My Journey to Creating an Online Gallery for My Self-Portraits

So I have been a self-portrait photographer for a little over 10 years now and I have a dream of opening up my own online art gallery to host all of my work, new and old.

This dream of mine comes after a realization that I genuinely miss shooting and editing photos, especially those that are adult in nature, but I don't particularly want to deal with everything that goes into that-- from customer service and chats, to custom work, and general male entitlement.

I just want to create art that is personal, fun, and sexy, and allow others to view it in a typical artist/audience lens, as opposed to the relationship of a model/personality and their very overly involved fans.

Is this possible? Can I really have it all? Creating adult art and still maintaining a healthy distance between me and quite frankly, overly horny men? Can I genuinely just get paid for making art and that's it? No need for any fuss in between?

The Love for Self-Portraiture

I started taking self-portraits when I was 16 years old. For context, this was before social media was the mega-beast that it is now (which means I was doing it "just because" and before I even knew it was a thing to do.) I don't even think people were earning on YouTube, Instagram may have just started up (but I don't think it had), Tumblr was the spot for all things teenaged and moody, and we were still ranking our friends in our top 8.

As a young girl scrolling on Tumblr, I was deep into the lesbian, vintage, and emo aesthetics and spent hours seeing so many pictures that felt "so me", but at the same time felt... off. At my all white school, my best friend was the scene queen with her perfectly teased to the gods side bang look and studded belt from Hot Topic. And try as I might, people would remind me that black people just couldn't be scene so, even with my feeble attempts at teasing my hair similarly and trying to don the uniform, it didn't matter where I went, I was never going to look the part, which continued to make me feel alienated in real life as well.

When it came time to graduate high school and we were doing our senior portraits, our local photographer that shoots everyone's photos took mine and mine were horrendous...

Looking back, they weren't all that bad, but if you knew me, they didn't feel like an accurate representation of me at all and as a kid with highly artistic visions always, I wanted my photos to represent me accurately. So with the help of a digital camera and my sister as an on demand shutter button, we took my senior portraits together, thus starting my love of self-portrait photography.

I had always wanted to model (among other things) and years of America's Next Top Model had prepared me to pose away in various scenes my sister and I created. I remember posting my photos on FaceBook with great excitement because I really felt like we did that.

A friend of mine commented on a set of those photos, telling me they had a hippie vibe, and something in my heart felt excited-- not necessarily to be compared to a hippie, but because finally someone had seen me as more than just a black girl. They saw me as an aesthetic ideal. And if you don't get it, that's okay, but for a little black girl in an all white world, it meant a lot to be seen as more than just black and to be seen for what she was going for.

Over the years, I have taken many self portraits, featuring many aesthetics and themes because at my core, I see a lot of things and go "I can do that! And I can do that black!" And when my portraits became more adult in nature, it became especially important to me to utilize all my talent and resources to create things that almost forced people to enjoy the craftsmanship behind it.

Black girls and women are so forcibly sexualized and while I was in a sexual market, I wanted to show that we could be beautiful too. We aren't just a fetish or a niche, but we are allowed to make nude art to be beautiful just like our white peers can. I saw so often the care that went into white photoshoots and the permissions they had due to their privileges. I knew it and accepted it, but I still wanted to do something more.

This often meant I was creating more slowly, getting paid less because I wasn't willing to do more and risk my vision, and because at the end of the day, men will be men, I was getting burned out by my exuberant amount of work being boiled down to how well I pretended to care about dick.

I don't. I never did. And even when I tried, it only lasted for so long before I was right back on the cat.

I needed a break. A rebrand. And while I love that my audience is almost refreshed and renewed on who I used to be, creating adult art is still very much a part of my process that I do still very much enjoy and I can honestly say that, now that I don't create it for anyone but myself.

But now I want to share.

The Vision for My Online Gallery

I want to create an online gallery space where I can post all of my work from self portraits, videos, audio erotica, and more without having to worry about algorithms, censorship, or any other extra hoopla that comes with using subscription websites.

I envision a refuge for all my fans to come and enjoy what I create, to feel represented in some way, and to feel a sense of reprieve in knowing that everything that comes from here is consensual, cared for, and happily created.

I do plan to create my own subscription based model that allows people to enjoy on a monthly, yearly, or lifetime basis as I know that budgets and levels of support do vary. For instance, maybe you have extra money now and want to support, but can't commit to a year? Enjoy a month! Or maybe you're a super-fan and really want to see my big photoshoot ideas come to life, join my lifetime tier and enjoy my art for years to come.

I also plan on opening up shop and providing polaroids and if I can find a printer of NSFW art, I'd love to offer prints and more!

The goal is to make my art accessible so that if you've ever wanted more beautiful black art in your home (like I do), you can get that.

It is so incredibly important to me to be able to keep my artistic integrity and not have to sacrifice that for the sake of meeting a bottom line, whether that's algorithmically or monetarily. It's also important to me, as an artist, that I am able to just focus on art and not have to consistently cater to a fantasy that keeps the porn industry alive and well. I respect that aspect of the job for what it is, it's just not for me and I don't want to do it. I want a relationship with my audience that is more similar to that of traditional artists rather than that of the modernized model/personality.

At the end of the day, I create art and post it. Every once in a while I talk a bit about what I've learned in my processes and life journey, but I do not share the intimate details of my life. I do not talk about my friends, family, or whatever unless it becomes relevant because I enjoy my privacy. I don't want a career based on sharing those details or even fake made up ones to feed audience ego.

It's okay to have secrets. It's okay to just create art. And that's what I hope to be able to use this to do.

The Challenge of Costs

I'm not gonna lie, when I proposed this idea, I was thinking it was gonna put me a cool $50 in the hole... I was NOT prepared for what actually came up as my starting fee of $263.

As I mentioned before, I did not want to join a subscription based site myself because the perks of me doing this is that I get to keep more of my money to myself and therefore can keep costs low for everyone else. And while I already do pay the yearly costs to keep my site up and running, adding a shop and gallery to it when I'm unsure of how it will perform financially, does make me a bit nervous to take that jump.

I have been selling a few items on Depop in the meantime though and plan to offer limited lifetime gallery passes at a discount in hopes to recuperate costs so I can operate at zero as opposed to a loss.

All in the days work, right? Grateful for the skills I gained when I was living out of my Mazda Miata-- scrounging up money last minute is my top performing event in these Olympics.

Conclusion

All in and all, I remain excited and positive for the future of my self portraits and the life we will make together.

My journey has been long and not without pivots, detours, and finally a coming home. But I am glad to finally feel at home in my work. To finally feel free to focus on play, storytelling, and really doing things that speak to me.

There are obviously some risks, some worries about how I'm going to financially cover this and if my audience will respect my boundaries, but also, if time has taught me anything is that there will always be bumps and bad fruit. You don't stop taking the journey because you could get a flat or eat a lil sour apple. You keep going. Working hard. Doing what you believe in.

Life has a way of working itself out.

Make sure to follow me on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram to keep up with my journey as an artist.

And I appreciate you so much for following me on the journey so far...