Chandler Poses Indoors (Orono, Maine)

Chandler was the only solo male model I worked with in Maine. It is a very strange thing how hard it is to find men willing to model Nude; it is often a difficult decision for people to model for me...challenging their self-perception, and taking the risk they may not like what they see. The honest truth is that I think women find it easier to contemplate they may actually be beautiful, whereas men are raised to consider beauty as vanity, and frivolous.

4"x5" film

The first half-hour or so with Chandler was spent discussing this very thing, and how he felt about challenging it by exploring his body through my work.

The most interesting aspect of what we produced together was how much of it was interchangeable with the work I did earlier in the week with Leslie and Lisa. In one sense, all three sessions were bound to have common elements, having been produced in the same setting under the same light, but these are like saying the work is similar because it is in black and white. Rather, the work shares a visual thread in the representation of the bodies. There are images which would be interchanged between the sessions without any lack of continuity, or disruption of flow.

4"x5" film

Working predominantly with female models often leads people to think that I only photograph with women, or that my vision is tied to the female Nude. I do think that there are very specific issues attached to imaging the male body (a discussion in Art College with a student over males being too "blocky" for my work comes to mind) it is difficult to address or challenge these without models to work with. I have been fortunate in the last couple of years to have a small number of enthusiastic models, and Chandler plans to be in Halifax over the summer, so I hope to be able to push this work further, in the environment I thrive in, the rock-plains, weathered shoreline, and scrubby forests of Nova Scotia