What Gives?
Why do you live on Cortes? And are you happy?
Darshan lives on Cortes because Alex lives on Cortes. Alex lives on Cortes because he used to live in California and when he was 7 years old he decided he was going to live in Canada because he didn’t like President Nixon. It took him a few years but by the time he was a raging deadhead in his 20s, after many failed attempts to cross the border (they didn’t like the bells in his hair, or the smell in his Volkswagon), he got a note from his Mom (or something), and they let him across. He looked around and decided Cortes was the very best place to live in all of Canada. And Darshan agrees.
Sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are sad. We aim for feeling ‘good enough.’ Is that boring? Alex told Darshan when she moved to Cortes: “Cortes is the place ambition comes to die.” Well, she is less ambitious than she was when she moved here 8 years ago. She slowly realized that maybe she wasn’t going to "‘get somewhere.” She feels relieved.
We read a lot of books, also we go outside a lot because….. Cortes. We play pickleball (weird right?), we play musical instruments, we hang out with friends, we spend a lot of time with our respective Mom’s, we do lots of strange therapies and workshops, and we try, and often fail, to not get embroiled in political facebook feuds.
Are you obsessed with your dog?
We have no children.
Are you actually in love like in this photograph? And can you make us look this in love?
Sometimes we are actually this in love.
100% we can make you look this in love in photographs. Even if you just had a blow-out fight right before our photo session. We will bring out your inner shine for each other.
Why naked people?
Because after ten years of photographing weddings I needed a project that would rekindle my artistic perspective, and make me approach photography in a new way.
Also, I’m a nudist, and weirdly enough, I consider it a kind of cause. I think of casual and social nudity as a kind of antidote to body-shaming, and the power that body-shaming has over us as humans. Dictating what we eat, what we buy, who we want to sleep with, who we want to be, how worthy we feel of being alive, etc etc etc etc etc etc.
So I combined my ‘cause’ with a desire to photograph people being raw and vulnerable. Amazingly, I found some people who wanted to take off their clothes and say “here I am, I’m not ashamed, go ahead and put my photo on your webpage — I claim autonomy over myself, and guess what, no one can take that from me by looking at my naked body on a screen.”
Hey maybe, you want to be one of these people? Maybe you’re realizing it now as you read this…
Are you actually good at shooting weddings? Or will you just take weird art shots all day?
No it’s true. Darshan shot ‘documentary style’ for the first few years, as a way to cover up that she didn’t really know anything about light or how to take good portraits. Then she went in the complete opposite direction, and only cared about light, and art shots, and creamy background portraits of the wedding couple, and often missed the moments unfolding around her. She likes to think she is now taking the middle path, largely because Alex is there to help her pull her head out of the sand when she gets too obsessed with something pretty…..
Are the photos good now, and is the coverage of the day comprehensive? Darshan is clearly not the one to ask, as she thought she was great all along — only in retrospect does she shake her head in admirable wonder at the delusion.
Check out the Wedding Gallery and judge for yourself:
What else do you do?
We’re therapists. I’m serious. But Alex refuses to have a therapist webpage.
Will you wear weird clothes to my wedding?
Only if you request it. We actually do have some ‘normal’ clothing collecting mothballs in our closet. Don’t worry, we’ll launder it before wedding season.