there are some photographers in the local scene who do a lot of nudes. I love figurative work, when done interestingly, but the main purpose of some of these images seems not to be the figure, but having a naked woman in the image. I can’t exactly explain why i feel this, but often the figure appears to have been an after thought, or perhaps it is the environment that is the afterthought? In any case, they feel contrived to me. Stuck in my mind were some images from a recent series done out at the great salt lake. One with a woman with her back towards the camera, her head and shoulders draped in a scarf, holding a clay water jug. Others of women, again with their backs towards the cameras, with large parasols covering their body to the waist. Technically, many of these photographs are fabulous. Artistically, they do little for me. Not that i am an expert, but i am opinionated.

And so, in a conversation with sop about a year ago - a conversation about the single-gendered nature of nudes in the area and the lack of humor in art in the area, etc. - i said this: “It would be so fun to go out to the lake and shoot some male figures. Get one of those plastic umbrellas, the half-dome ones they have for kids, and just play… Oh! and then maybe one of those 5-gallon emergency water jugs and …” Before i finished the sentence, i had a model.

Four weekends ago we went out to the lake.

Three weekends ago i developed the film.

The weekend before last i started printing.

Last friday i picked up my matts and realized i needed to print larger.

Friday night i printed larger.

Saturday i toned.

I am not sure i am achieving quite what i wanted yet, but for now i am out of time. Saturday and Sunday were the submission dates for a juried exhibition that only comes about every three years. After framing sunday morning, i went down to find the museum closed. Apparently the printed material had an error, the submission dates were Friday and Saturday - no Sunday.

And yet there was hope - a note on the door : “If you are here to submit artwork, please call our office on Monday.”

SOP took our work down today, they were accomodating as the mistake was theirs, and the images are being juried as i type.

Not sure if they will be viewed in the spirit in which they were intended, or even if they are if any will be accepted. But that is okay, if nothing else, they have made me laugh… And there is another show accepting submissions this friday anyway.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 14:55 and is filed under photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.