the naked artist (preview)

I had and have several types of models and they are motivated by different reasons.

Some just model for the money. It's easy and fun: you go to a very centric address, undress, move around a little bit, and leave with some money like 2 hours later just for showing what you have with you all the time anyway.

Some do it for love (very few, and the older I get, the fewer, logically and sadly, but that's life: as my father used to say: if you don't want to get old you have to die young...). They are or were my girlfriends or lovers, enjoy(ed) a lot how I admire their sensual beauty personally, and then allowed me to portray them with my camera, often in moments of lots of joy.

Some model for the personal experience. It is almost unbelievable, but it's a fact that I have lived many times in those more than 40 years that I photograph naked women: even girls with perfect bodies are often full of complexes. The butt or the breasts are too big or too small, too round or not round enough, the lips of the pussy aren't symmetric, the waist isn't accentuated enough, the legs are too short, the nose is too big or small and the lips are not full enough, the hair is curly instead of straight or vice versa... and a large list of etc.'s, and I think: Jesus! do you know how many girls dream of looking as good and sexy as you do?!

Not that I shower these beautiful, in the beginning mostly quite shy girls with compliments or try to talk them out of their complexes, but they naturally sense that and how I like them and then can hardly wait until I finally edit the new pictures on which they discover how sensual they look and how wonderful and lovely their bodies are, often the very parts they were so critical of before.

In one of the last sessions before I got the flu, one of these girls told me, "Every time I walk out of here I feel so much more beautiful and confident than before." And sometime later they come back for another photo session, as a feel-good nurture for their self-esteem, so to speak, and each time they become more open, braver, bolder. And hotter...

Then there are those with a kind of a not lived out exhibitionism. They use the opportunity to show themselves completely free of their hottest sides and it is noticeable and visible how much it excites them to open up in a way that they probably don't even do to their partner. They know that I don't judge them for getting excited by their own erotic charisma. On the contrary. Once trust is established, they enjoy the photo sessions to the fullest. They know that I know very well to indiscriminate whether their excitement is for me or for themselves and the situation in which they can let themselves go.

Finally there are those who are interested in the artistic expression: like Julia.

Julia is an artist herself (she's an opera singer from Germany who spent a while in Barcelona as a music student).

After seeing my model search ad (back then I could still search models by ad...), she informed herself about my work. She liked my way of showing the sensual and erotic charisma of my models without the usual taboos, photographing their bodies only with light and shadow, angle and naturally evolving poses, without "optimizing" them afterwards by image editing. As a very self-confident young woman, who - of course - liked to look pretty, she refused to conform to the generally accepted standards and she therefore also liked my preference for naturally hairy models.

While she was interested in the artistic approach, she was also very open and had absolutely no limits in what she would show of herself. Some of the images I shot from her leave no doubt that it also excited her to show herself to my camera. Still and despite of the openness and sometimes exciting heat, our relation always stayed within the boundaries of a professional model-photographer relation.

I think I had 3 session with Julia during her stay in Barcelona before she went back to Germany to be contracted by an opera as a singer. Patrons who are here since a longer time probably know them from the gallery.

But exactly one year after the last session, Julia visited me again, just for another session. I photographed her with a hard contrast light in black and white: the series I uploaded right now of which you can see a preview here.

(There were some shots that went beyond the purely artistic. I'll upload them in a series for my Patrons of Special level.)