In Warrnambool, in south-west Victoria, there is a vanguard disability movement growing, charged by a grassroots group called the Find Your Voice Collective.

Most recently, they’ve produced a striking set of photographic portraits that topple preconceived notions of disability.

The exhibition, Alter Ego, asks, “Who would you be, if you could be anyone? And how do you wish the world would see you?”

Artists in the group say the images present a potential future, an inclusive world where power, beauty, fame and career success are commonplace experiences for people who identify with a disability. 

The artists are part of a larger group called the Find Your Voice Collective, a grassroots disability juggernaut that began as an all-abilities choir in 2018.

The choir has evolved to become the collective, something close to a political movement.

It advocates for the human rights of people with a disability, using art and music as a powerful form of creative activism.

At just 20 years old, Grace Kenny (GK) has become a lead singer in the group, writing and performing her own hip hop music in front of festival crowds, backed by the choir. 

Kenny says her alter ego, Greatness Known, is an expansion of her current life and career path: the manifestation of her dream to take the world by storm.

“The whole Alter Ego series is made out of who we really see ourself as, like it really goes down to the depths of our identity and the way we want to be seen,” Kenny says.

Kenny says her alter-ego portrait is a call for the world to see her potential.

“I just really want to be in a world where I’m a singer, taking on the world and I’m touring and people can see who I really am as a person,” she says.

Empowered by costumes

Find Your Voice Collective theatre facilitator Megan Twycross says the exhibition is both a proclamation and an invitation. 

“I think part of the program is asking other people to experience an alter ego too,” she says.

Twycross has her own portrait in the exhibition, along with a few other artists who also do not have disabilities. 

“We want to demonstrate that anyone can do this and the bravery of what we are doing is hopefully encouraging others,” Twycross says.

As an example, Twycross describes a portrait of artist Melissa Johnson depicted as her alter ego Mizz Wynter Vizion.

“It kind of emulates Girl with the Pearl Earring meets Queen Victoria,” she says. 

In the image, Johnson depicts herself as royalty, an object of power and beauty, someone who commands attention.

“Everyone has the right to feel beautiful, and to use costume and fashion to feel empowered and to feel beautiful,” Twycross says.

Over the months leading up to the exhibition, artists were mentored by costume and performance art specialists like Warrnambool-born Dandrogyny. 

Under Twycross’s guidance, artists directed their own photographic portraits, inhabiting a self-assigned alter-ego, developing backstories and catchphrases, and collaborating on costume design.

Johnson’s disability limits her capacity to talk, but she can write and communicate via smart devices.

Johnson worked with costumers Janet Punch from Warrnambool Theatre Company, and Yvonne Lefebvre, a Brauer College textiles teacher, to communicate her wintry vision, steeped in old-fashioned glamour and grace. 

“We sat down together and said, ‘Alright, so this is your character. How do you see them?'” Twycross says. 

“When the artists stood in front of the camera, they stood as their character and they’d already worked out the movements and the facial expressions and the voice.”

‘Transformative and magical’

Taking part in the photographic project was transformative for many of the artists involved.

Tom Leembruggan works at a recycled goods shed in Warrnambool, Are-Able Big R Shed, and has cerebral palsy.

His alter ego is a dark magician and escape artist, Mr Bang Bang Surprise.

“Mr Bang Bang Surprise is a really powerful, dark magician and he also likes chai lattes,” Leembruggan says.

“I like doing magic and I like escaping out of the coolest things.

“I want to be doing my own show with a lot of magic and surprise.”

Leembruggan says he found the day of the photo shoot taxing, but also transformative and magical.

“It was really busy and really hard to do. There was a lot of getting ready and getting all your costumes and makeup on. 

“Looking in the mirror was magical.”

Backed by a choir 

Since 2018, The Find Your Voice Choir has now expanded to about 250 members from more than 16 regional south-west Victorian communities.

The choir has collaborated with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Wiggles, Mama Kin Spender and Electric Umbrella (UK).

It performs regularly at events including Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and the Port Fairy Folk Festival, sharing the stage with headline acts such as The Waifs and Eric Bibb.

Singer-songwriter Tom Richardson co-founded the choir with Kylie Thulborn, a lifelong disability ally and the mother of Harves McCorkell, who is a multimedia producer and choir member, and part of the Alter Ego exhibition. 

Richardson said that the idea for Alter Ego came from themes exploring identity.

For Richardson, this exhibition, like everything their collective does, is a form of disability-led activism.

“Our aspiration as a collective is to be disability-led. So every idea starts or comes from our artists who identify with disability.

“Anything that we put out into the world, there is absolutely this sense of underlying creative activism.

Richardson says the collective is striving for an inclusive reality that doesn’t yet exist, but is within the realm of possibility. 

“Sometimes, where I think the world is, is further advanced than what it actually is,” he says.

“Everything that we do at Find Your Voice, I hope can be a real-life, living example of how the world should be, could be, as guided by the lived experience of disability.”

The Alter Ego photography exhibition launches on Friday, November 27 for one weekend, with live performances by Grace Kenny and DJ Cooper Smith at The Space in Warrnambool. 

Greetings, stargazers.

