My being a photographer springs from a love of light and narrative but also because for a long time it gave me a good excuse to venture out and be really bold.
If you have a camera you can be anywhere and feel like you have a purpose to stay and look at things for a really long time. Or it can explain you into interesting places or situations. The opportunities are manifold and all brilliant.
Most of the shoots I initially did were based on film vignettes, a series of images that all linked together to tell a story. It’s a less expensive way to tell a narrative, equally expressive but unlikely to get out to any audience in it’s entirety. An excellent success of stills as film is La Jetee (1962) Directed by Chris Marker, that later became 12 Monkeys (1995), Directed by the indelible Terry Gilliam.
Earth Tales -
I travelled to Japan a few years ago with the express interest of experiencing Butoh’s performance troupe Dairakudakan, in its native country.
Butoh, the dance of darkness - dance of the liminal, is a relatively new style of performance - although it really isn't a style or even performance so much as an experience. Beginning after the 2nd world war it was born both as a reaction to the convulsive societal landscape and to the contrived and artificial traditional Japanese dances Noh and Kabuki.
There is no strict form of Butoh, its basis being sublimation of life in the dance and the nature of this ever evolving.
Peripheral, liminal, total body awareness, the 'dancer' becomes the movement, free of identity, a state of being, impossible to mimic. Practitioners would frequently starve themselves of food or sleep to reach a place where their movements cannot be influenced by trivial mental distractions. As Butoh dancer Iwana Masaki says "I have never heard of a butoh dancer entering a competition. Every butoh performance itself is an ultimate expression; there are not and cannot be second or third places. If butoh dancers were content with less than the ultimate, they would not be actually dancing butoh, for real butoh, like real life itself, cannot be given rankings."
Though it is a discipline and the discipline often means a troupe, it can be anything you want it to be. Dancing into Darkness by Sondra Horton Fraleigh poetically evokes the feeling and experience of the dance. I also avidly encourage personal practice in whatever form feels right.
We want to encourage women of all ages, shapes and sizes to feel good about themselves and their sexuality.
Some people like their parties to be outrageous with lots of games, dares and forfeits while others prefer the more conservative approach. Either way, you are guaranteed to have a great and memorable night. Upon receiving your party request, we will contact you to arrange a suitable date and explain the details of the hostess benefits, such as sales commission and hostess gifts. We will then post a party pack to you, which will include catalogues, invitations, free gift details, competitions and other literature to wet your taste buds! We will keep in touch up until the date of your party to ensure everything goes smoothly. We may ask you things such as number of guests you expect to attend and which items you like yourself from the catalogue.
Naturally curious about people, SLR photography, at the time, was still niche, left to those who understood how to work a light meter, F-stop and aperture. I had an old school Minolta camera with a macro telephoto lens and no working light meter. So I learned how to read light myself and became an adept at reading exact lighting conditions for well exposed images.
Carrying a camera gave me an excuse to stand anywhere and everywhere for long periods of time. I could get into elite events or guest listed spaces. I could wander into police scenes, or any other sorts of scenarios unfolding and belong. I could look at anyone for an extended length of time. It gave me an excuse to be brave and to investigate anything of interest.
In studio work, which really was me showing up with a backpack of colored 100 watt lightbulbs and asking where the nearest lams and sockets were was also investigative.
I came to photographing naked people initially because finding clothing that wouldn't date and cut up bodies in weird ways was difficult. I brought a bottle of bronze body paint that accentuates the photographed individuals with its micro light reflecting particles.
I used my minolta for the first few years and sometimes recruited teams of curious friends or strangers to all hold a lamp with a 100 watt colored bulb while photographing friends and strangers. The dynamic of a photoshoot meant that social protocols didn't exist. There are virtually no rules on a shoot. There are no other environments where straddling a nude person non sexually and studying them conscientiously would be perfectly fine. But for years, this is exactly what I did. It was a wonderful experience, sharing stretched out periods of time with all manner of interesting people.
What was perhaps one of the more interesting elements was the energy, or what you might refer to as a vibe. Because the individual being photographed was naked (naked but clothed in light layer of bronze paint that I had applied) and I very rarely optimally clothed, the initial feeling might have started as one of curious sexual energy but this soon altered it's nature, becoming another form of powerful electric energy, a potent force but one that didn't demand being used.
Afterwards, there was a feeling of having shared a deep intimacy, a rare moment and there were photographs that bore witness.
Over the years, I became known for photographing people nude though I'd simply called everyone 'creatures'. People showed up and disrobed immediately, others (women) salaciously whispered their interest in being photographed and my more seemingly puritanical friends asked why I had not yet photographed them in the buff.
Create a personal gift, or keep for you
- Do something exciting, fun and feminine!
- Buzz with confidence when you look at photographs of your body!
- Create a romantic gift or spoil yourself with a personal treat!