Glenn Lassiter and James B. Doud, seated together at the low table in Cardinal Spirits, looked over the decades-old portraits of themselves.
The couple, together for 38 years, came to the bar for the final days of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction’s “Shots of Love” photo project March 11 and 12.
“We brought the old pictures and thought they might get a kick out of seeing what we looked like 40 years ago,” Lassiter said.
Lassiter, 70, said the pair has been involved with the Kinsey Institute since they moved to Bloomington from Virginia in 2004.
In 2006, Doud, 67, wrote a memoir called “Our View,” a series of biographical stories about homosexuality in the late 1950s through the early ’70s.
The printed spiral book of his writing remains in the Kinsey Library.
When Lassiter received an email from the Bloomington Pride Listserv asking couples to join the Kinsey Institute’s rebranding photo project, agreeing was an obvious choice, he said.
“We just thought we’d do our part,” Lassiter said.
Lassiter and Doud said they have been featured on WTHR in support of gay marriage and have advocated for gay representation in the community.
“We haven’t flaunted it, we just put a face on it to help the overall cause,” Lassiter said. “That’s what we’ve done for years, and that’s what we’re doing today.”
Local photographer Max Tortoriello, who partnered with the Kinsey Institute for “Shots of Love,” asked Lassiter and Doud to recreate their poses in the photos from the ’70s and ’80s.
On the porch of an unfinished house along the B-Line Trail, the two posed on the steps and leaned into one another, as they had nearly 40 years ago.
The two community days for “Shots of Love,” held at Cardinal Spirits and Gentry Studio, brought diversity to the Kinsey Institute’s rebranding effort, which focuses on human relationships with photographs of local couples and friend groups.
“The Institute has got to evolve with the times, like everyone else,” Lassiter said. “They’ve got to keep up with the cutting edge, so I guess that’s what they’re trying to do.”
When Sue Carter was appointed director of the Institute in November 2014, she ushered in a new area of focus: relationships, Janae Cummings, communications project director, said.
Carter, a biochemical endocrinologist, studied oxytocin, the hormone thought to create feelings of love and attachment.
Cummings organized the rebranding project for the Kinsey Institute.
As a Bloomington Pride board member, she also sent out the email asking Pride mailing-list members to come and be photographed to diversify the project.
“These aren’t stock photos,” Cummings said. “They’re real people in real relationships.”
In addition to the Kinsey Institute’s work in sexual health and behavior, Cummings said the Institute has begun exploring relationships — and not just those between sexual partners.
“Love, sexuality, well-being — it’s all about people,” Cummings said. “So the site and our marketing materials will show people — just people being people.”
The photo project explored all sorts of human relationships like those between married couples, friends, family and even relationships to objects or to oneself.
“We want to show love,” Cummings said. “Platonic, romantic, self-love.”
Tortoriello, who began taking pictures for the project in December, had worked previously with the Kelley School of Business.
“If anything, it’s gone through a lot of stages,” Tortoriello said. “How many times can you reinvent showing love? Finding a new way is difficult.”
He began with people he knew who were in relationships, then moved on to photographing platonic relationships, showing affection in small or large ways.
“We had this idea, ‘We need to show people depicting love,’ and we didn’t know how to do that,” he said.
Angela Lexmond and Kim Carballo, were two members of a group of mothers who created a playgroup nearly 16 years ago.
As “Moms of the Playgroup,” Carballo, 41, and Lexmond, 49, and their friends displayed a platonic, familiar relationship on film.
“It’s maybe not the kind of love one associates with Kinsey,” Carballo said. “You usually think of Kinsey as more ‘sexually aware.’”
Tortoriello photographed as the group of women draped arms over each others’ shoulders.
“It’s a family by decision, not a family by origin,” Carballo said. “It’s a chosen family.”
Tortoriello said his photos usually began with a short conversation with the subjects about their relationship, which he translated into visuals.
“A little bit of prompting goes a long way,” he said. “‘Give her a kiss on the cheek.’ ‘How did you meet?’ ‘Whisper in her ear about that.’ That kind of prompt lets things unfold very nicely, instead of too much direction — it comes off too heavy-handed.”
The two community days were the final stage of the project, Cummings said.
The goal for the final days was to capture “a very real representation of the community,” Tortoriello said.
Some even depicted relationships with oneself, Cummings said.
“Self-love is difficult to show,” Cummings said. “It’s kind of a pride that comes through.”
Christine Lemley, 76, drove from Columbus, Indiana, to be photographed alone for the project.
As a docent at the Kinsey Institute, Lemley said she enjoys participating in all of the organization’s projects.
“When I was at IU, back in the old days, the Kinsey Institute was a secret,” Lemley said. “I think people need to know about gender studies and human sexuality because that truly is the core of our being.”
Cummings said the photos would be distributed to the participants a few weeks after the community days, but the Kinsey website and rebranding will take longer.
When the project was finished, Cummings said she hoped for a real representation of the Bloomington community and the relationships therein.
“This is a more holistic view of a person,” she said. “It’s about relating and how we get along in the world.”
