 |
| Laura Faye from Peoria,Illinois, September 1983 in Las Vegas |
Today is 6 January in which I personally celebrate the Epiphany? Why? Read here.
I thought that I could write something that would be positive and the fact that at my age of 81 I can still wonder with delight at things.
I took this photograph of Linda Faye, from Peoria, Illinois in 1983 in Las Vegas at the first (and last) stripper convention called The Golden G-Strings Award.
I took many photographs including of the winner that happened to be my friend Tarren from Vancouver.
There is something that always makes me return to this photograph. It is not perfect. On the left you can see the back of another woman. And yet there is a poise and elegance in this woman that amazes me every time I look at it.
I know her name because my photograph was used in the Chicago Sun Times and she is named.
After I came back from Mexico City in October I wrote this blog of my inspiration to take street photographs there inspired by my respect for the work of German photographer August Sander. He photographed all the professions of his country for 50 years from beggars to Jews in 1938 you know would not live much longer. His primary talent was his respect for the humanity of his subjects.
Strippers in Vancouver were called exotic dancers and they were differentiated from the term burlesque dancers, as the Vancouver variety took all their clothes off. There is a term I rather like – ecdysiast.
Coined by writer and editor H.L. Mencken in 1940, from ecdysis (shedding or molting), from Greek ekdysis (casting off), from ek- (out) + dyein (to put on).
For quite a few years, beginning around 1978, I photographed often the Vancouver strippers. Many often cite men as mentors as the original mentor named Mentor taught Odysseus’s son Telemachus.
For me, mentors can be from all sexes including all the new modern versions. These strippers patiently posed for me as I learned to photograph them. Just like live drawing teaches painters how the body looks in different poses, taking photographs of a naked woman or man taught me to photograph them with clothes on.
Quite a few of the exotics that I knew were fabulous dancers, self-stylists, actors who had the self-confidence of Laura Faye.
Now this old man can look back at this image (lofty term?) of Laura Faye with the knowledge that I was plain lucky. I took the picture (notice the photographs on either side of that Kodak Tri-X roll) without knowing but there was something in me that pushed me to click that shutter.
I am sure that if I met up with Faye now I would be able to repeat that photograph, but this time knowing what I was doing.