In 1995 the Hubble science team released the image of the “Pillars of Creation.” This photograph fundamentally changed the way most of us think of astrophotography. Yes, the high resolution and image details were quite impressive, but it was the color palette that made this image unique. I have written individual columns about nebulae, astrophotography, astronomical filters, and a bit of spectroscopy, but these topics all come together to create these “assigned color” photographs.

The Pillars of Creation are part of the Eagle Nebula, which was discovered in the eighteenth century and is the 16th object on Charles Messier’s list of “fuzzy things that are not comets.” It was first photographed in the late nineteenth century and had been a regular late twentieth century target for astronomers using film cameras. While the first images were black and white, color film can produce some really nice images that would match (at least somewhat) what we might be able to see with our naked eyes if they were sensitive enough.

Because the Hubble telescope was primarily a science mission, there was great interest in studying the composition of the universe by looking at specific wavelengths of light. Each element has its own unique spectral signature, or fingerprint, so looking for a certain wavelength of light associated with a specific element will reveal the distribution of that element. For example, excited hydrogen atoms emit a prominent red line at 656 nanometers, and taking a photograph through a filter that passes 656 nanometer light will show the distribution of hydrogen atoms.

Narrowband filters are made by building up multiple layers of dielectric coatings on a glass surface. These coatings are the same as the anti-reflective coatings you can get on your eyeglasses, but by using specific thicknesses and layers, selected wavelengths of light can be allowed to pass through, while others are reflected.

Instead of simply looking at one element at a time, it is possible to associate an element to one of the red, green, or blue portions of a 3-color photograph. In what is now called the Hubble Palette, a line of sulfur was assigned to be red, a line of hydrogen was assigned to be green, and a line of oxygen was assigned to be blue.

Narrowband filters are now readily available, although they are not cheap. As the quality of digital cameras has improved over the last couple of decades, so has the quality of Earth-based narrowband images. It is easy to recognize narrow band images because of the vivid colors, instead of the overall magenta tones from hydrogen gas seen in “natural” light.

As the use of the Fort Lewis observatories continue expanding, I hope that more of these narrowband images will be produced locally.

This month

Charles Hakes teaches in the physics and engineering department at Fort Lewis College and is the director of the Fort Lewis Observatory.

A St. Louis boudoir photographer is facing accusations that she took thousands of dollars in payments from at least five clients but failed to deliver the promised photographs and products. 

Melanie Seleman, who specializes in intimate boudoir portraits, is alleged to have “ghosted” multiple women who paid upwards of $2,500 each for professional photoshoots and albums. Several clients say they received no images at all despite waiting months past expected delivery dates.

Boudoir photography has grown in popularity in recent years as a way for women and men to celebrate their bodies and reclaim confidence. Sessions with Seleman typically cost thousands of dollars and last several hours, including hair, makeup, wardrobe changes, and posing.

But women who booked appointments with Seleman’s downtown studio claim their initially uplifting experience soured quickly after the shoots ended. Phone calls, emails, and social media messages went unreturned as weeks turned into months with no sign of their purchased digital images or physical albums.

One woman, Elizabeth Gaines, says she lost nearly $4,500 after her July session yielded no results. After spending hours feeling “like a princess” during the shoot itself, Gaines was unable to get any response from Seleman despite repeated attempts over two months. 

“I left a great review after my session because Melanie has a great way of making you feel wonderful and empowered,” another client wrote in her one-star review. “The feelings quickly faded as I left my appointment and in the days that followed. It has been nearly a year since my session and I still have not received the items I paid for.”

Another client, Nancy Moore, was eight months pregnant when she paid $1,800 in June to memorialize her baby bump in boudoir portraits. But by August, the photos still had not arrived. “I won’t have those memories to share with my daughter,” she lamented. 

In total, the accused victims report losing close to $15,000 collectively from Seleman’s alleged failure to provide services. Most say they have been unable to get any refund or explanation despite extensive outreach efforts.

Attorney Michelle White is representing some of the women but could not comment further on the cases. Seleman has not responded to media requests for comment on the allegations.

Online reviews reflect a pattern of initial delight with the experience of Seleman’s shoots turning to deep frustration over lack of follow-through. Multiple one-star reviews on Google describe similar stories of no contact after payments were made.

“Melanie is a fraud; she stole over $4000 from me,” wrote one woman. “Don’t fall for this scam. I lost my job while planning the photo shoot, but I went through with it anyway because I wanted to do something special for myself/my husband. She made me feel great, until she got her money and completely ghosted me. I’m out thousands of dollars,” said another.

While boudoir photography can be deeply empowering for subjects when handled ethically, the intimate nature makes communication and sensitivity especially important. Customers invest not just money but emotion into celebrating their bodies through art. When trust is broken, the damage can go beyond the financial.

“It’s especially disheartening because these photos can never be retaken,” said Moore about her lost baby bump photos. “I feel emotionally preyed upon,” wrote another woman who says she is out $4,500. 

Photographers who promote empowerment carry an extra responsibility to safeguard their clients’ vulnerablility. While innocent until proven guilty, the accusations against Seleman represent a stark betrayal of boudoir’s core values, if true.