PJ’s Blog

There are many ways to take a picture of a person, and many of them involve them wearing clothes. There’s nothing wrong with that, and in fact I rather like to portraiture. I’ve tried my hand at many styles of photography, but in the last few years I realized that my best images were studio nudes…

I’m not entirely sure why that is, but i have more ideas, I’m more comfortable working with a nude model than doing a portrait shoot. Inspiration comes to me easier, because I tend to look at the body as almost an architectural element, and lightning being a critical part of bringing that physical element to life.

I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve been wearing glasses for as long as I remember, and being short sighted I have a closer close focus point than “normal” people, but I tend to love fine textures, I love to touch, and I try to convey that sense of touch in the images I make. I try to make the image feel real, to make it palpable. This is one of the reasons for my taste for larger formats, since some subtleties of tones and details are best rendered in larger formats.

A photograph tends to show us more that what we see in real life, and that’s the reason why portrait photographers have had a tendency to use softer-focus lenses, to tone down the hyper-realism of photographs. And that’s why fashion photographers re-touch every image to make it perfect, because details catch the eye in a photograph, whereas in real life, face to face with a person, we tend to see the general appearance and not necessarily focus on the details.

Now, what does it have to do with me doing nude photographs ? I like flesh. There, I said it. It’s an horrible thing to say for an artist, because it brings undertones of pornography and of shameful social taboos that are rather silly, when you think about it… I like the human body, I think it’s a beautiful thing that needs to be celebrated and shown, and admired. It is the primal building block of our lives and identities, and I really don’t mind that hundreds of thousands of photographers around the world are doing the same.

So, here’s my why…

I’ve come at last to a point where my oilprints actually look like some… The recipe was simple : I just didn’t use the right ink. I was using oil paint, but what is needed in this process really is lithographic ink which is much thicker than oil paint. In this case I’ve used 1 part oil paint with 5 parts lithographic ink.

One of the appeals of oil prints is that is allows for “artistic interpretation” of the image, which means that you can work with the image with a brush. I’m not at that point yet, and the image you see here is made using an ink roller, and dabbing the ink with an absorbing paper to clear the light areas and eliminate the lines associated with the roller…

Ok, I’ll jump on a slipery slope for a few entries, because that’s a subject that concerns me directly, as an important part of my photography work is made of nude models. Art has been showing nude people for a while, now (i’d say roughly a little more than 20 000 years…), and from my understanding of things it was very natural to do so, nudity being associated with all kinds of fertility rituals and deities, usually. Now, at some point in history, nudity started to become a state you are in in private where nobody can see you, otherwise it’s improper, shameful, disgusting, perverted, and all kinds of nasty stuff…

Now, nudity in photography, in the age of the internet, has become the most lucrative internet industry, in the form of sexualized nudity. And there is a very strong polarization of nudity towards sexuality, which makes sense up to some point, but which leaves a rather unpleasant stigmata on the models and photographers who try to make artistic use of nudity.

Now, what bugs me is that I have to do the distinction, I have to say I do “artistic” nudes, otherwise, if I say that I do nude photography, the assumption is that I am a pornographer and that I am a vile exploiter of naive young women…

Now, does that mean that I cannot make images with a sexual, sensual, erotic charge without being a pornographer ? Does that mean that I’m just another vile exploiter of naive young women? One of the things I find fascinating is the relationship models have with their images. Sometimes they are pround of them, sometimes they keep it for themselves, sometimes they don’t allow me to show them, but one common thing that comes back often is that they don’t want their parents to find out… I always find it odd that the people in your family, which are the ones who arguably look the most like you, give or take a few years, are the ones people don’t want to shoe their images. And I don’t do hardcore erotica, this image is probably the most erotic image I’ve made, so why are people ashamed of their bodies ?

I know : the media, the church, public pressure, what-will-the-others-think, this kind of thing… I just wish people would start thinking for themselves and realize that we’re all born naked and we’re all made the same way, and yes naked is beautiful, that’s why I take pictures…

I once did a show of my photos, entitled “Corps et ames” (bodies and souls), at the Universite Laval gallery, in Quebec city. This was my first “real” show, and I was asked to write down a little piece to send out to the local media. So I did. What I said in short was that in this age where magazines and films were re-touched to eliminate imperfections, slim waists, erase scars, where people were transforming their bodies, my images was a record of real women, no touch ups, just real natural beauty. Now, I actually got criticized because my images were of young pretty women. In saying “real women” people seemed to expect old, young, thin, fat, pretty, ugly, tall, short, all different kinds of people, as if the women I photograph were not real, and that trying to show beauty was not showing something that was real.

