The Great Gonzo Shoot

Surprisingly enough (to me at least) I do actually get requests from photographers to work with them sometimes. But never, ever for payment (this bit isn’t surprising as after all I am an ancient, and I don‘t shoot very much anyway.) So I was a bit boggled to find an email in my inbox this morning, offering me a paid shoot.

The photographer in question was incredibly polite, very professional and he sounded rather nice to work for. Money’s a bit tight at the moment, so I have to say the offer was tempting. As I usually ask Rich for his opinion on each potential shoot, I didn’t accept the offer immediately, but resolved to discuss the issue with him later over our morning coffee expedition.

Our favourite coffee shop was crowded as usual. Our local town is known as the “Gateway to Heaven” because there are so many old people living there, so we had to fight amongst the (surprisingly nimble) old age pensioners for a table. The coffee there is seriously good. I’m not exaggerating - I always suck the creamy bits off Rich’s cappuccino too (it annoys him no end.) As usual we chatted about photography (day-job conversation is avoided at all costs, this is “our time”) and I mentioned the modeling offer. Rich was very encouraging (as a dutiful partner should be) and said I should go for it if I wanted to, not for the money, but only if I liked the photographer’s work.

“I think I’d like to try it,” I said, “although the photographer did mention that there was gonzo work involved, and posing with a cuddly toy seems a bit of a strange request for a model my age, don’t you think?”

Cue violent explosion. Lots of loud cursing and ranting. And I mean LOTS. Both me and the rest of the old biddies thought he’d lost his mind. I’m surprised he wasn’t clubbed with walking sticks and evicted to be honest. Needless to say once he had recovered his inner poise and decorum, he calmed down enough to explain (to me, not the biddies, who would have no doubt suffered heart failure.)

It turns out that a gonzo shoot is not after all posing with my favourite cuddly muppet (I’m a huge fan of Gonzo the Great, I mean, who isn’t?) but in fact actually involves being photographed having sex with the photographer.

Immediate thoughts:

1. How do I stop Rich getting in the car, driving up to “location X” and inflicting serious harm on said photographer?
2. Why would anyone want to have sex with me anyway? (I’m guessing this blog and the love-ball shot in particular have a lot to answer for.)
3. Why is it called a “gonzo shoot?”
4. What does this have to do with muppets?
5. How is it that I’ve been modeling and writing this blog for nearly two years and I didn’t know what a gonzo shoot was?
6. Am I a forty-one-year-old naïve idiot? (I suspect I already know the answer to that one)
7.What else have I missed?

So, for the sake of my sanity, please can everyone let me know what other peculiar modeling terms and pervy-photographic-jargon I might be unaware of, so that I can become more…um…worldly?

Would you have sex with this muppet?

The Dyslexic Photographer

Dyslexics are treated like Mushrooms. Keep them in the dark and feed them bull.
William Ford (UK photographer.)

When Rich was a boy, he wasn’t like other kids. The teachers thought he was lazy and stupid, the kids bullied him, and he was passed over for sitting proper “O” levels at sixteen because he was in the bottom stream at school. He was advised to do manual labour when he left school, as he was told he was unsuitable for anything else.

Throughout his childhood, his parents lamented their misfortune of having a “stupid son” and repeatedly yelled at him because they thought he was thick. He had an utterly miserable upbringing as far as I can tell, and it wasn’t until he was at college at the age of seventeen, that an English teacher thought that it was rather peculiar that he couldn’t spell at all, considering that both his grammar and his reading abilities were excellent. She decided to pursue the matter further and he was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia. Needless to say he didn’t end up as a bricklayer. He went on to achieve a degree in physics and ended up with his own computer software company.

Dyslexia is usually defined as the result of cognitive problems in the processing of the phonological parts of language. It is thought to be a problem with the left side of the brain where language is not processed in the correct sequence, meaning that understanding and interpreting sequences of symbols are harder than normal. Dyslexia comes in many different guises, although in Rich’s case it is simple vowel-blindness. He can read perfectly well, but he is unable to place vowels in the correct sequence.

In the field of art, it is a lesser known fact that dyslexics are natural creatives. They have a better understanding of two and three dimensional form, and their appreciation for colour, tone, and texture is much greater than the rest of us. The dyslexic artist has an advantage because his brain is wired differently. He can visualise his art before reaching for the camera or the paintbrush, his imagination is greater than ordinary mortals and he is a natural innovator. With practice and determination , this innate talent can result in some unique and amazing art. Consider Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and of course our very own photographers David Bailey and Ansel Adams. Some of the greatest artists in history can attribute part of their creative genius to their gift of dyslexia.

