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My work is mostly nudes. Frequently abstract, often formal, sometimes whimsical, and occasionally political. Not obscured, coy, demure, or reserved, but direct, frank, forthright, and unambiguously nude.
I made my first nude image over 40 years ago. It was 1977 and I was a young photography student. For my initial assignment with a view camera, my partner reclined on her battered old wood desk and that was our first nude image. I still have the negative and she still has the desk.
It was a typical nude image for the time, a partial torso of an attractive young woman discretely posed. For that matter, it’s a typical nude image for today too. The photographic world hasn’t made much progress when it comes to depicting nudity.
Since that time we’ve shot a lot of nudes. At times life interfered, jobs and kids take up a lot of time, but there weren’t many months in those forty years that we haven’t shot something. A lot has never been printed or shown. There were false starts, mistakes, and reshoots to correct flaws.
The best images are grouped into the major projects shown here. I find it helpful to have a theme and then I work it to death. I’m usually working on a couple of projects concurrently. It takes me a long time to finish.
Some projects start serendipitously in the middle of another. It just hits me, that would be a great image, and then the model gets confused because suddenly the lights are moving and the photographer is upside down on the floor and asking for a weird change to the pose. And the first image of a new project is made.
Occasionally I look back through the files of negatives and find something that should be printed or inspiration for a new project. A benefit of digital scanning and processing is that images can be rescued from technically poor negatives. Yes, I made some of those, although thankfully not very many.
It’s been a journey and it’s not over yet.
