Andrew Kaiser (Absolute Reality Studios) for the first time

I lived two years in San Francisco, exactly at Sausalito. To reach my office, I passed across the Golden Gate Bridge four times a day. It was like a dream. And it's still the most beautiful period of my life. Some years later, I still miss San Francisco... and I'm sure it will be until my dying day.

Andrew Kaiser made these splendid and original cliches which turn me upside down.

Done in 2007

"Last stand"

" As for words...I tend to let my pictures speak for themselves. I will say however that I am a firm believer in the fact that all human beings are beautiful ; short, tall, fat, skinny, old, young. It doesn't matter and I am very tired of this notion that only one type of person is desirable. I'd like to think my work is doing its small part to speak out against that."

"Body Arch"

"Figured Bridge"

"Human Bridge"

" I Walk Alone"

"The Bridge"

Here is the first issue of Luminous Magazine by Luminous Press, Available at LuLu !

" The idea was to create a quarterly magazine without the goal of publishing what sells but more to publish what is interesting. It was with that thought that Luminous was born.
The first issue features eighty pages of photography, art, and interviews from such brilliant minds as Holly Bynoe, Tara MacPherson, Reg Mombassa, and a whole lot more !"

Nudes of 'ordinary' women by Jane Lancashire

This is a topic dear to my heart and about which I wrote in my personal blog. Following that post I contacted Jane Lancashire, after seeing her website. 

Jane is a photographer who specialises in doing nudes of women who do not model, either professionally or semi-professionally, and who want such images for themselves, just to feel good about themselves.


The results are stunning as you can see from the photographs :

Says Jane:

It is such rewarding work, celebrating the natural, feminine curves and reminding women how beautiful they are. The creative journeys I share with clients make this a particularly enjoyable type of photography.

Clients will find that even if they have some reservations about removing their clothes, this passes almost immediately and almost everyone has commented on how liberating the experience is."

The testimonials on her website, from women who have experienced being photographed nude, often for the very first time, are proof that what she does is amazing, in terms of helping women to feel beautiful and confident.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore it is perfectly possible to obtain high quality images when photographing women who may not be conventionally beautiful, but as people they are interesting and have a beauty which the camera may (or may not) capture, depending on who is taking the photograph. Jane knows how to make a woman unleash the inner goddess which is in all of us.

When I see Jane's images I feel that the only difference between me as a model and any of her clients is simply that I am more used to being photographed and feel very confident in front of the camera, regardless of who is holding it. It took a while to gain that confidence but I have it now and it will never go away. This is what allows me to be a model. There are times when some (male) photographers, usually middle aged,  try to shutter that confidence by claiming that "the best models are girls under eighteen". I look at them with pity, as what they are saying is but a projection of their desires. I am a photographer myself and I know that the camera is but an extension of my eyes. It sees what I see and my images embody my own prejudices. I believe women are beautiful, simply by being themselves,  and it's wonderful to see someone like Jane putting this philosophy into practice.

I can't help quoting here what one of the women photographed by Jane says:

"Thank you Jane for reminding us of who we are, who we can be and giving the choice of who we wish to be"

Thank you Jane for doing what you do!

Alex



More about Jane at The Real Does Not Efface Itself

John Peri talks about his models

" Colour is a conveyor of mood. The nostalgia expressed by this model in her demeanour is possibly accentuated by the colour. Since I know my models which of course others don't, I read things into my images which they cannot do, but these subliminal messages may help to give clues to the answers." John Peri

"Hotel room"








"Kate returns"

"Modern art images", "clever compositions", and gorgeous expressive models, John Peri deserves all these comments.

Living in France, John Peri figures beyond the most famous ones. Cake on the cherry, he never forgets to talk about his models, asking for the greatest respect. He's so right.

"Lady with the blues..."








"My neighbour on the second floor"

John Peri by himself :

"Any photographer who says he's not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar" Helmut Newton, 1995.

I don't think he meant this in the pejorative sense, but the ability to see and observe. What I photograph essentially is the "girl next door". I try to present the models as they are in private or how they imagine that they would be, when encouraged momentarily to play a more glamorous role. In both cases, they are showing a part of their personality that is usually not on display. It is a moment of self-revelation and discovery, and the models are sometimes surprised to have brought to the surface a side of themselves that is often largely overwhelmed by the constraints of everyday life.

"Those little moments"

The nudity that appears in some of these pages is superfluous. It is a means to an end and of no significance per se. There will be some that consider it gratuitous, but one cannot always accommodate to the lowest common denominator. Hopefully, a greater number will identify with the wish of these young women to capture a passing moment in their lives, before moving on again to the unending obligations that largely dominate our existence.








"For Anca..."



People are sometimes curious about the equipment used for these photos. I have a couple of NIKONS, one digital and one using film, each with a flash attached to the camera. In my view, this allows for greater mobility than with the techniques used by those that set up their pictures more carefully, and whose work I nevertheless follow with great admiration.

The models are all friends and those that they present to me, which become friends in turn. From time to time, I also ask a young lady that I meet in public to pose for me. Occasionally, they accept.

"Nathalie"

When making your comments, please take into consideration that the majority of my models follow these pages closely and do not like to have personal remarks addressed to their persons or their anatomy.

They grace us by allowing us to look at their photos. I think that we owe it to them in return to show some respect for their generosity. As fellow photographers, I thank you for understanding this, John."

"Jazz on a Summer Night"

Welcome Robert Triboli

Robert Triboli

 Art has little to distinguish itself from religion. Fundamentally they are both acts of faith and therefore subject to their own uncertainties.