Nowadays Rich views his dyslexia as both a blessing and a curse. He finds it very annoying, and he is occasionally prone to the odd bout of frustration and low self-esteem. And I really have to push him to write blog posts – he finds writing incredibly difficult. He also still carries some of the emotional wounds of his childhood, particularly that “stupid” chip on his shoulder, and it is indeed a brave soul who dares to point out to him that he has made a spelling mistake.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is his experience with dyslexia which has given him his bloody-minded determination never to give up, to prove himself no matter what. You have no idea how much I admire this remarkable man who has achieved so much, considering what he went through when he was a kid.

Dyslexia has shaped the man he is today, and I am absolutely certain that it will continue to influence both his career and his art in the future.



Claire Louisa last year. Shortly after this shoot, she married, bought a BMW and quit modelling.

The Five Percent

People are sheep.

No this isn’t me being condescending and arrogant again. It’s fact.

A study by Professor Jens Krause of Leeds University Biological Sciences Department found that it takes a minority of just 5 percent of what he calls “informed individuals” to influence a crowd of 200 people. The remaining herd of 95 percent follow the 5 percent without even realising they are doing it.

If you think about it, this is entirely logical because after all, we are animals, and we are therefore genetically programmed to follow general animal herding behaviour. We just don’t realise we are being led. In truth most of us (95 percent to be exact) are happy to play follow-my-leader, regardless of whether or not the leader actually knows what he is doing.

Of course you’re all thinking of politics at this point, and you’d be correct of course. But this same principle applies to everything, including photography. Ed Verosky recently lamented photographers copying a certain photographic style originally devised by Jill Greenberg.

Is this a case of the herd instinct taking over? Is plagiarism (Oh God, I used the “P” word and I vowed I’d never do that again) not actually the fault of those that imitate certain styles or images, but simply a result of genetic programming? Is the animal photographer just following the herd because he can’t help it? Is it actually hardwired instinct for the majority of us to follow the photographic fashion of the time, whether that fashion be a lighting style, a pose, a “look,” an idea, or a combination of these factors?

The herd instinct is programmed into 95% of us. Only 5 percent of you out there are actually naturally born innovators, leaders, creators of unique photographic ideas/styles/images etc. So only 5 percent of you reading this actually find it natural to think outside the box, to create something photographically and artistically unique.

You’ve no idea how much I envy you. The rest of us, the remaining 95%, we are merely programmed to follow where you lead.

If you want to move from the 95 percent to the 5 percent, then you have to fight your herd instinct with very fibre of your being. It’s just so easy to march to the beat of everybody else’s drum. But you can’t. You want to be part of the 5 percent. We all do. So you have to learn to fight your genetics, re-program your artist’s brain to actually THINK differently, practice viewing and imagining things from a different perspective. To paraphrase Brooks Jensen, the next time the flock veers left, try wandering off right just for fun, and seeing where the journey takes you.

Yes it will be difficult, challenging and you might not be sure that the end result actually qualifies as artistic, but whoever said making a decent photograph was easy?

A compelling reason to blog

This is just a short note to let everyone know we are still alive but swamped with day job work. Lin has been away on business, and has been asking if I've been keeping up with the blog (oh dear.) Apparently if I don't post an entry I'll be in deep trouble when she gets home tonight:-(

Normal service will resume shortly :-)



Image is of Clayre McKinnen

Looking but not seeing - The PhotoSig Wars

Yesterday, for a bit of fun, I decided to post one of my images of IvoryFlame to Photosig. I wanted to see how quickly it would get on the front page and see if the quality of the critiques had gone up.

The photo hit the front page within about an hour of being posted, which was most excellent.

The critiques were about the same “quality” as usual but they set me thinking about what the viewers were saying and why.

There were several responses in appreciation of how much they liked the image and inevitably there were a few that wanted to offer technical improvements to my technique. These were the ones that set me thinking.

There are Photosig members who base their critique on opening the image in Photoshop and playing with the levels to see where the white point is, if there are any blown highlights, if there is actually any absolute black, and of course the contrast levels. This is the basis of their critique. If you don’t have an absolute white then that’s not good, if you don’t have an absolute black, then that’s not good either. If the face is not illuminated, then that will be criticised. Shadows can't be the focal point of an image.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

That's like trying to listen to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony with a spectrum analyser. Hearing music is insufficient, you have to listen to really appreciate a piece. Looking at a photograph is pointless, you have to actually see it to appreciate it.

I'd also like to mention two words by way of education.

"Specular Highlight."

This is the highlight that is created when light bounces off a shiny object such as glass or chrome. What many people don’t realise is that at a low angle of incidence, human skin also produces specular reflection. This specular reflection cannot by its nature have any detail in it because it is a highlight. Underexposing a specular highlight still creates a specular highlight, but it’s just grey not white.

