An Indoor Session with Victoria

6x7 cm film

The more I work with Victoria, the more I come to appreciate the gift that comes with her long term involvement in my work. When we first met, it was in such a casual, haphazard manner that I had no idea what would grow from that first session with her and Ingrid. As each session builds on the earlier work, the overall richness of the work we've produced increases by leaps and bounds.

Victoria and I have worked indoors with the white sheets as a setting many times, so this session was less about exploring a new approach then simply making new images. As such, the focus was more on Victoria as a person, then exploring the juxtaposition of her body and the space around her.

6x7 cm film

All that being said, the first image that caught my eye from the session was a composition focusing on her knee, and her out of focus torso behind it. A simple image, I was immediately caught up by the upward sweep of her hand, which pulls the eye back into the image just as it is being lead out of the frame by the line of the knee.

 Once we'd exhausted ideas in the living room, I proposed to Victoria that we finish off with a couple of quick rolls in the shower. Since my work with Aurora last fall, shower images stick in my mind and have made a new series of water nudes with L_ and Miranda. Though I've worked with Victoria more than any other model to date, we've never made shower images, so this seemed like a good time to start.

6x7 cm film

As with other shower sessions, the biggest problem was keeping the shower steam from condensing on the camera lens; for most of the session, this wasn't a problem - I wiped the lens off between rolls, but the entire last roll swiftly degraded to low-contrast mush which wasn't much use at all. Probably the best images came from the colour roll which kept a good level of contrast, and being 800 ISO, helped freeze the motion of the water as it arced along Victoria's shoulders.