Today we’d like to introduce you to Elle Nightingale.
Elle, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I guess my story begins when I was a child. When I was five or six I started to notice I had an affinity for the feminine, though I didn’t know it as that at the time. Throughout my teenage years it was something I struggled with. I would go through long stretches, years even, when I would not be in touch with that part of myself. When I went to college, I tried to put it all away, out of sight and out of mind, but that part of me refused to be silenced. After college I began to get more serious about incorporating my femininity into my life in a more complete way. It was something I learned to share with my girlfriend (now wife) who gave me so much support in my pursuit of my true identity. But over the years it became something that was more and more difficult to keep private; it could still be a source of intense shame for me but simultaneously it made me feel free, alive, sometimes euphoric, and that was a hard thing not to share. I eventually came out to a friend of mine, who would eventually become my “fairy dragmother.”
She is a hoop dancer, burlesque artist and model. One day we chatting and she floated the idea of she and I doing a photo shoot together. I was both mortified and thrilled at the prospect… she told me she had the perfect photographer in mind and that I should trust her, so I did. The photographer ended up being Megan Afon Walker (previously featured here), and my experience with her was one of the singular events of my life. At first the shots we took were just going to be for me, a fun memento of a day of being my true self. But after getting the edits back, I was blown away by finally having a physical glimpse into how I had felt on the inside for so many years. These gave me a new-found confidence to continue modeling as an outlet of creativity and self-affirmation, and to be more open and public about my true self. It also made me start to think about the nature of beauty and decided that it was an area I really wanted to explore more.
The first thing I need was a psueodnym, one that better reflected my identity. My name came from another photographer friend of mine, Joey Phoenix (also previously featured here). She had suggested Lawrence Nightingale, as a play-off of Florence Nightingale and a way to embrace the blending of masculine and feminine. I loved the idea but thought it was a bit of a mouthful, so I shortened it to L. Nightingale, which then became Elle. In the past year I have worked to collaborate with as many photographers, artists and models as I can, but sometimes it’s difficult to find collaborators because what I do isn’t the usual “model” fare, but I’m slowly building up a network of people interested in exploring the same questions of beauty and gender as I am.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
My modeling work really revolves around two questions that fascinate me; what is the nature of beauty? And, can masculine and feminine beauty overlap, and if so, to what extent? What I try to achieve when I collaborate with photographers is this blurring of gender lines, finding a middle ground, where the viewer sees both, and neither, male and female. I think my most successful shoots are the ones that create that illusion, which make the viewer stop and think about what beauty is, or can be, and maybe even challenging their preconceived notions of what beautiful means.
Additionally, I want to show crossdressers in a more sympathetic light… often in popular culture they are the butt of jokes or are used as some kind of goofy plot device. Obviously, I don’t think those notions are things I can change all by myself, but maybe I can make a few people pause and reconsider that crossdressers can be beautiful in their own right, and can even be art. Lastly, I would hope that my work brings comfort to others like me who may still be in the closet, struggling with this as I did (and often still do). As with all artistic endeavors, this is also a journey of self-discovery for me, as I work to see if these two parts of my psyche can be reconciled and, if so, what that means for my own identity.
The sterotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
I think for artists things have never been so easy or so hard. The internet has created many more channels for artists of all mediums to get their work seen and heard, but the downside of that is that it is both difficult to get your work to rise up above the noise of thousands of other creatives, and that art consumers don’t appreciate the value of art as they once did because it is so ubiquitous on the internet. Services such as Patreon have helped bridge the gap for working artists, but to fully take advantage artists now how to be more than artists, they need to be marketers, brand managers, and public relations professionals. There are rarely enough hours in the day to wear all those hats and dedicate yourself do your craft without intense discipline, something that I know I constantly need to improve about myself.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My work is mostly smattered across various social media channels and digital magazines. People who are interested can go to my website or follow me on Instagram. The best way to support my work is to support the work of the photographers and other artists with whom I collaborate; Megan AfonArt, Joey Phoenix, Jessie Franklin, Ramakrishnan Krishnan, Bridget Conlogue, and many others. Many of them have will sell you prints of out shoots or have Patreons or Go Fund Mes that you can contribute to, or just hire them to photograph your event or do a portrait shoot. If you can’t do that, at least give them a follow on their social media channels and tell them you appreciate their work and creativity.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.elle-nightingale.com
- Email: collaborate@elle-nightingale.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elle.nightingale/
Image Credit:
Megan Afon Walker, Joey Phoenix, Lauren Kennedy, Jessie Franklin, Bridget Conlogue, Ram Krishnan.
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