Now, a couple of people also commented on the fact that some of my models had tattoos, piercings, shaved their pubes, as if “real” meant plain and hairy. In fact many people commented on this second photo here, stating the obvious fact that this model has breast implants. “Now that’s not real!” was the general idea. On the other hand, some people were almost offended that I hadn’t taken the liberty of retouching the image and erasing the visible scar under her breast. The fact that she has breast implants makes her not a real person ? Not a real woman ? Those implants, like her scars, like her belly button piercing, are part of her, they are part of what makes up her identity. Why does that make her less of a real woman ? She has a very athletic body, she has a dancing background, which means she know how to move, she is very enthusiastic and likes to work as a model, and I like the images I made with her.

I try to convey some of the personality of the model that I feel in the brief amount of time we spend together during a sitting. I think that what makes my images “real”. That’s what makes me like an image, when I feel something of the model going through, not just an impression of a concept thought out by a designer. I guess that’s why I don’t like magazine covers and glamour images.

I think that’s it’s something that is reflected in my technical choices when taking images : usually high resolution film, and no retouching in the process between the moment the shutter is tripped and the moment the print is hung on the wall. That what “real” means to me.

Autoportraits have been part of art since art exists, and photographers have experimented from the starts with autoportraits. It’s very simple for a photographer to turn the lens on himself, either though a reflective surface or by sitting in front of the camera.

For some reason the human mind is fascinated by the representation of other humans, and portraits, nudes, sports, snapshots, in fact i’d guess the majority of images produced today have people as main subjects. The most readily available human being to a photographer is of course himself, so the turning of the camera towards oneself is I guess a natural step…

Now, what I find odd, is that on the internet, on sites like Photosig, where people put up photos so that other users can rate them and comment them, most of the autoportraits i’ve seen are from women. More than that, almost 99 percent of nude autoportraits are by women. It’s no secret that most nude photography is made by men and has women as subjects. I find it odd that women feel compelled to do the same and take pictures of nude women. When a woman wants a nude model she can use her own body, and it goes in the art circles as a questioning of the image of self imposed by the society (or some thing like that). A man does that, or takes images of nude men, and he tends to be assimilated to the gay community. This is what I find the oddest, most nude men images produced are aimed at the gay community, and not at women. Is it that men in genenral respond more to nudity…

Nudity, now, that’s a subject for a whole week…

Over the last few days I’ve talked about the relationship between art and photography, about how the technical aspect of photography might or might not be an integral part of the images, about stuff that shows that frankly, I think too much…

Where does my own work come into all of this ? Why do I make images, why do I take images of whatever it is I take images of ? The first thing to clear in this reflection is do I consider myself an artist ?
What the heck does it mean to be an artist ? This is a strange one, because many people who produce incredible works of art don’t consider themselves artists, and many people who consider themselves artists produce well, crap… (some literally…)

I consider myself a photographer, which means that I am someone who takes photographs. Artist is such a loaded term that I find it hard to relate to it. Being an artist for means being part of the art community as a social activity, means trying to Be someone, being an artist has undertones of hypocrisy, contempt, considering yourself as a higher being, trying to be famous. I know very well that most artists are none of those things, but that’s what comes into my mind when I hear the term “artist”… And don’t get me started on “Artist statements” which are a tool of the devil, if you ask me… They are just a way for art historians to have an easier job classifying artists. They are a product of art schools. Art schools… Now that’s a good subject… I understand the need of feeding on the experience and knowledge of experimented artists, I understand fully the reason for learning techniques and history and all that stuff, but someones doesn’t become an artist because he has gone through art school, and art school is far from being the only way to become an artist… (And then again, this reflection might be the voice of my own frustration at not being an “official artist” who’s gone through the usual hoops…)

Now, back to being a photographer… Photography is a technical media, I’ve gone through that in the last few days, so in my opinion being a photographer means being in control of the technical part of our work. Whether we stick to one recipe or experiment, a photographer needs to have some idea of what he is doing. And my work of the last few years has been about getting this control, developing my technical skills, finding a “recipe” that works for me, and that will produce images of which I will be proud. There are already images in my work that I am proud of, this one here is a good example of one of my images I quite like. I am not denying the fact that it is an academic, classic nude, that it doesn’t reinvent anything in the depiction of women in art, it’s just a photo. It’s an illustration of my learning process, in a way. One day I’ll do better, I think. One day I’ll find my own voice and produce amazing images which will be forever known and loved, and I will be famous, the most famous-est of all photographers, living or dead. People will come from all corners of the galaxy to have their people taken by me… Or maybe not. I’ll go back to my camera, and expose a few sheets of film I think… The rodinal must have gone up to my head…

Here is a tough one for me to decide : I’m not sure if I like Linda Broadfoot’s work… Who’s Linda Broadfoot ? She’s a photographer, using the Polaroid 20×24 system (I know, it’s turning into an obsession, this Polaroid 20×24 thing, I guess I’ll be cured when i get one for myself…:p). She is using this big huge camera, like the one you see here (this particular one is the camera from the polaroid studio in california, at Polaroid 20×24 Studio West, operated by Tracy Storer.) to take pictures of insects.

