The “Why” behind a boudoir shoot

My path to boudoir photography is not the traditional. I did not start as a portraiture photographer and I didn’t start with weddings. I started with a study of human sexuality in graduate school and a love of black and white film photography. But more than that, I started with a long history of an eating disorder that plagued me for most of my young adult life. So how does an eating disorder, human sexuality, and film photography come together to land me in boudoir photography? The short answer is that I stumbled upon boudoir photography while doing research for a grad school project. I was researching the intersection between body image and sexual pleasure. As part of my own journey I had found that the more I healed my relationship with my body, the more I also healed my relationship with my sexuality. It turns out, this is a fairly well researched topic. Those who deal with negative body image are less likely to be embodied. And those who are not embodied, are also less likely to be sexually satisfied. But it isn’t just satisfaction, being embodied also leads to higher sexual agency, in terms of both pleasure and consent. So the experience of being present in your body is paramount to your ability to experience and have agency over your body.

I spent the entire year of grad school centering my research projects around this issue, but I kept coming back to the same questions: How can women become more embodied? How can women heal from eating disorders and negative body image? How can women embrace their sexualities? Are there alternative ways outside of therapy (therapy is very important, please don’t get me wrong on that one)? And how do we do this in a society that tells us over and over again that our sexuality is a problem and that our bodies are a problem that need to be shrunk, tightened, firmed, shaved, and toned to fit a stupid definition of what beautiful means.

And in came boudoir photography. A perfect way to combine my love of art with my passion for helping women embrace their bodies and sexualities, and increase their confidence all to live more embodied lives. So I don’t come to boudoir because it was another way of making money as a photographer. I come to boudoir with the intention of creating an experience and images to help you on your journey to embodiment. This is the type of photography I live for because it is so much more than a pretty image to put on Instagram. Boudoir photography is the experience of being vulnerable, it is the experience of allowing yourself to be sexual and beautiful as just you. So if you are looking for the answer as to why you should book a boudoir shoot, it isn’t to have beautiful photos to give to your partner, you book a boudoir shoot so you give yourself the gift of stepping into your body, your sensuality, and being able to see yourself in a light that you have never seen before. While I cannot promise that it will heal your relationship with your body (nothing is that simple), I can tell you that the experience I have had documenting my own body as art has given me the beautiful perspective of being able to see what I first thought of as flaws, as beautiful parts of me. It has also given me a way to step into my sexuality, a beautiful power that I hope to be able to give to all of the people that step in front of my camera, regardless of your gender.