January 01, 2003

A New Year Begins

6x7 cm film
New Year's Day was planned to begin with a photo session working in my front room with Krista but, after a mid-morning call, the venue was shifted to her apartment. It was unclear if Krista would actually be home in time to model so L_, her roommate, proposed that if Krista didn't make it in time, she and Elisabeth could model together, and if Krista did arrive, all three of the roommates could model. In the end, all three were available when I arrived, and with little preamble, we started working.
6x7 cm film
The fact that the light was coming from behind the models and flooding across the bed on which they worked pretty much limited us to poses lying on the bed. With most of the images produced, I worked looking across the lines of the model's bodies, the repetition of breasts, stomachs and hips. I'm usually pretty critical of the "compare and contrast" approach to photography, but in this case, it was pretty much the only viable approach.

I've only worked a couple of times with three models at the same time, and found it quite a challenging dynamic to work in. The visual complexity that is inherent in having so many bodies in a composition at a time is difficult to overcome. The most obvious solution is to create images that involve repetition and contrast to create a flow through the composition.
6x7 cm film
We finished up with a couple of sitting portraits, with the three models together against a white sheet. It was difficult to find a pose that worked all three models into the same image, but after some experimentation and shuffling of bodies, we closed the session with a portrait of the three of them together.7

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