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| Joanne |
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| Salem |
The Platonic Essence that Makes a Woman be a Woman
Perfection Beyond Plato's Cave
A few weeks ago I read Susan Sontag’s posthumous book On Women which she wrote in 1975. Not much has changed for women since then. As she points out, “Old men have character. Old women are ugly.”
My relationship with women, because I have been and am a portrait photographer, has been an unusual one. For reasons that escape me, about a year after I had married my Rosemary on February 8, 1968 I photographed her in the nude. I was much too shy to go below her waist. To this day those portraits, where Rosemary is looking straight into my lens have that (innocent?) have that Platonic essence of what a woman is.
The word Platonic not capitalized is now the common use of it and it has all to do with a relationship that does not include sex. I like the word capitalized as it narrows down in my portraits that desire to delve into my subject’s soul/essence.
By 1977 in Vancouver I started getting frequent calls from women I had never met who wanted me to photograph them. They liked to use the expression, “I want different photographs.” I soon figured out they wanted to be unclothed. Since 1977 I have amassed about 800 files of these women. The calls now are perhaps no more than twice a year.
Two of those early photographic sessions stand out for me. One was a receptionist at Vancouver Magazine. I was new at the game but the pictures are not bad. The other was a woman who worked at the YWCA. When she called me she said, "I want my body to be photographed before gravity sets in."
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Vancouver Magazine receptionist - Kodak B+W Infrared Film
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| YWCA instructor |
Having red Sontag’s On Women I now look back on my photographs and I can at least point out that none are cheesy boudoir shots and none are pornographic, by my standards. I once tried to shoot pornographic and I was unable to as I realized that pornography involves bad taste.
Now with my life waning at 83 I want to keep taking photographs of women but with the new standards of this century (not predicted by Sontag) of having the woman be who she is. I would assert that if a trans woman contacted me I would happily do as they would please me to do and reflect who they are.
I am placing here two photographs I took in my past. One is of my friend Salem licking milk from a dish like a cat in my studio. Is this demeaning? Is it funny?
Quite a few years ago I participated at a group show at the then Exposure Gallery. The show's topic was "Erotic". I photographed two different women with my camera centered on their faces while they were having a self-induced orgasm. I chose five pictures in a row with the one I thought was the important one in the middle and framed then. I was astounded when several women I knew came up to me at the show and asked, "Alex why did you not ask me?"
The other portrait is of Joanne who faced me with a stark eye contact. The picture is a result of an Ektachrome slide I shot pushed. Even though some chest shows I think that the portrait is of a woman who is proud of being who she is.
It is an essence of who she is.
