Eric and I photographed yesterday. A Nude shoot with my seventy year old mate. We have been photographing together for thirteen years. He came to me as a life model asking to learn how to be a photographic model. I remember saying, I don’t think I know what to teach you about it, but am happy to work it out.
So it started.
Photographing with the same person for 13 years taught me so much about photographing people and the nude in particular. I learnt about using the light to reveal the figure and steering the eye. I learnt how to work with someone. I learnt how the body works in art. It is no wonder that we draw the Nude at art school as a foundation to painting. If we sort out the underlying structures, when we add clothes we can easily sort it out.
Photographing an old man has its challenges. I am not so much into capturing his rawness. I am a seeker of beauty. Trying to express what’s right in the world. Adding good rather than tackling the bad, the ugly or sad. So to create these works takes hard work and hours of collaboration. He poses, I look, ‘change’ I yell, he poses again and hopefully I see. Ahhhh, something is there, so we adjust and strengthen the pose. Eventually the pose, light and scene come together to make a cohesive and strong whole.
Then I have to really work hard while he holds the pose. He loves holding the pose for me as I work, knowing it’s worth the discomfort.
Despite all that learning, we had fun. Actually, keeping learning and fun in the same sentence is something every good teacher needs to aspire too. We traveled lots, we photographed an inordinate amount of locations and poses. We experimented, took risks and tried.
We have had many adventures together and photographed in so many locations. When other photographers get all excited about their work in some secret new location in the Blue Mountains, Eric sends them a photograph of him in the same location in a beautiful artwork that we created previously on one of our adventures.
Our friendship has developed steadily. For exposing oneself without the security and protection of clothing brings a certain closeness that is hard to define and capture in words. There have been the moments of fear, horror and shock.
During our friendship I have managed to inspire Eric to pick up the camera and create. Over these years his work has grown and developed. Now at every shoot he has his camera too.
Our conversations deepen as the years pass. A strong bond has now formed. We always remember the classic shoots. The first one, when we first started. Ones where the mist came in thick and we could work next to the road without getting caught. His favourite is to remind me of is the snow, hail and sleet while he posed nude on some frozen rock. How Len had to rug up because he was getting a bit cold.
Eric is very good at talking to strangers, and this takes away much of my nerves when it comes to photographing him somewhere we really shouldn’t be. An open and friendly attitude of sincere apologies seemed to soon having the security guard helping us. Rather than the usual moving us on.
Shoots are always punctuated with Japanese food.
This particular photograph was beside the road. Mount Hay Road at Leura. My TAFE students drove past and stopped to see what I was doing. They had been canyoning. We had covered Eric up with a sarong, and know one was any the wiser as to me photographing a naked man in the trees. Though I am sure there were some questionable looks thrown our way.
Someone commented on Facebook the other day that they were over nudes in art. I replied with a fisty I am not. I am only getting my head around it. The nude is ubiquitous with fine art for many sound reasons. The fine art nude is not to be automatically associated with the male gaze of fashion or pornography. It’s interesting to note that consistently my greatest fans of the nude are females, who celebrate the beauty of the human form.
The nude challenges us with the naked mirror it holds up to ourselves. It strips away time and adds a timelessness and classicism to our view.
It is also our teacher.
The biggest question it has to raise is what can we learn from it?
Esoteric Eric. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2019