Anyhoo, its time to show you the picture. Hopefully this image creates a certain sense of mystery, and not the sort that is fixed by playing with Photoshop.

Enjoy.



Addendum:
After an argument with the admins of Photosig as to whether I should accept and value any and all crits (from poeple who have a port of crappy images or no images at all), it appears I am "arrogant" and "love my work." Phew, to think that I might actually hate my work!?! Now there's a thought!

Dose this mean I've made it as a photographer? After all, the majority the great photographers whom I admire have gone to war with Photosig and then left.

Hurrah, I must be a photographic artist at last!!!!!

Eostre Greetings

Apologies for being a little wacko this week. I suspect that 70 hour working weeks and radiation fallout don’t go well together. I’m not of this politically correct American art world. Different rules apply there, and sometimes I forget that when I'm tired. Plus the trouble with blogging is that, at some point, you discover that you’ve become lost in your own ass. Mr Wood has always maintained that if he wrote a blog it would consume him, and I’m beginning to realise the same problem.

Talking of pleasant posteriors, here’s another rather spiffing shot of the gorgeous IvoryFlame. This image sucks on my little laptop monitor and looks bloody fabulous on Rich’s groovy high resolution monitor (Synchmaster 244T.) This monitor resolution issue is really frustrating us both. You’ve no idea just how many kick-ass photographs we don’t show on-blog because most people can’t see the fine detail due to lower grade monitors like mine. The subtleties are just lost.

There’s different shades of black you know, and some are blacker than others. A valid statement about my moods this week, as well as about publishing photographs.

*sigh* If only I could show you the prints instead.



Incidentally, for those that don't know, Easter is primarily a pagan festival. Eostre was the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. She was supposedly reincarnated in the form of a hare, since it was widely believed that when hunted, the mother hare would sacrifice herself so that her offspring could escape. So that's why you get cute little chocolate rabbits everywhere at Easter. Easter eggs symbolise fertility because, well duh, life hatches from them. So basically (Christians please look away now) Easter is about spring sex.

Wishing you all a great Eostre, with lots of fertility rituals:-)

(For those that want to debate theology and the actual date of the death of Jesus, please do feel free to email me.)

(R6) Creative Vision

In which the writer becomes the photographic blogosphere's Public Enemy No.1.

Franz Rosenzweig defined “creative vision” as “the artist’s plan, the basis for the individual artist’s construction of his individual work.” Nowadays, this term is more generally used to refer to when a photographer has a vision of his unique style in his head. He sees what he wants to shoot before he shoots it, and through the medium of photography, his creative vision is realised in the final image. Voila! True art is born!

Unfortunately this inspirational little phrase has now become so overused in the photographic community that I get very annoyed every time I hear it. Which is often. Very, very often.

“Creative vision” is a modern catch-phrase, a must have accessory. You’re not a real photographer unless you have one. You can justify just about any photograph as “true art” because it reflects the “creative vision” of the photographer. It doesn’t matter if the image in question is messy, chaotic, badly shot or just plain awful, in this modern politically correct art world it isn’t polite or cool to be critical of an image. All images can be defined as “art” because art must be subjective nowadays, and so you have to be nice, you have to see meaning or depth in an image, you have to look for the photographer’s “creative vision.” So what if you secretly don’t understand it? So what if you don’t feel anything for the image? If you don’t like it then you, the viewer, are a bad critic because clearly you don’t understand the artist’s true vision.

Oh please. Why the hell can’t we call a bad photograph, “a bad photograph?” Why should I be the one at fault because I don’t understand you? Isn’t it just remotely possible that your art is just not very good? Why does me being less artistically educated than you, mean that I am missing something about your work?

The truth be told, bad photographers are prevalent in the art world. We all know it. Their work may be trite, amateurish, a load of rubbish, but because the photographer is good at marketing himself, because he’s skilled in the art of bullshit, then he can convince just about anyone that his work is good. The charlatan artist can schmooze you into believing that his creative vision is so subtle, so mysterious, so esoteric that because you don’t understand his work, this actually means that you, the viewer, are the one who is at fault. Clearly you don’t recognise his creative vision as the work of genius that it really is.

What a load of bollocks. But people are taken in by it all the time. I know I used to be. Producing bad art and promoting it as genius is very seductive, but it’s actually fake, a lie, a betrayal of what creative vision actually should be.

I do believe that there is such a concept as “creative vision,” but it is a nebulous concept, not easily translated into words, and even harder to translate into a photograph. And not every photographer has one.

Real creative vision is ordered, disciplined, harmonious, unique to the individual artist, and its beauty is such that it can be translated by the artist into something that can be easily understood by the viewer. Creative vision is constantly evolving, never static, an ongoing quest for knowledge, to paraphrase Cézanne, “a model of steadfast learning and growth, the artist’s value lies not so much in what he can MAKE, but in his capacity to seek and continue to find.”

