Figure Work

Stacy & I used to trade off modeling for one another in grad school. As a photographer and ballet dancer, she is a great model. She knows how to move, and knows how to make a photograph. She's also an incredible contortionist, and recovering anorexic, about which she was very open, and with which she struggled every single day.



I wanted high-contrast black & white images with an other-worldly quality, wherein the figure is abstracted, but only slightly, so that it still suggests the figure, but begins to suggest other things too.



The banner with the repeated rotating image suggests calligraphy, for example.



Stacy's body also has an androgynous quality in these images, which hints toward that subtle abstraction as well.



I attempted a fair amount of figure work at Iowa, and to be honest, I never found it to be very successful. It's just not easy to do it right. In fact, the thing about figure work is that it's really easy to do it wrong, I've found. Maybe it's just not my medium. Or maybe the real challenge is in the relationship between the model and the photographer. As a once and former nude artist's model myself, I can attest that it's not easy to do --- not because of being naked, but because you need to have that "it" factor to be a good model. So maybe that's it.

At any rate, I have always felt that these images accomplished what I wanted them to be. And I do think I might try it again, working with models. Perhaps the most important thing as a photographer is knowing what you want to make, regardless of models and media.