Turning point

“Circa mea pectora
Multa sunt suspira
De tua pulchritudine
Quae me laedunt misere.

Venus! I trow’d thou wast my friend,
Professed to Heaven thou wouldst send.
As a disciple of a villain,
Didst thou act the tragedienne?

Iam amore virginali
Totus ardeo.
Iam amore virginali
Totus ardeo.

Amor volat undique,
Captus est libidine.

Venus! I trow’d thou wast my friend,
Professed to Heaven thou wouldst send.
As a disciple of a villain,
Didst thou act the tragedienne?

Iam amore virginali
Totus ardeo.
Iam amore virginali
Totus ardeo.
Circa mea pectora multa sunt suspira
De tua pulchritudine quae me laedunt misere.
Tui lucent oculi sicut solis radij,
Sicut splendor fulguris, qui lucem donat tenebris.”

[ Venus - Theatre of Tragedy ]

I consider this photo, along with the others taken in this session, some sort of turning point in my work as a photographer. I’ve always had a controversial relationship with artistic nude photography: I really love human body, I think that (when it’s well proportioned) it’s one of the most beautiful things on Earth. Nevertheless, centuries of mortification culture have tainted its collective vision, and today it’s too often seen as a mere sexual object and, consequently, a taboo. Thus, portraying it is a tricky work: it’s not always easy to harmoniously insert a nude figure in a context where it really fits, and too often it’s simply exploited for its sexual/taboo power, as breaking taboos, in particular sexual ones, always draws attention to a work.

I don’t really enojy browsing through artistic nude photography exactly for this reason: most of the pictures just break the taboo for the sake of it, and to me such photos are is meaningless. As I strongly believe that the subject must always be functional to the concept of the photo, a person who simply stands up naked without a context that requires it is simply pointless. Better yet, it’s a bit squalid, as it’s often a desperate attempt to play with the viewers’ pudency or sexual obsession to drag their attention to an otherwise uninteresting work.

It’s no wonder I’ve always been somewhat reluctant to experiment with artistic nude myself. I knew it takes a lot of competence to create a genuinely interesting nude portrait, and have always been afraid to fail, to merely end up doing something like the works I despise. I just didn’t feel ready and artistically mature for such a challenge, and I’m quite sure I wasn’t for real. Finally, some time ago I felt I had something to tell that wouldn’t have worked without a naked figure, and that I was finally ready to give it a try. I said it to Briar Rose, and we put a nude photoshoot among the possibilities for our upcoming collaboration.

The shoot as you can see it came up rather unexpectedly: at the beginning, we had planned to do it outdoors in a forest nearby, so that we would have had a natural context to help us valorize the photos. Of course, a sudden and violent downpour totally screwed out plans, so we initially just dropped the idea and decided to wait for another occasion. Fortunately, that same night, right before going to bed, we saw my black background, and decided to give it a try, just to see what came out. The shoot was born as a mere study without any pretense (we just hoped to get a Venus photo for my Aégis Collection), but turned out unexpectedly well. We used a simple desk lamp for illumination, which provided a somewhat pictoral light, so we tried something very classical-oriented. The red fabric, together with Briar Rose’s wonderful hair, helped give the classical painting feel. I guess I was somehow more embarrassed than Briar Rose, but she was quie at her ease, which helped me relax too, and thigs worked out so well we even had some photos to publish.

What I’m very satisfied of is the fact that we managed to provide variety even working indoors in studio-like conditions. I was a bit skeptical at first, and quite afraid that such photos would have really turned out to be nothing more than a naked girl out of context, but Briar Rose is just more than a random girl. Her very expressivity created the context out of nowhere and made the photos worth publising. Here are the other photos from this session.