By Amanda Knox

In my limited modeling experience, the most difficult thing has always been the face. So much can be conveyed through a facial expression. It’s not as simple as deciding to smile. Minute muscles may compose all kinds of smiles—ecstatic, ironic, indulgent, concerned, condescending, embarrassed, communicative—the difference between them so subtle and yet so legible. Usually I don’t think about what my face looks like while I’m emotionally responding to a context which might make me smile. When modeling, suddenly I am made aware of not just one, but two simultaneous expressions: 1) my face in context, self-conscious about the act of playing pretend in front of a camera; and 2) my intended face, conveying the character of the composed image. If I’m not careful, the self-consciousness of the first will eek its way into the second, compromising my expression entirely.

West Seattle-based photographer Dawndra Budd and I convened in a nondescript building on Capitol Hill, in a pine-paneled room painted stark white, floor to ceiling. It was warm, clean, and offered a small assortment of furniture pushed into the corner: a white leather couch, a white coffee table, plush orange high-backed dining chairs, blue velvet pillows, a gilt-framed mirror. Bright natural light streamed through the opaque drapes at the windows. Dawndra bustled with Barbarella, her beloved Nikon D810, while I slipped on a flowy red dress with simple embroidery down the chest. It was Dawndra’s dress, one she had used in pervious shoots with other models. Once I had applied equally red lipstick, Dawndra delicately pulled out a grey-white moth from her bag and gleefully suggested she pose the dry corpse on my lips. “This is one of those improvisational things I do,” she explained. “I found this beautiful little guy on my kitchen counter this morning and I thought we had to find a good use for him.” I was game.

Dawndra had brought other creative props: a heavy metal chain you’d expect latched onto the anchor of a sailboat, a spool of thick black wire, rusty vintage keys, a silky opaque sheet, a thick rope, a silky dress slip. Over the next hour and a half we made use of them all, almost always to obscure or incapacitate me in some way—in keeping with the theme. I was aware of my face, of the many layers of subtle emotional expression I’ve accumulated in response to helplessness and captivity. I tried to relax, and was encouraged by Dawndra’s enthusiasm. Every so often, she took out her “toy cameras,” a Polaroid Instax Mini and a Lomo camera, photographed a few of the poses, and gave me the Polaroids as souvenirs of a session well-spent.

The body isn’t nearly so difficult to pose. Usually, only talented professionals may hope to convey through their postures all the complexity and subtlety of a facial expression. In my case, my body puts on a costume and reacts to an environment. My body is limited to what burden it may carry, what space it may squeeze into, how long it can maintain balance. Every so often there are happy mistakes, like the time I was posing for Madison in a nighttime shoot and my legs became entangled in a fold-up chair I was trying to quickly scuttle out of the road with in time for an oncoming car.

The Puget Sound is so, so cold on a cloudy, breezy morning, when you’re knee-deep, wearing a halter dress, and Dawndra’s tattooed assistant, Richard, rains the frigid salt water onto you from a large, tin watering can. To his credit, Richard apologized the whole time. He then dug the feet of a wooden ladder into the seaweed strewn pebbles, deep enough so that the first rung was submerged. My feet numb, the hem of my floor-length dress heavily saturated, I slowly wobbled up the ladder and stabilized myself. Richard handed me a smoke bomb, pulled out the ring, and orange smoke billowed around me. “Cool! Cool! Cool!” Dawndra cheered from the shore, clicking away. After the bomb fizzled out and the smoke dissipated, Richard gave me a reassuring nod. “It did look cool,” he reassured me. I smiled. I was shivering violently, but I didn’t mind. We were in this together. I readily fell back into the distant but familiar mindset of giving myself over to the art.

The whole experience—the studio session and the outdoor shoot—reminded me of one particular role in a play in a One-Act festival at my high school. Before I had ever kissed anyone for real, I had to kiss a fellow classmate, a friend of mine named Andrew, on the lips. Even worse, I also had to slap him across the face. During rehearsal, we tried all sorts of maneuvers for faking the kiss and the slap, without success. Finally, Andrew suggested we should just do it for real. We did, and when the time came, it worked—gasps rippled through the audience and I ended up being nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the festival. I took away the lesson that it’s better to give what the art demands of you, even, especially, if it’s uncomfortable. You have to just take the plunge. It helps when your photographer is as happy and encouraging as Dawndra is.