raphy and local photographers who didn’t know how to accurately capture Black skin. “I’ve always been comfortable in front of the camera because for me it was putting on a role. It was getting to be something bigger than myself. When you grow up in an environment where you’re the only Black girl, you have to shrink certain parts of your identity, to kind of fit in to not just survive,” Symone says. “So I got to be bigger, I got to be my full self in front of the camera. Being in front of the camera was the place that probably felt the most comfortable.” In her 20s, Symone studied musical theater, drag and burlesque. These experiences in performance and garment design (as well as the lessons she learned from performing in predominantly white spaces) shaped Symone’s creative expression and equipped her with skills that she continues to draw upon in her current work as a self-portrait artist.
Neo-Boudoir
“When I first started performing, and really even when I first started self-portraits for the online world as opposed to just for my own enjoyment, I did feel like I had to assimilate a lot,” Symone says. “This Black diva persona that white people predominantly wanted to put on me … now I’m more conscientious of it and now I don’t care for it … I don’t have to prove my Blackness to anybody. I also don’t have to feed into Blackness for anybody.”
As a queer Black deaf woman fully embracing her creative vision and desires, Symone is proud that her current self-portrait work disrupts the historic norms of Anjuli Symone captures her artistic soul as boudoir photography that center the white male cisheteronormative gaze. Her work is a testament to self-aua self-portrait photographer. thorship and self-definition, due to the high degree of creative control she exercises at every stage,from the WORDS / SOPHIA ORDAZ conception of an image to its capturing and editing. Brands like Dove, Loblolly, and Logandria seek her out or self-portrait artist Anjuli Symone, photography as a partner because of her unique and authentic exis her medium of choice. Channeling her lifelong pression. flair for performance, Symone opens portals to glamor, indulgence, and fantasy in each of the portraits Symone’s image has become an extension of her autonshe publishes on her Instagram page, @anjulisymone. omy and a manifestation of her artistic vision at its most Currently based out of Central Arkansas, Symone is a raw and unfiltered. The images she brings into being, shape-shifter who interpolates ’90s high fashion run- from regal Renaissance-inspired portraits to passionate way with ’60s vintage romance, creating an artistic ex- pinup-style vignettes, cater to her soul as an artist. pression that is as unique as her fingerprints. “I did not have that initial foundation of knowledge Symone is a multi-hyphenate at heart, and music was that this [body] is my vessel, and I can do whatever I her first artistic medium. Born mostly deaf, Symone want with it. I was constantly drawing from these ideas “hears” through vibrations. Her perception of tonal of men and money because I needed to survive. I had vibrations has gifted her with impressive vocal pow- no strong foundation to remind me that, at the core of er and range. In high school she participated in choir, it all, this vessel is mine, and I can do whatever I want though she was often told to quiet her gospel singing with it,” Symone says. “Now I get to return to the love voice because it was “too loud.” of photography, to the love of artistry. Now my art is me again and my joy of the creative process and my joy of She began to take her own self-portraits of her fashion being a woman.” as a teenager, when she was confronted by the absence of Black models in alternative fashion photog- IG @ANJULISYMONE
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