Univers d'Artistes: Jeffrey McAlister

Showing posts with label Jeffrey McAlister. Show all posts

November 5, 2015

Their eyes !, by Jeffrey McAlister

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."

By Jeffrey McAlister

"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"

September 25, 2012

Jeffrey McAlister's Interview

Jeffrey McAlister at his official site, Model Mayhem, deviantART

How did your passion begin ?

I knew by the age of eight years old that the nude female form captivated me.

I grew up with the love of two parents who never made me feel as if that was not how I should feel. I never really questioned my passion for a woman’s body and simply tended that passion, free to grow and deepen as I became older and more experienced. Middle age has freed me to completely embrace the study of form and erotic emotional sexuality both felt and expressed in imagery.

"The Rainmaker"

Did you learn photography in a special school ?

I had a high school project that forced me to pick up the 35mm SLR and began a love affair with my father’s Nikkormat FTN. I first had the opportunity to make nude photographs in a continuing education class in Cambridge MA.

Who are your greatest inspirators ?

I have so many inspirations. It feels as if my life is one long string of images and pieces of music that have shaped the joy in my consciousness. Among those are Edward Weston, Ralph Vaughn Williams, CV Stanford, Margaret Bourke White, Trevor Watson, Bob Dylan, Michael Helms.

I have to say ; early in my time making nudes, the published work of Jock Sturges was huge for me. The fact that he could shoot a subject so socially forbidden and bring such clean, frank love and expertise to those images… such honesty blew me away. I admired Robert Mapplethorp for the same reasons.

I need to add… in my work there is no inspiration greater than the heart of a woman that compels her to want to share her body and the truth of her feelings with my camera.

By the way, how long could you be far from your camera ?

Like so many artists who have to make their livings in other ways, my camera is not always with me but then it’s never really very far away. I’m striving not not let too many days go by between making images.

"Trident"

"Rain Maker 2"

Do you feel particularly inspired by a type of location ?

For a period of time I made many nudes in nature. Frankly that is the cliché fallback for making “art nude.” I hit a point where the affectation in that bothered me. I found myself asking why ? Why is she naked ? Why is she here ? The obvious answer was, because I crave her nude image and the here lends some sort of context. I guess I felt that that context, no matter how beautiful, was dishonest. More dishonest was the why.

Why is she naked? The true answer is because she and I want to express the power of humanity that is both physically beautiful and multi textured in its emotional range. The sexuality expressed inherently in the nude has drawn me like a moth to a flame. I believe every nude is sexual. I believe every person who argues otherwise is being foolish. The studio has given me the freedom to explore sexuality in imagery by virtue of the privacy it gives me. Truthfully I’m dying to make more images in more varied locations, which might again offer more context to the feelings in my images.

"Flesh"

What are your preferences, indoor, outdoor, natural lights, color ?

God is light. Light is light. I make it, I reflect it, I bend it, I follow it, I take it as it comes and goes. I certainly don’t believe any one approach is best. I use strobe a lot. I use natural light if it is available to me. At rare times I use both.

I think color images can be very beautiful and recently since the digital world has opened up for me, I make many more color images than I use to. I do think that color reminds any viewer of modern culture… color says television, computer, movies. Color says porn to people, in a way that monochrome simply does not.

Black and white by its nature stylizes an image and takes the viewer into a different relationship to the image.

As much as the average viewer doesn’t realize it, monochrome offers such a wide and lovely range of tonality. Film does that better than digital but anyone who hasn’t noticed how fast digital is improving, isn’t paying attention.

"Hands Down"

"Herself in color"

Some words about your models ?

From the most experienced to the least, they are angels. You have to understand a model removes her clothes and bares her sexual soul, not only because I want to make imagery, but because she wants to see herself in that light, through my eyes, and she wants to be seen. She wants that raw freedom. Weather or not I’m paying her has very little impact on that basic truth. For me having the freedom to create, sharing the light with such generosity of flesh and spirit is a colossal gift.

I agree, of course... And what is your process of creation ?

I guess I seek order. I know I need contextual concept, props, and visual details to help advance my work conceptually. That is really what has led me into shooting more fetish images. I end up with models who are sometimes turned on by fetish, and it gives me a smorgasbord of directions I can take in the work, visually speaking.

How do you feel at the end of a shooting ?

I’m usually exhausted, elated, and a little sad that those magic hours of light and flesh are ended for the moment.

Do you make many corrections ?I’m never completely finished with any image or any set of images. If I go back to some set I made years ago, I always find an image that I didn’t regard at the time as I do now.

Have you a special project you're dreaming about ?

I’ve wanted to have the resources to make more images with real couples. I want to shoot lovers, true lovers.

Have you scheduled your next exhibition ?

Not currently. Perhaps you could arrange for me a show in France ?

Wow ! I never thought about, but why not ?... And what's for your next future ?

I do wish to make a book.

"Lovers"

A message to send ?

If I could communicate only one thing in my work, it would be that human sexuality at its most raw and explicit is infused with exquisite beauty.

A dear friend told me what she loves in my work is (her words now !) “ You give women permission to behave the way we feel inside. What you see and express validates me.” No compliment regarding my work will ever matter to me more than that one.

I will battle against any force to remind people that the voices, which want to condemn sex as suspect, evil, and socially perverse… those voices are the real evil. Those voices lie. They lie to themselves, and they inflict harm and pain, which the world of feeling thinking souls would be happier without.

You're so right... "Make love not war" is to engrave everywhere. I'm battling at your side. Thank you Jeffrey !