Member since 2008
Photographer multi-awarded
I find this text of Jeffrey McAlister very well written and interesting. So I can't resist to the pleasure to publish it. Thanks for your agreement dear Jeffrey.
"Her eyes""The Erogenous Zone between the ears and where you can see it."
"Valentine"
" Recently I've been seeing possibilities for making the art that I make open up. I had the great pleasure of attending a meet and greet event close to home here where many photographers and models convened to eat, drink and converse and make images. It really was a revelation. I'm not sure quite why (perhaps because it's just so nice when the unknown not only becomes known but the knowing turns out to be so pleasant) but the people I had a chance to talk with and shoot with really inspired me.
" Unlike a typical shoot I would book for myself, I was blown on the wind, shooting who appeared for me. I had contacted one lovely model I'd been in contact with before, and we got to spend time making calm simple head shots. Another model I shot with is an erotic nude/fetish fashion model I'd been aware of for some time. I certainly had no idea that opportunity would arise. Frankly I shoot very little what I would call glamour, so shooting with her was a joy.
The last woman I took pictures of that day is a local art model I'd also had on my radar for sometime but had never been able to reach consensus with over what kind of work we would both like to do together. I had a really affirming moment when she recognized my name. Her face lit up and she launched into the certainty that she had hoped I would be there and we were gonna shoot right ?!
I had this wonderful moment of just feeling like what I do reaches people somehow, and in a world that would usually step over you if you were dying on the sidewalk, this angel wanted my eye and my artful focus on her. I can hardly describe what an emotional boost that was for about a hundred parts and pieces of my heart.
"V"
As I tend to do, I find myself trying to define honestly what was so fun and moving in all this. Part of it is having a chance to be in community where what I make is accepted and valued... not a secret world. It didn't hurt to be in a whirlwind of really fun kind people, many tattood and pierced, fetishy, or flouncy, and photographers like me, hunting for that instant in light that captivates. The naked women getting body paint and loving being eye magnets for the whole gathering certainly didn't bother the mood of the event either !
What I realize this morning as I write this... as I try to put a period on it, can be defined in this way.
I shot three beautiful women who couldn't be more different. One was lithe and tall and elegantly shy. She was beautifully clothed and quietly curious about what making nudes with me might be like down the road. The second was audaciously sexual, happy I suspect, to go down most any path, voluptuous and oozing erotic intent. The third, a woman of eastern European lineage, thin, angular, bones and a proud jaw line... This was a person who radiates intelligence from every pore. Her body is a canvas of really unusual ink. Her tattoos were surprisingly (for me at least) at home, not jarring or detracting but really completing her pretty frame.
What I see now is the thing that so gotten to me. The thing that pulls me in, makes me worship and marvel... the magnet... it was their eyes. Each of them, so different, and so astonishly poignant and powerful. Lust. Eroticism can certainly be expressed in how I feel about a pretty breast or a swollen vagina, but what I know today is the real heart of what I seek... is there to be revealed in her eyes. Every time.
"Wallflower 4"
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