#CreateArtNotPorn
Art_Nudes


By
By Scott Sullivan SCS Photography

and   Unbearable-Lightness [link]

  2012 May 18th

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Woman  by `Unbearable-Lightness


WOMAN
    "Woman, please let me explain,
    I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain..."
    ~ John Lennon

On December 8, 1980, Annie Leibovitz photographed John Lennon for the cover of Rolling Stone.  He insisted on bringing his wife Yoko Ono with him.  Leibovitz had no preconception at all about what she wanted from the married couple except she wanted them both nude.  As the story goes, Yoko said no to nudity, and Leibovitz later said a nude John "looked cold."  He curled up against his wife.

Viewing a Polaroid of the shot, John and Yoko exclaimed to Annie, “You’ve captured our relationship exactly.”  Five hours after the shoot, John Lennon was shot.

An image from that shoot became THE iconic photograph.  In 2005, it was voted by the American Society of Magazine Editors as the best magazine cover of the last 40 years.

Everything about that image has always fascinated me.  Five hours before his senseless and tragic death, Lennon appears prophetically vulnerable yet protective of his wife.  To be honest, I never understood his attraction to Yoko Ono with her stone faced countenance.  She always seemed to convey detachment.

Scott and I talked about shooting a version of the iconic cover shot for over a year.  Initially, we planned to shoot it with an African American model, but he failed to show up for the shoot.  Then we arranged for Elijah to create the image with us, but he wasn't able to get a flight this week on short notice.  Scott had just worked with beautiful Erin, and I told him, "You know what. Bring Erin and she can do whatever a guy can do - and better."

Our day-long shoot began with getting the anchor shot.  I asked Scott to share his thoughts about it, and last night he wrote:

    "When Carla brought up the idea I loved it.  Part of this term [in his fine art program] was learning about visual signifiers and iconography, and working on such a strong visual image as the one created by Annie Leibovitz was a real challenge.

    The fun part was to make the image something unique and create our own feel to it. We then had a lot of dialog about how Annie created it.  In the end, as the photographer, I just let Carla and Erin express themselves, like John and Yoko did in the original.

    It was a beautiful way to start our shoot, and created a beautiful bond among us."

Erin and I decided to wear brunette wigs as we are both blondes and wanted the dramatic framing of dark hair.  I've never really understood Yoko Ono, but after I also lost the love of my life to death, I developed a sympathy for her.  When we decided I would portray her in our recasting and I dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans, I immediately felt I was back in the the time of the iconic 1980 shoot.

I met the love of my life that same year.  As Yoko lost hers, mine came into my life.

It was much more difficult than we ever anticipated to figure out our body placements.  We tried everything, including propping my head with a rolled-up towel.  Scott stood on a tall ladder to get an overhead shot, and Erin and I took turns in poses that crushed my arm or her leg.  Beyond the physical challenge was the emotional one.

At some point, Erin suddenly said, "I really get John Lennon!"  When a model gets into someone else's skin, literally, you begin to feel what the person was feeling.

We referenced a less-iconic shot where John and Yoko both stared at the camera.  Erin's facial expression of John's vulnerability and protectiveness completes what the pose is saying.  I found it impossible to look as dead pan as Yoko always was.  Since it's my own expression, you will have to tell me what, if anything, I conveyed with that look at the camera.

The three of us decided the image should not be cropped like Leibovitz's.  The entirety of our physical selves seemed necessary to say what we wanted to say.  We better see Yoko's submission to fate in the cast-aside arm and hand in contrast to her set, grounded position that communicates her strength as the survivor of a great tragedy.  It was John's protective strength that saw her through an incomprehensible loss.  I believe we all learned a lot about love from recasting this work.

For me, the iconic image will always be about John and Yoko's great love for each other, what it means when the love of your life turns out to be someone of another race, and the tragedy of losing that once-in-a-lifetime person.  

From my own experience, I know an interracial marriage isolates you as a couple and makes you stronger together.  When the spouse dies, the one so fiercely protected suddenly becomes the vulnerable one.  As much as your love for that person remains a great joy, the sorrow and pain of the loss also remains.  Thus, I chose the the prefatory quote from John Lennon's "Woman" to explain what our version, shot a couple days ago, means to me.

More at [link]

#CreateArtNotPorn
Art_Nudes


by Founder Unbearable Lightness
Dr. Carla Johnson [link]




   
Un-Sinkable by `Unbearable-Lightness


    "You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

    ~ The Unsinkable Steve Jobs


What are you doing the rest of your life?  I've been haunted lately by all the misunderstandings of fine art nude models, the fly-by-night nature of the online world, and the little reward for so much effort.  It has been almost a decade since I first stepped in front of the camera.  For the first three years, I had one mentor, guide, friend, and photographer.  I learned a lot about the art of photography and its part in the brick-and-mortar world of shows and galleries.

Taking "the show" online was heady stuff.  Immediately I was asked to blog with a high-profile fine art nude model and worked with some of the best educated, most talented and experienced fine art nude photographers in the United States.  A year after my "debut," I was in France working with a well-known celebrity photographer and had my own blog, WHAT WE SAW TODAY [link] did some runway work, my work continued to be submitted by photographers to real-world venues, and I became managing editor for Carrie Leigh's NUDE magazine [link]

In February 2010 I shot with Carrie Leigh herself, leading to a featured layout in NUDE's Spring 2010 issue.  At that point, I knew I'd reached the pinnacle.  It was time to stop.

But I didn't.  I'm still going.  I've done more beautiful work with incredible people and enjoyed my blog and deviantART immensely.  Almost four years and some of my best work ago I began to work male model Fitness101.  The question of where we can take this "show" remains.  Every day I risk losing family, friends, and followers, and I have to ask, for what?

I've watched the fine art nude community, that flourished for years, thin out.  Some people disappear.  Some remain friends offline.  Some take another fork in the road and seem to improve their lot.  Some quit when the damage can no longer be justified or rectified.

What now?

I decided to revive my most-viewed image:  63,000+ views on Model Mayhem and another 15,000 since its re-posting on deviantART.  Dave has shown it at various festivals and shows and, since 2010, it has been a permanent holding of the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture in Seattle.

To me, "Everything, Including the Kitchen Sink" (new version:  "Un-Sinkable") has always been a tribute to survival.  During the 180+ frames Dave shot for this series, I lost self-consciousness and drifted back in time.  I became the baby bathed in the kitchen sink in the faint light coming through a window before my drowning and near-death experience at age three.  It's about my innate love for the purity of light and water.

It's about resiliency and the ability to immerse yourself in life because Death has already swept you away once.

What am I doing the rest of my life?  Whatever I want.  Steve Jobs knew he was dying when he said, "You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish."  I know I will be dying for the rest of my life.  We all are.


What are you doing the rest of your life?
The north and south and east and west of your life?

More posts by Unbearable Lightness at [link]