My personal opinion is that it takes an entire lifetime to discover your real creative vision, because it is all about figuring out your own unique message you are meant to express to the world through your work. And maybe, just maybe, by the time you do discover it, in many years time, you’ll have enough experience, practice and insight to be able to produce the artistic vision of which you alone are truly capable, because you will finally understand yourself.



Introducing IvoryFlame.

B.P.A.

(Big Penis Art)
This post grossed me out. I blame Mr Neasley.

I was asked a while back if I’d share my thoughts regarding photographs of magnified male genitals, which often appear on Deviant Art, Photosig and other similar forums. Now I’ve been putting off writing about this for ages, partly because I’ve realised that I don’t much like these photos either.

The question is why? I believe in wide comfort zones, I approve of tolerance and recognition for all types of art, plus I’m a heterosexual female for heaven’s sake. I’m a big fan of good male nude photography, and I simply adore the male member, so why on earth do I dislike looking at extreme-close-up penis shots?

Personal thoughts as follows (please feel free to disagree):

1. It goes against our taboos. Western societies are all about equality between the sexes. The erect penis is a symbol of domination, of overpowering of the woman, and is therefore unacceptable under modern moral code. And At least that’s what I’ve read, but I suspect many of you may know more about the social anthropology of this than I do. (And yes, this theory may be a load of bollocks - sorry, couldn‘t resist.)

The Cerne Abbas Giant, UK, believed to date from the 2nd Century, depicting Hercules.

2. In ancient history, and nowadays in some tribal societies, the penis was worshipped and depicted in art as normal and acceptable. However, in many Western countries (including the UK) it is illegal to show any image of the front of a naked man. If I showed an actual photograph here of an erect penis, I’d have the police on my doorstep within 24 hours, I guarantee it. Society’s hang-ups have now become the viewers’ hang-ups over time. I even have difficulties finding Mapplethorpe’s penis shots via Google.

Last week when we visited the Photographer’s Gallery in London, we visited their famous bookshop. I did look for Mapplethorpe’s work there (purely in the interests of research you understand. I don’t roam London looking for mighty wongas, sorry to say.) Sure enough I found his book, on the top shelf of the bookshop, about 10 feet up, too high for even Rich to reach, and it was monitored by a lone security camera pointing at the book. No kidding. It would take someone with balls of steel to pluck up the courage to browse that book, and I refrained from asking the tiny grey-haired little old lady manning the shop to climb up and pass me the porn. It wasn’t exactly being marketed as a warm and fuzzy reading experience, if you know what I mean.

3. It’s all in the lighting and composition. Big penis shots can be art too, but the photographer has to be talented enough to portray them artistically. There’s no eroticism in a clinically shot close-up photograph of genitals - where‘s the mood and the turn-on in that?

I do think that such close-up graphic shots are very difficult to do well, and only a few succeed. There’s Mapplethorpe of course, and Andreas H. Bitesnich has shot some absolutely magnificent erect male nude shots which are clearly art, and quite beautiful because they are well lit and composed. On the other hand, badly exposed snapshots of someone’s boyfriend’s penis, touted as “photography” really makes my blood boil. I guess this is a typically snobby reaction on my part against bad photography, and has nothing to do with the subject matter. Let’s face it, a talented photographer can make anything look good, even a pair of hairy balls.

4. Floppy winkies are icky. I’m sorry, but “yuk.” If you’re going to shoot big penis art, please please shave your balls and shoot a boner. Make it big, make it proud. Make it a potent symbol of your manhood. Big glistening slongs are magnificent, an example of man at his most primitive, sexual and potent. Combine this with good lighting and composition, and you will have mighty powerful art.

5. Most people are not used to looking at Big Penis Art, so it is outside their personal comfort zones.

When I first saw Hotel Room Nudes a couple of years ago now, and viewed Don’s close-up female bum-hole shots (as I call them) I was completely repulsed. It took a year of regular exposure for me to accept them, and even now I have to remind myself occasionally that they can be art, albeit not necessarily to my taste.
Homophobia on my part? Yes, almost certainly. I do think biological conditioning has a lot to answer for. Extreme close-ups of any woman’s genitals (including mine) can be a bit of a reach for most heterosexual women, entirely understandably too.

As for me, over the last couple of years, since I’ve become interested in nude photography, I’ve come across thousands and thousands of photographs of women’s genitals, and I’ve taught myself to recognise them as art. Self education? Brainwashing? Either way, if you actually looked at photographs of men’s genitals every single day, my guess is you’d get used to them and accept them as normal everyday viewing, pretty darn quickly.

