Sex Education and Counseling Services with Cara

Over the decades as an Iyengar yoga teacher/ practitioner and fine-art color photographer, my photo models have shared how their self-image has radically, positively transformed after working with me in photography sessions.

My Photography-Models Testimonials:

Cherie:
Strange, liberating, slightly erotic, rejuvenating, inspiring…Being pregnant, and naked, amongst other naked pregnant women, invariably eliminates [the ego], leaving one feeling more connected, more confident, and more excited about the experience to come.

Charis:
I found the photo shoots to be extremely cathartic. After many people making comments like “you’re huge, are you carrying twins”, in which they meant no harm, but nontheless hurt my feelings, I was able to transcend that. During the shoots I felt beautiful. They were raw and intimate, a perfect transition into motherhood. Labor is raw and intimate. Pregnancy is full of dichotomies, you’re scared yet somehow you know everything is fine, you have no direction, and yet somehow find your way. Everything I ever believed in, every preconceived notion I had flew out the door the minute Aidan was born. My ego melted, I surrendered. The photo shoots prepared me for that letting go, that stripping away of masks and letting the world see me as I truly am.

Sonia:
Having photos taken of my nude and pregnant body was not just a memorable experience, but one that was empowering. I was at first tentative about the idea. I am no model. I don’t think I have a model body, a model look. And so it felt strange, taking my clothes off. I wasn’t sure I could do it, especially in front of all those people, the camera, the energetic air of a busy music store like Amoeba. But, after having done the shoots, I not only feel more comfortable with my body, I was better able to cope with being a pregnant woman, a woman who would soon have to shed my clothes in front of a room of doctors and nurses in a rather compromising state. In this way, the experience prepared me for labor.

Andrea:
Well, standing in a room of naked pregnant women, surrounded by colors and textures, I felt like a living miracle and a living work of art . . . the experience was unique. I have never felt so beautifully female before nor since in my life. I thank you for the photos you gifted us for modeling, and even more I thank you for the experience and the memory.

Marisa:
Odd feelings of being in a strange rather sharp environment of the hair salon with strange scary objects all around…Appreciating the other women’s acceptance of the bizarre environment and their ability to have a good time-naked and semi-naked and Cara making it all seem very normal.

Anna:
Modeling, nude and pregnant, for Cara was just what I needed for a pregnancy that required courage and a free spirit. I was going for a natural, vaginal delivery after two cesareans. Cara’s work with the Gestation Project, like birth, is a rich mix of vulnerability and introversion.

MJ:
I used to be anonymous. Being a part of Cara’s vision meant finally exposing myself as opposed to being exposed, removing the thin veils of clothing that stood between the outside world and my inner world. I was ready to reclaim the parts of myself that had transgressed into public domain.  Shooting pregnant women in a hair salon, and later a zoo, a nightclub, a record store, and an empty auditorium exploded the expected, and what fell into place was a narrative of maternal magical realism. How else can you capture something that is eternally natural, and yet feels like a logistical impossibility? Religiously chaste and yet erotically sensual? Communal and yet isolating? Symmetrical y perfect and yet grotesque? How can you display the love one feels for her unborn child, the strain she feels from carrying him, and the daunting thrill she has of pushing him out? How can a photographic exhibit tell the story of the emotional duality and the spiraling contradictions that make up this incredibly unique and ephemeral chunk of life? Cara turned the image of expectancy into hyperbole. She took what we think we know, what we’ve all seen a million times before, and propelled it out of our comfort zone. She colonized a new realm characterized by playful swaps. Compositionally, Cara shows us a world of intimacy and of distance, of fullness and wonder. We are solid in mass and in number and yet at times, quite uncertain. We manage to exude a peacefulness and sense of belonging despite the incongruity of being naked in public settings. From the perspective of model, it seemed that Cara approached these shoots with very little expectation. She never knew how many of us were going to show up (one model had the very permissive excuse of having gone into labor during one of Cara’ shoots); she never knew the level of intimacy she could attempt to establish among total strangers; and there was always the variable of sensitive body issues. One model agreed to pose nude as long as her body and her face were not in the same shot. Without so much as a furrowed brow, Cara accepted this woman’s personal limitation and shot accordingly. It is this acceptance, openness, freedom, and whimsy so evident in Cara’s work. By the end of the afternoon incidentally, the modest woman seemed to have lost her inhibition and appeared before the camera lens without restraint. Those shoots were a process of shedding inhibition. Letting go when you’re holding so much was an incredibly cathartic exercise and one I look back on with fondness and warmth. We entered record stores and hotel lobbies feeling out of place in our own uncovered skin, and midway through the shoot, we were all usually remarking on how unbelievably normal it had become to be naked with each other. Yeah yeah, your belly button has popped out like a meat thermometer, and your abdomen is rippled with stretch marks, and my ass is fat, and your ankles have blown up, and here we all are naked at the zoo and I’ve never felt so at ease with a group of people in all nine months of my pregnancy. In fact, at one point in the hair salon shoot, a client had to get rinsed in the room where we were posing. Cara gave us a minute to cover up, but by that point in the day, none of us really felt the need to scramble for clothing for the five or ten minute interlude. Interestingly enough, it was the fully clothed pair, the woman client and her male stylist who seemed out of place. This was an environment turned on its head. And the photos bear witness to the invented reality. Tim OBrien wrote, in his contemporary collection of short stories entitled, The Things They Carried, that sometimes story truth is truer than happening truth.?When I look at Cara’s photos of pregnant women horizontal in a hair salon, perched on barstools, roaming the aisles of a record shop, milling around a lion’s den, I think, yes, that’s what it was like to be pregnant. Even though none of those people would actually be doing any of those things in a conventional reality, Cara’s work illuminates a very real truth about the complexities of pregnancy. As the client lay back for her rinse, and the stylist kept to his task, I grabbed a fashion magazine and sank into a swivel chair. I was one of a dozen naked pregnant women in a room filled with painted masks and Aboriginal woodcarvings. I flipped glossy magazine pages and relished the moment of feeling once again unremarkable.