So the images she produces are 20 times life-size images of beautiful insects from around the world, with exquisite details, and furthermore she does them in image transfers, and not straight polaroid prints. Now, I’m a biologist, so I appreciate the simple documentary nature of her work. I am a book lover so I appreciate the look of her images which look somehow like the color plates from a 19th century biology book. I am a photographer, so I appreciate the technical difficulty in creating images which such magnification. I am a polaroid user myself (only 4×5 for now), so I appreciate the difficulties of the technique she chose.

Her images, in short, are stunning, and they tug at various chords in my own experience, so I happen to like them. I think… (Image by Linda Broadfoot) Or do I ? Her use of Polaroid transfer seems to be almost an artifice, something she wouldn’t need to produce such finely detailed images. Why not use straight 8×10 color transparencies, which would produce higher resolution images than the polaroid, at a lower cost…

Would her images be as interesting if there wasn’t the element of technical prowess linked to the polaroid 20×24 ? I would probably like her images as much on the biology and photography level just as much, but would her work be recognized as art ? Would she be represented by one of the most prestigious Galleries in the world , The Weston Gallery in New York ? Does it matter why I like her work, as long as I like it ? Can photography be interesting as a purely technical medium ? I’d like to have your comments on this question…

Photography is very technical. No arguments there. There is a movement of photographers in contemporary art that is trying to do “untechnical” photography, using toy cameras, plastic lenses, etc… (“Lomography” is a good example of that).

It is an approach that has some merits, just as any artistic approach, but it’s not what my photographic work is about. I’ve recently come across two very interesting characters in ULF photography, and interviewed them : Patrick Alt and Elsa Dorfman.

Both work with very big cameras, both use highly technical processes (Patrick Alt works with platinum printing, Elsa Dorfman works with Polaroid 20×24…), but their approach to these technical processes is very different. Elsa admits that if the camera she is using ever breaks down, she has to dig up an Polaroid engineer to fix it, that she is using a single studio setup with a single lens and a single kind of film, because she wants to stick with what she knows and concentrate on the subject. Patrick Alt, on the other hand had a more technical approach. He was a camera restorer, he put back into service himself a century old camera, he is using a number of classical lenses for various effects, in short, his images are about how they were done almost as much as what they look like.

Now, I’m not trying to separate who’s right and who’s wrong between those two, they both have interesting approaches, and both produce interesting photographs. It’s just an illustration of how a photographer can include as much or as little technicality in his images and still produce interesting images. The important thing is to produce images, no matter how they were done, digital, film, it’s all good, as long as the main thing that created the image was the photographer, not just the technical side, and that’s not always easy…

Something is something odd in book shops. (Well, for starters, book shops here in Belgium are chaotic at best, I could start a whole blog on book shop adventures…) Most book shops have an art section. This ranges from prehistoric paintings to contemporary conceptual art, and sometimes even extends to architecture. This is a good thing, art books are great.

Now, many of those same book shops also have a separate section for photography, which is sometimes in the same neck of the woods than cinema. Now, libraries (even university libraries) are also organized this way, in general, with a fine art section separate from a photography and cinema section. Now why is photography in a separate section, and not in a simple sub-section of fine arts ?

I know, I know, it’s petty bickering at that point, but trying to define what art is also is petty bickering, so bear with me… Now, in the artistic community : galleries, museums, etc., there seems to be some confusion an the status of photography. Photography is usually not sold in galleries, except in some select galleries who sell very famous photographers, but the ordinary small gallery does not sell photos. It’s a different medium, you’ll tell me, but in fact most art galleries offer a variety of different art forms : paintings, lithographs, sculptures, all in one place under the term “art”, whereas photography is sold in photography galleries. Yet, photographers who consider themselves artists try their darnest to be recognized as artists, and some do, but most of these use some visual or technical artifice to present something else than “simple photographs” : huge prints, installations, sculptures which include photographs, but very rarely simple, black-framed-white-matted, traditional images. Which brings a questioning over the fact that photography is sometimes seen as too technical to be considered art : it’s just pushing on a button at the right time, the camera does all the work. Is that why that some artists feel the need to use some technical artifice to present images in hope that they will be recognized as art ? Can a weak image that cannot stand on it’s own without artifices be turned into art just by printing it ten feet tall ? No answers still today it seems, we’ll have to continue this tomorrow…

This week was very busy for me, so my photographic production was not very diversified… I mainly did still lives of objects I have around here, so I can get the exposure of my Type-55 polaroid film just right… This is the hilt of my sword… I do historical fencing and this is my practice weapon, nice textures to try to get right, the metal, the leather of the handle… Exposure 15 seconds, window light…