IMO, there’s no difference between acceptance of male or female genitals as art. The same argument applies to both. You too can teach yourself to expand your comfort zone as I’ve done. You can learn to accept that which you find distasteful as normal. You can even recognise it as art and learn to like it. I guess the question is: do you want to?



This is not me! (Hurrah!) But is it "dodgy porn?"
Hmm...once upon a time I would have thought so...

Improbable Drive Problems

The biggest problem with digital photography is the sheer volume of data it produces. A typical shoot will generate nearly 4gb of raw files. Some of these get converted to psd for photoshop and most of the time it is easier to keep all the files from a shoot rather than cull the bad ones. You simply never know when you might decide to resurrect a shot you thought was a bit iffy.

In just over two years I've amassed a photo collection of 21,000 files covering 216GB of data. Now obviously there is no real way to create a hard backup of these files. That would be 48 DVD's. It would be 9 BluRay disks which would be an option if I had a BluRay drive. But just writing them to a DVD or BluRay is not enough because these disks often degrade over time, so periodically you need to renew them.

I decided my solution was to use a known method from normal computer data handling. I have the main data on a working PC, then a backup elsewhere. In this case the backup is a purpose build file server. It has 1.3TB of drives arranged as 2 pairs of mirrored drives. So that's 4 drives, 2 of which keep a copy of the data from the other 2. So that's 3 copies of the data, the main PC, the primary drive on the backup and its mirror. To further add protection, the file server has a triple redundant power supply connected to a industrial uninterruptable power supply and a backup generator.

Pretty neat huh? I felt very safe with this setup. Until Thursday morning.

I got up, had my coffee, and then logged into my PC to find that network access to the file server backups was not available. I went to the server and found that 3 of the 4 drives had failed!

Statistically there is no way that 3 out of 4 drives in any PC can fail at once. I've had single drive failures often and know the drives tend only to last a few years in a file server. But for 3 drives to fail without some form of catastrophic failure of the whole system in unheard of. Yet, the 3rd backup drive and the core drive for the OS were fine and dandy.

So my backups of my photography, 3d work, downloaded tutorials and some other stuff was blown away and were it not for the fact that I still have the main PC with the live copy, I would be suicidal by now.

Today I have installed new drives, recreated the mirrors and started to restore the data to the backup. However, I have installed another drive into my main PC and have an additional backup from its main drive to its second drive before it copies to the redundant backup. I'm also going to install a 3rd tier backup that holds a backup of the backup on another machine.

The worst part is that I also lost our entire MP3 music collection and now I have to rip all 400 albums again.

Now if only I could find some software that could do all this for me automatically and keep historic versions, and run regular CRC checks I would be a truly happy man. If you know of such a thing, please let me know. If not, I might just write one. Any one want to buy a backup system designed for a photographer?



This image is of Lou Lou from last year.

Why the fate of the world rests with Ohio

So it’s Hillary for president then.

At least that’s my outside bet. But hey, what do I know?

Well, I’m an accountant, so my reasoning is mainly financial. (Yes money is boring, but I’m boring, so live with it.)

The US is in recession.
Yes, it is.
I’m sorry for all you die-hard optimists, but please let's all just get real for a moment.

The U.S. lost 63,000 non-farm jobs in February, the biggest drop since the start on the Iraq war, and overall, the private sector shed 101,000 private sector jobs in January alone. And there’s no end in sight either. Inflation and the general economy are worsening. When people are broke, they can’t pay their mortgages, which means more pain for banks, who in turn are more reluctant to lend money and when they do, it will be at a higher rate, which in turn means less dollars all round. And as the US stops spending, so the poor starving Chinese citizen will end up losing his job too, as US imports will also decline dramatically over the next year.

The eminent economists Ethan Harris and Jody Clarke predict things will get gradually worse, both inflation and unemployment will continue to rise, despite the Fed continually cutting rates, and the end result will be negative growth by the end of May.

Forget about the war, after all, no-one’s talking much about Iraq any more. All talk is of money and how it affects the average US citizen. In particular, please spare a thought for all those blue collar workers in the depressed US manufacturing heartland (N.Y. Pennsylvania, Ohio and in-between), who are feeling extreme pain in their wallets. Life for them is unrelentingly grim at the moment. Their jobs are being increasingly outsourced to India and Taiwan, and many of them are starting to blame the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for their misery.

Enter into this gloomy scene the immaculately coiffured, blond haired witch, who will make it all disappear with a zap of her magic wand…hurrah for Hillary! She’ll swoosh in on her broomstick to save the day.

