5 October 2007

An Art or Nothing Moment

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Prudence White in Brussels studio space. Photo by Eric Francis.

WHAT EXACTLY is sexual art? Oh, we usually use the words ‘erotic art’, but I am this evening declaring them a euphemism. Or perhaps there is a difference. Maybe erotic art includes the depiction of something directly sexual. But sexual art is something where sexual alchemy went into the creation.

Here is the story of the tee shirt.

We met again some months later. She did not want to pose nude or topless. Or perhaps she did, but she was adamant in a way that made me proud of Austria. She also knew this would be disappointing, since we both knew I wanted to see her nude and planned to make some fun pictures while doing so. I am sure she got a jolt from the power of saying no. I did.

Yet I am sure our desire was in the same place – and her resistance (she said, “I am a prude”) could have extinguished the daring quality that photos need. I have leaned to work with resistance rather than against it. This was an art or nothing moment. I slipped into my room and came out with a new white tee shirt and sharp scissors. I placed them on the black tabletop and suggested she make herself a garment. She snipped away at the thin cloth for a few moments, stepped into the bathroom and came out looking like she was wearing a smock. The shirt kind of dangled off of her like a 3-D female clothes hanger.

Then she started playing with it, just as the light turned sweet. The shirt became a living thing, relating to her consciously. In truth, it was her puppet, and she could make it do anything. What it was going to do was present, display and engage with her breasts. With this boundary, she could expose herself.

Okay taking the photos was fun. It was also agonizing because the tension we were walking on was between me and her tits, but she was in command. Further, she had confided in me two explicit details of her habitual masturbation at the end of our first session. So I had that imagery in mind, and the vision of her face saying the words to go with it. I don’t think she intended revealing this to torture me. Maybe she just needed to share.

As a model, she did what she wanted. In other words, she did not need direction; I just followed her with the lens as she went about her motions, took a call, smoked a couple of cigarettes.

As she moved around and occasionally talked, she kept stretching the shirt in a myriad of directions. She would not reveal her nipples or areolae. She played an interesting game that I didn’t see till I was looking at the photos, which was to flirt as closely with revealing herself as she could, but without actually doing so.

The word for this is psycherotic. It is a kind of mental interplay between oneself and an experience, or play between two people, that is an intimate psychological mingling. Oh, and visual, because photography is just about all about looking and seeing – and showing. This particular showing came in the guise of concealing herself.

One result was, looking at the photos later that night and in the days after, I was gradually obsessed by her breasts and also by the woman who was engaging with them. I cannot say I liked her, but I felt deep, swirling compassion for her. I was in her world, I knew and understood her as the feelings fluttered through her psyche. I felt her slip on doubt and gradually get her footing again. Her face told the story. And that daunting, tentative beauty could send my mind reeling into pulses of surrender.

I think it’s fair to say she claimed not to like her breasts, and her reluctance to reveal them bare may have involved the fear that they are too small. In the process, she created pictures that make one’s heart thump a few times, and that exalt breasts, hers and those of all women.

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