"Yulia 198"
Art Model Yulia






"Isobel 3"
Art Model Isobel

Professional photographer from Sacramento, Ca, USA, Robert Triboli is a wise and devoted Photographer I admire since a long time. Like a very large majority of the artists featured here, his passion began really young. Always fascinated by the light, you can feel today how much he knows everything about her. As I choosed the pictures to illustrate his article, I found many wonderful shots that I invite you to contemplate right now !

Thank you Robert, you're so kind.  See you soon !



When I was a child I could feel light – not just the sensation of hot or cold – but light itself. I can'’t describe it to you, but I know I could feel it.When I was a child l would spend breezy summer afternoons lying under the vine-covered pergola in my grandfather’s vineyard. It was like being in a kaleidoscope and I could feel the millions of possible spectral permutations. It was rapture.

"Lily 158"

"Yulia 318"
Art Model Yulia

"Aedrea 277"

"Yulia 286"
Art Model Yulia

"Lipstick"
Art Model Yulia

With maturity I lost that facility to feel light. It was like learning the definition of awe and losing its meaning. It’s not that adults can’t feel awe ; they just don’t experience that knock the wind out of your guts awe that a child does.

I was a serious young man. I was one of those people who thought that discovering the meaning of the universe was possible. I experimented with a lot of systems (Eastern, Western, Middle Earth) in search of the Eternal Answers. For a while I even thought the camera would allow me to differentiate between what Takahara calls “the dreams that are true from the truths that are only dreams”. The camera ended up being just another system. Art has little to distinguish itself from religion – fundamentally they are both acts of faith and therefore subject to their own uncertainties.

"Stephanie 3"
Art Model Stephanie Anne

"Kristin 1"
Art Model Kristin

Older now, I concern myself less with answers. Instead, with a conviction that the universe is always presenting our senses with miraculous gifts, I have tried to foster receptivity and appreciation. I have tried to rediscover the awe and rapture I knew when I was a child.

Someday I would like to relive the feeling of light. I don’t know if it’'s possible to find one’s way back, but photography has brought me closer than anything else.

"Stephanie 249"
Art Model Stephanie Anne

"Kristin 2 16"
Art Model Kristin

"AP 162 2"

"S 21"

"Lily"

The great majority of my images include people. While I don’t consciously seek out children I find them in many of my photographs. Perhaps, if I can’t get back there on my own, I can follow them as they instinctually find those paths that lead one up into the light.

André Brito

André Brito

Contributing Artist since 2008.

Thank you André for everything.

Robert Wagt

Robert Wagt

I love his work. Robert Wagt is a dutch illustrator. I don't know him but I am sure that Robert is simple and funny. He wrote : I am a coffer-tester in the morning, I laughed, me too. Now, he lives in US. And he is happy, for sure :

Thank you Robert. Your blog is full of joyce and art. Du fond de mon cœur et avec gratitude, BRAVO l'Artiste. Ich danke Ihnen sehr viel.

Lost My Palette by Michael Vasquez

With the advent of digital photography I have lost my palette of colors, textures and hues. With the closing of Kodak so too it’s films, we have suffered lost so much its unimaginable. Both commercially and artistic values are gone and no one have produced the same type of films. From tungsten film, to high-speed film like Ektachrome with all its lovely grain patterns and depending on processing various tones and hues. Not to mention Agfa films with its own characteristics, I was just getting used to what to expect.

For many years I’d use these films like they were intended to, then I started using them for figurative studies for the different effects. My lab-guy asked me when I was cross-processing the films and wanted contacts, “what color do you want, I mean you could get anything”. I loved that flexibility to let my creativity go wild. I settled for skin-tones, get me the best skin-tones you can I told him. And skin-tones I got with lovely background textures and hues all in one film. As I used different films I got different results, some I like some not so much in this case or with this person. I’d just made that distinctions when I had the stroke and all experimentation’s turned to survival mode.

After two years of trying to get back to normal I had a friend come down and pose for me. She seemed as nervous as I was. I looked at that camera that I had gotten so used to, saw all those dials and setting, then the lens with more settings. 
 Add to that she was losing more clothes as we went along and getting more and more nervous. I had to get control over myself, subject and the situation in general. Then I had a physical reaction to her completely unbidden, I thought huh, followed by this is a model and friend, you are not supposed to have these. And then I thought that I was human and that this overall was a good sign and now concentrate.

 

Then I got that model/photographer equation, I remembered the creativity we had here, got 

myself back in control. The rest of the shoot seemed to flow naturally, because we were comfortable with each other I could concentrate on the camera and the model, I could see that we were getting some good stuff and I wanted to see on film what I’d gotten. That was part of the joy of photography in those days, the idea of what have I got here on film. Part of the magic of film was the unknown. I felt the magic of the shoot in me but I didn’t know exactly what I had gotten.

 Add to that the film part, what had I captured, what did the film look like and say about our shoot. 

Three or four rolls of film is a lot of exposures, in every shoot I look for that one or two remarkable exposures that tell the world a lot about you, the model and what the shoot was like. It tells the world what your eye is like, what it see’s, what questions do you have of the model. Not simply that she is naked, she has thought, feeling of her own..., what is she feeling, what has she experienced and what oh what is she thinking. The type of film that you use is important to telling part of the story, setting the mood if you will. The hue and grain add to the story you’re trying to tell. That was part of the message of film in my opinion, part of the craftsmanship of telling a story, part of the who, what and where of the messages you are trying to convey.

So I am going to miss my film. Those are important details I, we have lost for good it seems. I’ll take grain over pixels any day of the week.







 

Vada


An article by Michael Vasquez