Barack lacks economic experience and he's dodged the NAFTA issue completely, but our future Madam Prez Hillary, saviour of the morally upstanding white proletariat worker, has pledged to renegotiate the same treaty that was once championed by her husband. The result? Ohio and the other swing states (once Bush devotees) are now so desperate for change, for hope, they will fall under her evil spell. Muggles beware!

Not convinced? Need another reason?
Well, it is popular knowledge amongst political analysts over here that however Ohio votes, the world follows.

Of course I could be wrong about US politics, and let’s hope I am. But if The Grand Sorceress is indeed ruling the world this time next year, then you can be sure I’ll be blaming everyone in Ohio…



Me, wearing clothes for a change.

Understanding Abstract Photography

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”
(Picasso.)

Whilst wallowing in my bubble bath last night (that’s vanilla flavour for all you bubble-bath devotees out there) I was musing on abstract photography. I’ve always wanted to write a critique on an abstract, but the problem has always been that I just don’t understand this art form.

Abstract No 3, Fort Worden by Brooks Jensen

Now when you think of an abstract photograph, you think of something like this acclaimed image, by my beloved Mr Jensen. The problem for me is that although I find this photograph quite beautiful, I have absolutely no idea what to think when I look at it. My mind goes completely blank.

So what am I doing wrong? Well, after reading a little about it, it seems that I’m approaching abstract art the wrong way. Apparently a better question to be asking myself is, “How does this make me feel?” What the artist intended, or sees in the image, is completely irrelevant. What only matters is what the viewer “sees”. And by “seeing” I don’t just mean trying to understand what the artist was thinking (which is where I’ve been going wrong.) What I should be doing is studying this image for a longer period of time, say half an hour, drinking it in, losing myself in it, letting my imaginations and emotions run wild. Exploring the colour, the texture, wandering beyond the visible and seeing where the meditation takes me. What I will end up feeling won’t be the same as what Brooks felt, and indeed, his intentions are irrelevant. Abstract art is a mirror. When we look, we see ourselves as much as we see what is in the image.

Now at this point, I’d love to start waffling on about abstract nude photographs, such as Stephen’s intriguing image from a few weeks ago. (Please note that Stephen didn't claim this was a true abstract photograph - although I think it's an excellent example of the term.)

An Abstraction by Stephen Haynes

However this caused a bit of an argument with Rich, because it turns out that he (Rich) doesn’t think abstract nude photographs can ever exist at all. If you can remotely tell it’s a nude, then it can’t possibly be a true abstract, by its very definition. Rich reckons that abstract art is supposed to interact with the subconscious in order to see what images can be conjured up to generate meaning to the viewer. Thus abstract art works best if there are no recognisable images. The inclusion of a nude form would cause the viewer to centralise their focus on the form, and so it no longer classifies as an abstract.

Hmm. I suspect he might be right, although I am unfortunately not qualified to judge. What I do know is that I can connect with Stephen’s image because I can see it is a nude, so my mind can immediately focus on something, the object, the woman, and extrapolate accordingly, so it is easier to understand.

So…back to my dear Brooks…I gave his photograph my complete attention for a full ten minutes (and that’s a mighty long time for me.) What did I see? Did I glimpse the meaning of life? Did I discover a part of myself? Did I actually experience anything at all?

Nope.
Still nothing.
Really pretty wallpaper, but that’s all. The meaning escapes me.

Oh God, I’m obviously shallow, superficial, and clearly I have no appreciation for true Art. And I so very much wanted to understand.

The Quest for Knowledge

Hello. My name is Lin, and I’m addicted to studying.

My behaviour is derived from the Master Workaholic, my father, who had two businesses and worked 24/7. He never learned to play. Work absorbed his every waking moment, and as I grew up, I learned the same thing from him. In my case “work” came in the form of study. I studied because I knew nothing else. I was a dedicated student from the age of about nine onwards, and by the age of thirteen I was doing four hours homework a night. I worked and obsessed through many qualifications, two degrees and beyond, and nowadays it's just become a habit, a hobby, a compulsion, who I am. It’s not money that’s the lure, it’s knowledge. I crave it to the exclusion of all else. And I mean ALL.

In our house, it’s well known that Mum doesn’t play computer or other games. Mum works during the day, and she studies for fun. And yes, learning is fun for me as well as an addiction. I’ve realised that I really do love what I do the vast majority of the time. I can't really explain how much of a rush it can all be, and yet how much it can drain and exhaust you as well.

And yet…there’s a nagging doubt that something isn’t quite right with this life-study-work ethic. My kids tell me to “get a life,” they think that learning is a form of work not play, that it’s weird that their mother gets “obsessions” with studying particular subjects, and that the quest to know everything about them absorbs every waking moment. My friends sigh and half-heartedly tell me to teach myself to play, and I’ll kill myself eventually if I keep up this pace forever. And I’d like to be able to take holidays too, and enjoy them (I endure vacations, I do try to enjoy them I promise, but I get so bloody bored lying by the pool, I usually want to shoot myself by the end of day two.)

