great-great-grandmother was the town spiritualist. She was like a healer and would do all these sorts of things.”

On her other arm is another piece connecting Gabby to her ancestory. “I just knew I wanted a sacred heart because it is very much part of my Mexican heritage, but I wanted something really ornate, and I wanted the three roses again, just for no reason other than I’m really attached to them. I love this piece, I’m going to get a gardenia on my hand there and I’m going to get my knuckles done as well.”

“This is my little two-faced lady. All my tattoos are very much themed, like some sort of spooky shit plus feminine, floral, sort of balancing light and dark situation, which is very much my aesthetic in general. We named her Maria, which is my great-grandmother’s name.”

“I got so many of my tattoos when I was younger, and I feel like my pain tolerance was significantly better than as I’ve been older. Because I’ve been getting tattooed really for almost twenty years now. I’m just really glad I got my ribs done when I was in my early twenties, because I was like, whatever, it’s fine, fuck it. I don’t know if part of it is because, when I’ve gotten tattooed in my thirties was post-brain injury, post-concussions, stuff like that. So I do notice that my pain in general in everyday life is very different because I have chronic pain and I live in a different space, I suppose.”

“This is a little heart with a key. I got this—very cliché—after going through a bad breakup to remind myself that I am the person in charge of maintaining my heart and maintaining my joy, and that it is not someone else’s duty and responsibility to give me that. It is my own.”

“When I got my septum pierced and when I got my hand tattooed, I was like, oh this is how I’ve always been meant to look. Like it was a physical affirmation of me internally. It’s been such an interesting experience to watch myself evolve through my tattoo styles and what I’ve gotten, and how I continually gravitate towards the same things.”

 “It’s such a good touchpoint between bodily autonomy and resilience, and really chooses what you want for yourself in terms of how you present in the world, because obviously we are not in control of a lot of things but we can totally be fun art projects. I think that’s awesome. It’s been such an interesting thing, especially when I got my hand done, one of my former clients was like, ‘Congratulations on the career-ender.’ And I was like, yeah I mean, I’m going to get my neck and my knuckles, and all this sort of stuff done because I work for myself and I’ve made this a viable option. And I can’t go back at this point, it’s done. Working for other people seems like something I could never do again. Especially getting my hand done was a real affirmation of like, this whole thing has really come full circle. Like, I really did do all of this and this is here as a reminder that I kind of did the whole thing.”

Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Horse Girl

Bull riding is typically considered the main event of most rodeos, but for a lot of people in the stands, it’s all about the horses. And no one dominates horse riding like cowgirls. From barrel racing to trick riding, the women of rodeo excel at speed, precision, and agility. I love seeing little girls in the audience, decked out in pink cowgirl hats and dusty boots, climb the fence to get a better view, awed by the horses as much as the women driving them.

The below photos were taken last month at a Longbranch rodeo in Powhatan, Virginia. All night, I positioned myself close to the bucking chutes (the pens holding the bulls and their riders before they are released into the arena) in hopes of getting clear shots of the riders clinging for dear life to the massive bulls attempting to buck them. Under the dark of night and the glare of arena lights, my grainy Ilford Delta 3200 speed film did her best, but as I’ve developed the film and seen the results, it’s clear it was all about the horses for me too. I still have two more rolls of film I haven’t processed yet, and more to share from the ones I have, but today’s post is for the horse girls

I know most of you find your way here from social media and are probably on your phones, but I recommend viewing these images on a larger screen to really see the detail. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Have a Seat on the Bed

A month or two ago I watched All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, a documentary film about activist and photographer Nan Goldin. Goldin’s photographic work in the 1970s and 1980s largely documented her friends and surrounding community, usually presented in the form of ever-evolving slideshows, with themes heavy on relationships, sex, queerness, and the AIDS epidemic. The film itself is powerful, detailing Goldin’s activism against the makers of pharmaceutical opiates and their involvement in the nation’s opioid crisis, while also chronicling her rising art career. As the film went on, there was one theme I kept seeing in her photographs that struck me: people in bedrooms.

Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC by Nan Goldin

Nan and Brian in bed, NYC by Nan Goldin

Odalisque of the Bowery, NYC by Nan Goldin

Lynelle on my bed, NYC by Nan Goldin

Some of the images feel intimate, such as the first two above, seemingly capturing couples at the end of the night or waking up in the morning. It hardly feels like the photographer is there (although in fact she is literally there in the case of Nan and Brian in bed, NYC.) Others, like the fourth image Lynelle in my bed, NYC, feel half-posed. I imagine Nan spending a lot of time with her friends, winding up in each other’s homes and beds. At times, they barely pay attention to the camera always in Goldin’s hand; at others, they mug for her.

You can google “Nan Goldin bedroom photos” and find a long gallery of results. The fact that she did so much of this is striking to me. I am so rarely in my friends’ bedrooms, and they so rarely in mine. There is an intimacy in the sheer frequency she finds herself in these settings that I almost feel jealous of.

Maybe this is what inspired me. I found myself wanting to photograph people in their bedrooms. I made a Pinterest board. And I texted my friend Amy, who has a lovely bedroom, and is always game to sit in front of a camera. This is the beginning of a series.

All photos in this post, with the exception of the top four taken by Nan Goldin, were shot on Kodak UltraMax 400 35mm film and a Minolta X-700. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.