This poem describes my experience of the last 36 years, photographing the nude, and following my intuition. 

 

The Way It Is by

William Stafford

• There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
• things that change. But it doesn’t change.
• People wonder about what you are pursuing.
• You have to explain about the thread.
• But it is hard for others to see.
• While you hold it you can’t get lost.
• Tragedies happen; people get hurt
• or die; and you suffer and get old.
• Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
• You don’t ever let go of the thread.

2019 was a particularly prolific year for shooting, and I was able to photograph on a very consistent basis. I found myself fueled by fascination for the deep, passionate red that had been prominent in my work throughout the last few years, and was determined to explore its powerful presence. The majority of images from this year incorporate this rich, beautiful, and complex color, and I still absolutely love it's effects- at times elegant, other times raw, and always intriguing...

The productivity of 2019 came to a screeching halt as the COVID pandemic reached new and frightening heights in 2020. Suddenly I found myself shooting very little- with so much time spent in quarantine, and very little spent behind the camera, I was photographing less consistently than I ever have at any point in my career. Even when I did return to shooting, it was with only one model- masked, and physically distanced. While my work has always featured masks - either visually or thematically - the COVID PPE mask we've all become so familiar with was not something I would have ever considered working with. It did, of course, became an element in many of the images I produced from this year- more so out of it's unavoidability and necessity than a creative direction. But it did eventually become an interesting visual element to work with, especially upon reintegrating the lines, shapes, and colors of background cloths and materials. I now think of it as the "COVID-fluence" on my work...  
 

I see the figures in my work from 2012 - 2016 as archetypal embodiments of mythological narrative. They feel like  psychological dramas that we either identify with personally or recognize internally. Nearly all of the images throughout these years were created in the studio and working with the mirrors, often times merging the figures together in ways that illustrate a recognizable myth- as in the likeness of Oedipus in Untitled (#09-04-13-287)- or elicit a recognizable state of mind- as in the despair evoked in Untitled (#4-24-12-012). All of the images from this period are quite visceral, and as if tracing further and further back, become more raw, more primitive in essence as I continued this journey. Eventually, the merging of figures became less seamless and more hard edged, moving on to 2016 where the hard edged lines and shapes of the mirror shards become important aspects of piecing them together. The strange amalgamation of these beings got even weirder when I began experimenting with replacing one model with mannequins in various states of completeness - some missing arms, some missing heads, legs, etc. Sometimes, what is seen of the actual figure in an image is quite minimal - as in Untitled (# 06-08-16-429) 2016 - yet the fullness of the body and its gesture remains.

My journey into the water took me literally into the water, and eventually underneath it. I loved seeing the reflection on the surface from below, and the odd perspective lead to very unusual images, often redefining the forms in such a distinct way that they were nearly believable if not so odd. Between 1994 - 1996, the majority of my work was shot beneath the surface, a time that vastly improved my lung capacity while discovering another visual layer to work with. It was an exciting time, but in 1997 I felt like I had hit the wall. I continued to photograph even though I found nothing that inspired me, and feared the creative well had run dry. But the payoff of continuing to work through it led to a discovery that would keep me engaged for many years to come, and to learn the value of persisting when you feel you're at the end of the rope....(see Untitled #7146 for more)....  

From 2001 - 2004, I worked primarily in the studio with the mirrors. The process of piecing together forms and figures had become very exact- the way I could compose to visually line up graphic elements, the shape of mirror shards, the relationship of one form to another all became very important. Most of the figures in the images throughout these years are composite "beings", created from merging two or even more models together into one strange entity. They seem otherworldly, or supernatural, yet because their composition is so precise, they seem almost believable. There is an elegance, a grace to their gestures, which was the basis for where the creative path took me next...

After such intense looking and the arduous task of being so meticulous in visually aligning shapes and forms, my eyes needed a break. In 2005, I returned to photographing in the water, once again simplifying the body to the most minimal, graceful forms I could find. The mirrors had become so complex, with so many intricate layers, that I needed respite in the sheer beauty of the way water can reshape the body. This work resonates with the same lucid, ethereal quality that I had discovered much earlier in images like Untitled (#4442), 1992, only this time, I was determined to streamline the body into an even much slimmer, simpler form. How much of the body could I not reveal, or how little of it could I show, and still have it read as a body?