Culturally, we Britons study all our childhoods, and work very long hours in our adult lives. It is both expected and encouraged to do so. Unfortunately, like alcoholism, workaholism is bad for you. Subjecting your body to that level of stress for many years will definitely have consequences for your body (yup!) It makes people neglect families, relationships and their health, and workaholics are usually in a state of denial about the impact of their behaviour (guilty on every count.)

So what do I do? I don’t want to end up like my father, who retired at 55, but was dead by 57 because his life was suddenly empty without work. I can see my brother (who at 60 is still working 80 hour weeks) going the same way. Even though I know it is bad for me and those around me, changing my behaviour (yes I’ve tried) makes me wholly miserable. I have become my father. I’ve spent a lifetime addicted to the drug “workahol” and I must change before the burning quest for acquiring knowledge eventually wrecks me.

The grand irony is of course, that the answer to life’s ultimate questions, “Is that all that I am? Is there nothing more?” almost certainly can’t be found through study, or books or rusty academia, but by learning to play and actually living life rather than observing it.

So if I know this already, then why the hell can’t I quit?



Roswell Ivory, from last year.

Sadness

Just a quick one today.

If you haven't already done so, please do take a moment to visit Univers d'Artistes, and leave a supportive and appreciative message to Chris Saint James who closed his blog yesterday due to ill health. His excellent work will be greatly missed, and we all wish him happiness and hope he stays in touch.

Relative Embarrassments

Apologies for the lack of posts. I haven’t felt much like blogging this week, due to the kids being afflicted with winter vomiting bug, which isn’t exactly conducive to creativity. Oh and we’ve had one of our closest relatives visiting too. Now this chap knows about Rich’s photography and my modelling, and he has always maintained he was completely cool with the whole thing. This was incorrect. He is in actual fact totally appalled and ashamed of us.

Apparently what we do could never be classified as Art. Rich’s photography is some sort of silly mid-life joke, which he will grow out of in the next few months. And as for me, I am a total embarrassment, a floozy and clearly experiencing some sort of sad personal crisis, otherwise why on earth would I be modelling nude and posting my pictures on the internet? And at my age too. I should be ashamed of myself.

Relatives suck.

Now if you’ll please excuse me, I need to go and hit something.



This is Lynx of course. However you’ll notice that she is wearing…gasp…clothes. This was during Rich’s very brief ten-minute foray into fashion photography. This is not art. However, it appears that this is the preferred level of nudity for our more morally constipated viewers.

How to prove you can never be too old or too stupid

An excruciatingly long and sordid tale of the seedy world of a middle-aged female accountant.

As part of “the top ten things to do to prove to yourself you’re still alive after having brain radiation,” I resolved last week to do something out of character, something outrageous, something that I hadn’t done in a very long time. So I decided to visit a sex shop.

Now the last time I went into a sex shop was 22 years ago. What can I say? I’m a middle-aged boring accountant, for God’s sake. I’m supposed to be repressed. Nice English girls don’t do that sort of thing, what? (Incidentally, I don’t watch porn either. Sorry to burst your bubble folks, but I require something with at least a hint of a plot.)

So anyway, last week on the way back from a particularly torturous Company Tax Update Lecture, I called in at the local sex shop. Once upon a time, before the UK became a totalitarian state, the sex shop used to be in a quaint little stone-clad shop in the centre of town, with pretty net curtains, a charming green wooden door and a bell that “tinged” when you went in. In fact it could just as easily have sold muffins rather than ye olde rubber dildos with pink ribbons and bobbles on. Mmm…bobbles…fond memories…

Anyway…where was I? Oh yes…well nowadays the sex shop has of course been chased out of town by righteous pitchfork-bearing yokels, and has been forced to relocate to a large grey anonymous warehouse on an out-of-town industrial trading estate. It’s now a large grey steel building, with no windows, a dirty tar-macadam parking lot, and the entire thing is surrounded by eight-foot high barbed-wire security fencing, that is patrolled at night by sniffer dogs. Maybe the dogs are there to protect the sex toys – who knows? All I can tell you is that it doesn’t leave you with a warm, romantic feeling driving up to this place. And having your vehicular details recorded by a row of large security cameras doesn’t do much for the inner erotic glow either.

Now I can model fine art nude, I can show my nakedness to thousands of folks on the internet without a second thought, but I have NEVER felt so self-conscious as I did that evening, as I parked up and walked into the store. A single, middle-aged professional female dressed head-to-foot in tasteful faux-fur, with fifteen video cameras following my every movement. Big Brother was watching this strange old accountant with deep fascination.