Alexandra:
I found the experience physically liberating. As your body expands in ways you never expected, you are constantly trying to determine what clothing looks nice, potentially how to hide some other new lumps? etc. But while modeling amongst other pregnant women, I strangely found myself feeling at ease with my body as a whole; as a whole it was representing pregnancy, not just the stomach, and as a whole it represented a beautiful process. Of course, the juxtaposition against the lions certainly helped lessen my focus on my body and its flaws.

Julia:
What I loved most about being in the gestation project was being and communicating with the other pregnant women, naked, in the space…Posing with out clothes brought an instant intimacy allowing each of us to really take a look at the unique shapes of the pregnant body in different places in a city, have a conversation, or ask a question..all with out embarrassment. My body changed so dramatically that it was sometimes hard to remember that it was really happening and seeing the others in similar situations, not just through the layering of clothes was comforting, and bonding. I loved it and I enjoy running into some of those people around town now.

Devra:
Modeling with the puppets while pregnant represented an image of women’s cycle of Life – there we were, naked and abundant, surrounded by larger than life images of women in mourning. We were on the precipice of bringing new life into the world – almost in defiance of the fact that women throughout the world loose their children to war, tyranny, hunger and poverty every day.

Maria:
A friend had offered to take some semi nude or nude photos of me or go with me to make a body cast. Her photo idea was to do something like Demi Moore did on the cover of some magazine years ago. Neither option sounded appealing. I guess I felt embarrased to pose for my friend. The irony is that I felt comfortable posing in a strange environment with a bunch of strangers and for a complete stranger.

Monique:
I wasn’t quite sure what it was going to happen when I first walked into the hair salon. It sort of felt like going into a girls locker room for the first time with everyone checking each other out politely but with deep curiosity and then as we began to relax we could start to ask all kinds of questions that only pertain to pregnant people. It was so beautiful to see bellies of all shapes and sizes and to know that we were all safely carrying around a new generation of people in them. Then, to see the pictures months after having the babies was slightly strange. The people in them looked sort of foreign. We all looked different with our empty tummies. It was a great experience. Thank you.

Yami:
Cara’s easiness and artistic vision completely blew my mind. My expectations from the first photo shooting were thrown out of the window. I had prepared myself for an average experience, some traditional and disconnected belly shots…Instead, I found myself deeply immersed in this artistic, expressive, fulfilling and abstract art project. I felt connected to the awkwardness of the setting, the boxing gloves in our arms, the unexpected goggles, the fabrics covering our faces, the different bodies, ethnicities, and all empowering pregnant women.

