First, the update:

At long last, I think I'm about done with the Club Photographs. I've enjoyed the images and the experience, but the Sign On website is talking about making it a once or twice monthly feature, and I expect that will take the edge off it for me. It's a little bit of a relief, too. I'll have to start looking for another interesting thing to do with the camera. First off, I am scheduled to photograph the Goth model that Fran mentioned earlier. (Fran and I share many models.) Changing the subject by changing the costume isn't enough though. I really need to change the way I see things. Another thing I'm playing with is the use of the Minox 8x11mm format. The format itself forces a change in the way of seeing things. Large format would too, probably.

Partly as a result of stuff done in the motel room in Billings, the pallet of colors I've used in the past is starting to grate on me. Some of the softer pallet work, done under mixed fluorescent/tungsten has kind of grabbed me. I've never been able to duplicate it in the studio, so there's some work to do to figure out what made it, and see if I can do it again. We'll see.

Now the Art and Tasteless Nudity part:

Helmut Newton said something to the effect that he didn't want to hear the word "tasteful" in referring to his photography. On the web, and probably elsewhere, "tasteful nudity" is jargon meaning that the crotch is obscured or not shown. As far as I can tell, that's all it means. It has absolutely nothing to do with "good taste" as a quality of an aesthete or art viewer.

The weekend after next I'm doing some exploring of my own limits of "good taste." I'll be shooting one or two models with the intent of finding my own personal boundary where "art" turns into "porn."

(Sorry about all the quotes. I'm emphasizing the popular definitions of those words, rather than accepting the reality that porn can be art, and so on.)

Because I expect to shoot progressively more explicitly, I should be able to go through the slides and at some particluar slide say, "That's gone too far!" After which I destroy the remainder and use the stuff I like up to that point. At least that's the plan. I'm kind of shy, so it's possible I'll chicken out way before I reach that point.

However, I do expect to make some killer erotic pictures.

To date I've been unsuccessful in pitching my existing erotica to any of the fetish mags. They've encouraged me to submit (duh!) after seeing the site, but I don't hear a peep out of them once the prints are there. And the prints have been kick-ass B&W work. The stuff I'm shooting in a couple of weeks is being done specifically for submittal, but this time I'm doing it right, letting my rep handle it with registered mail and return envelopes and everything. And we'll probably avoid the mags that seem to have kept my prints.

The purpose of the photographs on my erotic site is to make women wet and men hard. I've been partly successful in that aspect too. The bondage pictures seem to divide viewers into two distinct groups. Those that like them, and those that don't like the subject at all. Fan mail about that site is pretty evenly divided between men and women. I think much of the interest of women is that the photographs are specifically designed to show women that enjoy the bondage as something of their own choosing, rather than depicting them as victims. In a way, it validates a socially-prohibited form of sexual behaviour. (The part about men is easy, and not deserving of comment.)

I don't expect to do much erotic stuff in the future. While it's fun, my heart's not really in it. Finding suitable models isn't all that easy either.

-Don