Once inside, I was so petrified with fright that it took a while to actually get my bearings. The place was vast. Grey walls, red carpet, one or two old guys wandering around aimlessly. It was very dark, and I couldn’t see the other side. As far as I could tell, the place was mostly full of dirty movies. Rows and rows of porn stretching down the aisles as far as the eyes could see under the yellowy dim light (which was no doubt intended to both simulate a sultry and erotic feel for customers, as well as saving electricity, as this highest quality establishment was clearly run on a shoestring.)

I edged nervously round a huge dangly rubber mask, which appeared to have a giant black nine-inch penis instead of a mouth, and approached the shop counter where the storekeeper was buried behind the financial section of The Times (The Times ? In a porn shop? Surreal.)

“Um, excuse me,” I enquired in a rushed, squeaky kind of voice. "Um…do you have any…um…you know…glassware? I need something for a photographic shoot next week. I’m a model. My husband is the photographer. In fact he’s very well known for fine-art photography. It’s all very tasteful, you know, so I really would appreciate your guidance.”

Of course I was babbling incoherently at this point. Completely shitting myself if we’re being honest. My heart was pounding, I had absolutely no clue what I was saying, and only sheer bloody-minded determination not to be labelled a total wimp was keeping me from turning and running as fast as I possibly could.

The owner of the shop slowly lowered his newspaper and observed me. He looked about my age, very distinguished and intelligent. He looked me up and down slowly and impassively, taking in the Italian fur, the high heels, the briefcase and the beetroot-red blushing face. To his credit, he didn’t react at all. His eyes remained completely expressionless, but I noticed that his lips twitched ever so slightly.

“Glass dildos, end of aisle 3,” he announced in a deep, slightly bemused voice, and then disappeared behind the stock prices again.

Emboldened by the normality of his acceptance, I actually relaxed a little. Maybe this wasn’t so bad? In fact, it might be kind of fun. Hey, maybe middle-aged professional women did this all the time? Maybe my accountancy colleagues popped in here most nights on the way home from work too, after picking up the milk and the ready meals for their partner? Oops dear, better not forget the giant rubber penis mask too.

Aisle 3 was very exciting

Anyhoo, I sashayed down the narrow DVD aisle, knocking aside Bertha’s Big Bulbous Bazookas, Martha’s Mighty Mammaries and Big Bertha III: Revenge of the Mighty Wonga. And then I reached aisle 3. I stopped. My eyes widened. Well, quelle surprise! What an impressive display of plumbing supplies there were! Balls and strange shaped objects for orifices that I never even knew existed. Talk about a rapid education. To a 40+ has-been like me, this was an extremely steep learning curve. I felt rather out of my depth, to be honest. So you’ll appreciate that I was delighted and very relieved to see something I recognised amongst the vast and bewildering display of debauchery, the one NORMAL everyday object amongst all this porno paraphernalia. And it was elegant too.

A large glass bottle-stopper, with a narrow neck and an exquisite blown-glass ball on the end, with a single real goldfish suspended within the glass orb. (Actually it might have been a plastic fish but it certainly looked real enough.) It was laid in a beautiful blue velvet and silk cushioned box. I was enchanted. I experienced that well-known inner erotic glow of woman’s “must-have-shopping-lust.”

“Ooh, pretty glassware!” I thought. “That will go nicely in my bottle of chardonnay at home. Perfect for dinner parties. That will certainly impress my guests. Right, that’ll do. I’ve seen all there is to see. I’ve completed my mission. I’m no longer a middle-aged wimp. Now let’s get out of here. FAST.”

So I flung some cash vaguely in the direction of the (by now openly laughing) shopkeeper and fled home at warp speed, still shaking from the adrenalin rush of my success. Once back safe in my home, I needed an urgent drink to calm down, so I uncorked a bottle of our finest chardonnay, and popped little Goldie in the top. A perfect fit. Very snug. My fishie looked gorgeous, tasteful, elegant, shiny.
I toasted my victory over fear, pronounced myself “a survivor” and “truly living life!” and mentally pictured myself showing off my elegant glassware purchase to my yummy mummy pals at our next posh dinner party. Mmm. Truly I was a woman of the world.

I wandered into the living-room to show Rich.

“Erm…very pretty…er…you do realise it’s a butt-plug, right?” he said not unkindly, struggling desperately to keep a straight face.

Oh. My. God.

Remind me NEVER EVER to think of myself as intelligent or educated again. Clearly I know nothing.

And yes, of course I’m still using it as a wine stopper.

What kind of girl do you think I am?

A tasteful still-life of ye olde modelle’s elegant hand-blown glassware