Photographer Jordan King presents herself as a showgirl and a star in this Polaroid self-portrait. One of the series of four Polaroids taken in 2020, this image has been selected for the 2025 CONTACT Photography Festival’s billboard project. Transforming this photograph into a billboard communicates to the public that life is ever-evolving – sometimes leading to positive realizations and, at other times, presenting unforeseen challenges.
King shares that she and her friend Greg Manuel took this photograph in her New York apartment on March 13, 2020, just days before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted everyone’s lives. However, the aim of this photoshoot was for King to celebrate her connection to the history and space of her apartment, where artists from the New York art scene, and stars, had lived prior to her. These included performance artist Clark Render and drag queen International Chrysis, both of whom continue to inspire her, and whose influence manifests in King’s use of heavy glam, dramatic costume, and playful attitude.
King’s polaroid portrait captures the instantaneity of the moment in which history and the inner self become one, all the while against a dual background in which the external, in this case, the pandemic, also comes to affect the narrative of the self—culminating in a photograph that captures the ever-evolving way of human life.
Jordan King, Untitled-1, 2020, billboard on Queen St West at Augusta Ave, Toronto, till May 31, 2025. Courtesy of CONTACT Photography Festival.
Antonella Pecora Ruiz