I’m the type of person who usually runs away from having my picture taken. But when I saw what Kristin Reimer was able to bring out in people, it was probably the first time in my life that I was sorry to have avoided a photo session.
Kristin was the photographer for MISTI-Con 2023. I couldn’t avoid the organizer group photo, so there I am in the back, smiling nervously and trying to disappear. To put it bluntly: I hate pictures of myself, usually. I hate being photographed.
But then I saw Kristin’s MISTI-Con portrait gallery. I was enchanted by how she photographed people I’ve known for years. She made them glow. She brought out knowing looks. Mischief. Smirks. She made them look the way I always wish people could see themselves, instead of the way they fear they look.
People raved about how reassuring she was. “Her poses really work.” I saw some of them go back for more.
So I booked a session with her and this is what happened.
Kristin has developed a process called Transformation Sessions. She helps you come up with a persona that connects with your powerful inner self. We didn’t do a full transformation, but I thought carefully about what I wanted, wrote it out to Kristin, and met with her on Zoom. She used that time to get to know me – that’s an important step for her. She gets a sense of the person and her mind starts going on what she needs to do to make sure their true beauty comes out for photos.
She wrote back, “I wish you could see what was swirling around inside my head! Suffice to say, I have several ideas in mind. I will DEFINITELY NOT laugh at you, that is 100% guaranteed. I see your beauty!!!! Those images in my head above – they are unique to you, your physical self combined with the words you have been typing to me. I see you, and I can’t wait to show you what I see :)”
I told her I wanted to look like the witch in the forest who has a scary reputation, but you have to go to her if you want potions that work. I said I love jewel tones, greens and blues, flowers. She did my makeup. It wasn’t like anything I would ever have chosen, and that was a good thing. I wanted to trust her guidance and not let my reticence be in control. We had an outdoor session planned, but it was raining heavily, so she set up an indoor wilderness, clipped feathers into my hair, and brought out a fog machine.
She asked what music I wanted. I chose the soundtrack of Chocolat, for its knowingness and dark warmth, and Cirque du Soleil’s Alegría. Music helped.
She started telling me how to pose, gazing at me gently but with concentration.
I had prepared several mental strategies to stave off self-consciousness, but I didn’t need them because it was so absorbing to watch the way Kristin thinks and works. She observed carefully for moments when I seemed empowered or most myself. I saw her eyes registering various poses and expressions as she thought rapidly and strategized.
Sometimes she would say, “Wait… I just saw something. Try this.” Then she would direct me with tiny shifts in movement or expression until she saw the thing she was looking for. Sometimes she would make the movements herself so I could mirror her until she said, “Yes, yes, good.” Sometimes, she said, she gets mental images but it turns out that humans can’t move that way in 3D.
It all made me feel I could trust her. It wasn’t personal, and there was no way I would be judged. It wasn’t a matter of me having to live up to being attractive enough to deserve being photographed. She was looking for a way to capture a truth that was already there, focusing on what she could do to get a photo that would let me see myself as she saw me. I didn’t have to do anything but be.
When she noted happily that I’d had “so many expressions,” I suddenly understood how she does what she does. How she can get photos with just the right knowing smile or inner fierceness.
Kristin registers micro-expressions more quickly than most people. Where most of us might see four or five per second when interacting with someone else, she might see 25. She can slow them down in her mind, isolate them, remember something that made the person look expressive or powerful, and tell them what to de-emphasize and what to emphasize. She’ll notice if there’s something in the environment, like a piece of music or a comment, that made the fleeting moment go away, and she won’t reproduce that. In this way, she’ll narrow things down to find what works for that person.
Wow.
What she did for me was: she turned her attention on me. With her sensitive photographer’s mind, she filtered what she saw of me and did the work to speak it back to me and make it manifest in a visible, permanent, and shareable way. This is something people can’t do for themselves. It’s the work of an artist and a labor of love.
It reminded me of something. It reminded me of Sorting.
When you write about Harry Potter, it turns out that sometimes people – especially children – want you to Sort them into a Hogwarts House. I was afraid of the responsibility at first. How could I tell someone else’s child who they were, minutes after meeting them? What if I just told the children everything I could about the Houses and left the recognition up to them…? No? Apparently, no. They wanted me to look into them, ask them questions about themselves, see their gifts, then reflect back what I saw. They already knew who they were to themselves. They wanted to incorporate that with how they appeared to others. It was the interaction, the insight, the back-and-forth that they wanted. They came to me with the burden and the honor of that trust.
Kristin talked about the origins of her Transformation sessions. She had been doing portraits for businesspeople, trying to get them to show their inner selves. They always had something else going on in their lives, as well. Sometimes they would ask her: What would you put me in? They wanted her to show them how she saw them.
In her 1996 book The Power of Beauty, Nancy Friday argued that the painful yearning to be seen as beautiful applies to all of us, even those of us who believe we made peace with losing that game a long time ago. While mentally preparing to ask to be photographed as if I deserved such a thing, I realized something strange: one of the places I’ve felt the most beautiful has been the figure skating world, even though I’m far from athletic and figure skaters are the most beautiful people in the world.
It’s because I used to write about figure skating, and the skaters would read it. I witnessed their real-time art, recorded it into words and reflected them back to themselves with my own feelings added, showing them what effect their work had on other people. Sometimes skaters would ask me specifically to come watch them perform, then write to them and their coaches about what I saw. Sometimes their parents would write to me. I tried my best to see and write about the skaters’ true selves. I felt like they saw me in turn and wanted me there.
It was the act of looking and being welcomed for it that made me feel beautiful. Humans acting as loving mirrors to one another, using whatever gifts we each have.
Here is my favorite photo from my session with Kristin. I think I was supposed to look mysterious with this crow, but I couldn’t help looking at it adoringly instead.
Thank you for letting me watch you work, Kristin. Let’s work together again soon.
If you’re curious about the kind of work Kristin does, she explains it in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3oGYPIcsc0