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Tina Peterson was an aspiring model with a promising career with the Joffrey Ballet in New York City. That was in 1966, the year she was profiled in Seventeen magazine. “To be a good dancer, you must really give yourself to it,” she told Seventeen. “The thrilling, ethereal effects of a performance are very difficult to achieve. But to me, there are so many other important things–nature, friends, reading, painting. I design my own clothes and breed St. Bernard dogs, too. Without all this I would feel incomplete.” Mom on Top of Boyfriend (2002), Mom Spread with Tiara (2002), and Mom Fingering (2004) are three portraits of Tina Peterson captured by her son, the photographer Leigh Ledare. Following the termination of her father’s funding, Tina Peterson moved back in with her parents in Seattle, which in turn cut short her gig with the Joffrey. An unexpected pregnancy cemented the raw deal. To make ends meet, she turned to stripping and sex work. Peterson plays a leading role in Ledare’s series of photographs, Pretend You’re Actually Alive. As their titles suggest, the photographs portray Peterson engaged in a patchwork of erotic acts. She mainly appears in these photographs naked, spread, or in the act, although the series also includes non-sexual portraits of Peterson as well as photographs of her partners and of Ledare’s wife, brother, and grandmother, and Ledare himself. Mom Spread with Red Heels, a 2003 portrait included in Pretend You’re Actually Alive, is the very essence of fantasy. In it, Peterson is pictured sitting atop a bed, her straightened arms propping up her torso. Her knees are bent and spread, the points of her stiletto heels touching, her hairless genitalia exposed. True to the title, she wears red high-heeled shoes as well as an embellished diamond necklace: her sole accessories.
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