Effects

Sometimes you can take a picture of a normal object and manipulate it to create something impressionistic or abstract.

Echo Lake

These again are ancient. The strips below this post are recent, although I've been growing my hair very long in the last year and don't have any good extremely current pics. Still, I modelled for a class today (which inspired me to come back to post here) and the body in the "strips" post is the current edition.

Echo Lake is on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. When these were taken there was an area that was a generally accepted nude swimming area. I love places like that. I went back some number of years later and in the same area everyone was wearing clothes. I wonder whether another bit of clothes-freedom has been lost.

Strips

Sometimes I make these strips, each a variation on a theme...

Life Model

When I got a little serious about art a few years ago and started taking classes and attending live modelling sessions I thought I would be holistic and experience life on both sides of the easel, so I started modelling as well. It's interesting to see the different ways people would record me. I still model semi-regularly. The first time I did it it was a strange sensation to be the object of study, like knowing what it's like to be a pretty girl. Now it's second nature. It's a kind of meditative experience to hold a pose for minutes.

Truro

Pure vanity. Just because I looked buff. Truro Massachusetts is one of my favorite places in the world.

Top of the World

This is from Montana, Glacier National Park. One of the ways I've maintained a nude autobiography is by taking pictures on most of my vacations. I'm missing a couple of years due to lost hard drives and such.

Object

This one was done in the spirit of the blog title, self as object.

The "David" Originals

These are the picturess I cropped and tinted to make up the David collage which is on my (other!) blog. Just for historical accuracy. In the Aquinnah picture you can see the red and grey clay baths, which for environmental reasons are no longer accessible. Aquinnah is the Wampanoag word for Gay Head, sometime in the recent past the PC police renamed the town because I guess injun is less bad than gay. It was given its anglo name by Samuel Gosnald who first charted Martha's Vineyard. These vivid reds and greys and some tans run up the face of a sheer cliff which is instantly recognizable from its "gay" colors. The one in the mirror was in a shack on Nantucket. I believe I took it in recognition of the fact that I wouldn't always be 26 and I might want a relic from the period.

Genesis

I recently reconnected with a long lost girlfriend who shares an interest in the human form and created a private blog in which to share some pictures and narratives from the long period during which we hadn't known eachother. I realized that by putting some context around pictures taken over years and continents I had created something of a naked autobiography. And I got to wondering about how (whether) it would be perceived by the world at large. So, whereas the prototype for this is personal and private, this blog will be public but anonymous.

This collage of David is a bit of hubris I put together not long ago. The photos of David I took in Firenze, the photos of me are from other places and times -- cropped and tinted to present something of a challenge to the giant slayer.

I'll post the originals later. I will show my face here, I'm not shy about my identity, but as I'm taking no actions to inform anyone I know of this I expect that anyone who stumbles across it is a stranger. I hope that this doesn't come off as vain, and maybe only a little exhibitionistic. These pictures are taken over a long enough period of time to make me no longer young, but even in middle age I work occasionally as a figure model for art classes, so I haven't completely fallen apart. Sometime soon I'll post a "this is me now" set.