Lady Lazurus

"Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style" ~Jerry Saltz

Natalie

Milk. It does a body good.

Jezz

The following quote is from a NY Times article that I read recently:
"No organ is more promiscuous than the eye, and no appetite more insatiable than the hunger to look. These truths go a long way toward explaining the preoccupations of a culture whose interest in imagery is defining."
I could easily have a lot to say about what I feel regarding this quote. It is probably best to just leave it here on it's own, though, since the reason I like it so much is that it sums up many vague thoughts that I have- and so well in just a couple of sentences...

Li & Carl

Photographing Li and Carl was one of the first really explicit girl/guy shoots that I've done, and it is still one the the most intense. While I've since done shoots that are perhaps more explicit, this set the benchmark for me on the type of intensity that I'm looking for lately. I often give a little direction as to what I think will work before shooting, but I don't recall saying anything to them before shooting- I just picked up the camera and started looking for angles. Well, I guess that I sometimes tend to perhaps make doing these shoots sound simpler than it is. I am constantly moving lights around. I'm also constantly thinking of making sure that these images are raw and uncensored, while striving to be anti-porn at the same time. Not that I have anything against porn, but it is what it is- it's a definitive formula for a practical use. I'm always trying to go against the formula and beyond to rise above and create something more genuine, to let people see more possibilities in sexual imagery. There are plenty of amateur photographers trying to pass off what is essentially porn as fine art- especially with the advent of digital cameras. One can even walk into an art gallery and see erotic work that is essentially, or basically, porn being poorly passed off as art. I want to get a visceral reaction from viewers, change perceptions, or ultimately have someone say that my images are like nothing that they've seen before...

Jade Vixen

Jade Vixen is a very well known fetish model, who is also an old and dear friend. Some of my most memorable images were created with her, although they have usually been fashion or vintage looking images rather than raw and erotic. There are several good reasons for this, despite that she has a very edgy and uninhibited persona. For one thing, she typically tends to be in control and dominant (or wants to portray that in her images), whereas my erotic images tend to portray a submissive with some wild abandon. She also has an exquisite collection of latex and vintage clothes- so we've usually gravitated towards showing them off.

Sylvia

I've been doing different versions of this shot for as long as I've been shooting, which is about 25 years now. It usually does not work, as hands on the face photographs typically look either stiff, forced or fake. Often, they're absolutely painful to look at. I always think of the hand on the face scene in Napoleon Dynamite! What makes it work are the hands and their owner- the combination of photogenic hands and someone who knows how to bring them to life. Hands can be just as expressive as facial expressions. Hell, they can be even more so- think how much sign language can convey. Human hands can paint the Sistine Chapel, pluck a guitar, maneuver surgical instruments, chisel a David, forge steel, and write poetry. They can grasp, scratch, poke, punch, feel, sense, evaluate, hold and mold the world around us. No other species has appendages with such a remarkable range of capabilities. And yet I can count on one hand how many people out of everyone that I've photographed have amazed me with their hands...

Miera

Bettie Page tribute. Deviating a little bit from my own style to create a more authentically vintage look. Actually all that I did differently than usual was add some scratches and some vignetting on the edges, but it works.

Lauren

Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar.  ~Helmut Newton

Holly

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. ~Imogen Cunningham

On posing...

I don't like when models pose. When I see a model start to pose, I have to start on my whole spiel about how I don't want them to pose for me. While a seasoned poser can lend themselves to a great image, usually it's just simply superficial & soulless at best, and cheesy & fake at worst. It's easy for me to get what I'm looking for out of a neophyte, but an experienced model can be a different story. Kitty (second image down) was one of those who was apprehensive at first to my demands to just keep moving without stopping to think about it, but she quickly came around- by the end she said that it was the most interesting and refreshing shoot that she had ever done. Indeed, movement and spontaneity are the most important elements to my more recent style of shooting...

M & S

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Holly

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more you it tells you, the less you know."

~Diane Arbus

Devorah

It makes me happy when I can incorporate movement and have it come across effectively. It's more difficult than it seems, at least for me. It's something that I wanted to capture for as long as I've been shooting, but it's only recently that I've been achieving it.

Lady Lazarus

There's something about this that moves me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It looks different than anything else I've shot. Perhaps because I don't shoot backsides often, or at least not well. Perhaps it's that the figure appears to be floating, due to the angle and the lighting- it just seems a bit weird...

Percolate

When someone hires me for a boudoir shoot they typically tend to gravitate towards imagery that is more glamorous, which is fine- I can understand that. Often they see some of my work that is more edgy and raw, and they ask to go in that direction. Invariably, though, I notice that women hiring me tend to steer clear of rope bondage. These two images, though, very often get a very positive reaction- "Oh I want to try that!".  From my point of view, it's really the same thing as the rope bondage- but the lace instead of rope somehow makes it much more elegant and refined. I can't help to be amused at the fact that there is such a fine psychological line between the lace and the rope. Rope= scary, but lace= classy.

Untitled

This is a very early photograph of mine, yet it is also a very personal favorite out of everything I've ever taken. It was an unusual paid shoot- a strip club owner hired me to take pictures of the girls to hang on the walls. It was not a big mainstream club like some on Delaware Avenue, though- it was a small seedy place in a less than safe part of town. A limo came and picked me up and took me there- an important detail, since there was no way I would just find and/or walk into a place like this. I was the only white person there, but instead of being out of place, I was treated royally due to the fact that I was the "Photographer". I spent hours walking around shooting anything and everything in this den of iniquity- seriously, it was much more raunchy than your typical go-go bar. I had an idea to make a sort of studio set up in the back, where I did some more formal portraits- and this was one of the results. I think that it has a very timeless appeal. It could have been shot in the Cotton Club in the 30's, but it also conjures up the 70's Superfly era at the same time- whereas it was actually shot in 1993 in the heart of West Philadelphia. What makes this image for me is the combination of her jovial smile and the complete pathos in his eyes- youthful beauty paired with weathered age.

Grace

I first met Grace when she just turned 18, and she had already been collecting vintage lingerie and dresses for quite a while. She would buy it on ebay- often wear it for a shoot, re-sell and buy some more. It really threw me that someone so young would have such exquisite and refined tastes. She is also one of my favorite artists that I know- she was already doing very strange and genuinely original paintings in high school. In fact, her style has not really changed that much- and that's a good thing. Grace is one of my favorite models to shoot with.

Katy

She is the bee's knees. Get it? Sam Goody got it.

Isabella

Lovely details, such as the little bit of dress.

Sonia

Wonderful soul to the eyes in these- something that I've always tried to achieve, but it's much easier said than done...