Stephanie:
The mommas’ bodies are beautiful, poised for the picture, but the babies are the ones most present. Surrounded by these bellies, butts and boobs, I found comfort in my baby’s company with the other growing babies.

Hankie:
Modeling for Cara was a unique experience that gently pushed me outside my comfort zone and opened a door to nonconformity and free-expression. I soon found myself relaxed, content, and bonding with the other mothers-to-be in a special way.

Nicole:
Being a part of this photography project was very invigorating and liberating. It helped my let go of my inhibitions and helped me feel free. There was something almost primitive about it. Being able to share this with all the other woman was a extraordinary experience and totally refreshing.

Julia, my model in “Waking into the transient membrane of such delicious moisture:” One reason I enjoy modeling for Cara is that she puts me into situations and positions that test and question my own physical experience; a reaching out and past the boundaries my culture and I, myself have set up. One time while Cara balanced a very smelly dried octopus on my face, I had to control my breathing to limit my nasal intake of air so that I could reduce the nausea swelling inside me. It was an illuminating experience of finding my limitations and reaching around them to feel what’s on the impregnable other side. Every session we do together, a little more about my body is revealed to my mind. Another time, Cara inserted very large dead insects in and around my ears. Beautiful and horrifying creatures, which allowed such intimate contact only because they were dead… helped to reduce my irrational fear of “bugs”. It was exhilarating and so sensual: feeling the delicate prickly legs and raspy crisp wings and the fuzziness of the abdomens on my own skin sent chills through my body…It is ironic that the tension I feel while we are taking photographs does not always come through in the final print. Perhaps we do not want to see the scars, the adipose flesh, the blood, the pressure of organs, the blemishes…Those who are afraid of their bodies, I believe, are afraid of life itself and so limit or try to disregard this living tension.

Astraea, my model in “Viscous Expectations:” It wasn’t a hostile degrading experience—it tempted the tension between play and pain-now when I look at the photograph of my nipple pulled through a sharp metal disc, what I remember is play. It was an image Cara and I created in my room when we were first getting to know each other—a very warm space. I was propped up against the wall and using rusty heavy pliers, I pulled my recalcitrant nipple through the metal, a corrugated, convoluted disc, which Cara refers to as her dinosaur diaphragm— and my nipple which at times became just as convoluted. There was a lot of tenderness. We were trying to figure out how to make it stay hard so the photograph would show the visual metaphor between my vulnerable flesh and this supposedly hard object. This metal object looked like it had once moved like fluid—this object that could have been the hardened skin of an animal. The process was one of play—of attention to my body-and while trying to get it to do a very specific thing—the recognition that it had its own responses-the resistance of a nipple.

Don, my model in “Inside the Visible:” I felt I was part of a landscape, a collage, fitting in there with so many other things that are coming together to make a whole-a construction similar to the montage of forms that make up a separate reality, separate from me, like Salvador Dali’s “Apparition and Fruit Bowl.” I felt like I was becoming part of something else…Cicadas on my lips, rotting berries in my mouth, saliva dripping down my chin, my tongue being grabbed by rubber sheathed toes. My saliva and to some degree, my viscera became joined into this collection of forms that make up a different whole. I felt literally frozen in time—holding the pose—I am becoming the photograph.

Sean, my model in “disarticulated membranes:” …your attention always there, looking, adjusting; there was, if anything, too much of a safety net… you discuss the enigmas of knowing/wondering/ fearing…the contradictions of desire, invasion, space, yet you protect yourself, (and us) from really hitting those core feelings by making the situation too safe: in a way, I was more excited, the stranger the position you placed me in…I haven’t really thought about the most, perhaps only, disturbing aspect of the photos for me, namely the rubber glove, the encased hand (or foot), the separation, that refusal to touch, to sense, and the depersonalization; I know it’s you, but do not feel you; indeed the contrast of that strange wrapped member with the strong memory of the real touch of your skin, in random contact…which made the glove the more alienating, but then there was your foot…I do not recognize my own body there… perhaps that uncertainty is the best of all, I feel a thrill not knowing.

Micaela, my model in “Bloodlines:” Cara invites her subjects, her photography models and props to collaborate with her. The ground rules require accepting our vulnerability but nevertheless trusting her. We do not know where she is taking us or what is about to happen. I allowed myself to merge physically into what appeared to be a chaotic interpenetration of an irrational collection of objects…courting what initially felt like a potential assault and a total transgression of boundaries.