7 April 2008

Book of Blue: A World Within Women

link to this | View all from August 2007 »

Readers of the prior series, set in Vancouver, who are interested in the continuation, please write to me at egg -at -bookofblue.com.

I’ll reply if it’s clear that you were a reader of this series, which ran from December through mid-March and is now continuing.

BOOK OF BLUE began as a series of photos of women looking in mirrors.

One photo from an earlier stage of my work inspired the project, an image of my then-lover Maria Henzler created in Miami in the spring of 2000. This was one of the last photos in an earlier series called Luscious Photo, a more explicitly erotic project involving four models and two other photographers.

This photo of Maria haunted me in a stirring and evocative way; it entered my consciousness and would not let me forget its existence. In truth, the image and the experience of creating it with her put me in contact with something in myself that I did not know before. She was at that moment in a far-out erotic state, which was easy for her and natural to for her do around other people. In some ways she appeared to be reserved; in others, she could consciously enter a world with no borders at all.

I remember handing her the mirror so she could see herself. That is her gaze in the first seconds.

Empathy from that moment followed me for years, indeed, it took over as I slowly integrated it into every cell of my body through many experiences. The ability we learned, or discovered, to see ourselves absolutely unfettered, in the presence of one another, and to have that be photographed and seen by others, was for me a deep layer of freedom being made available.

With this came the ability to see without shame, and to look without judging the act of looking.

Many other hangups seemed to evaporate in the process. Something inside me gradually set itself free. Through the next phase of my life, something that had been choking me for a long time gradually loosened its hold.

Photo by Eric Francis.

FOR AS LONG as I remember, I have wondered what it was like to be, that is, to exist inside, the beauty that I perceived in women: the state of mind rather than body. From the outside, I would ache with the desire to make contact with what I saw and felt, as if it were separate from me.

As I developed the ability to communicate and mostly to listen, I began to figure out that what the women I knew, loved and yearned for were experiencing was often something other than I was seeing and feeling. This may be a gap that is more or less extant between all people; is there a way to really see through someone else’s eyes, or to feel through their feelings?

I would experience an exalted expression of humanity as a direct experience. They often perceived themselves as ordinary, and sometimes as striking and other times as plain or ugly.

Between the two states of mind there seemed to be a chasm that was not only wide, but incomprehensible and a little tragic. Getting to know women “as people” helped; certainly, that is demystifying. Yet it was still difficult to see through my perception and glimpse how she witnessed herself.

The question had begun to unravel with the Luscious Photo series. Three women I knew well and cared about deeply had been willing to participate in some exceptionally revealing photo sessions, often with mirrors present in the space. Photographing someone’s face masturbating or near orgasm (as opposed to play-acting, which we too-often see in commercial pornography) creates some transcendent images, but it has some drawbacks: for one thing, many women are at least initially reluctant to go there with a camera in front of them.

For another, it puts a sexual charge on the session from the beginning, something that does not need to be there. The Luscious Photo sessions were created by a small group of very willing friends; I wanted to do something that involved many more people and explored subtle states of mind that could be found around the edges of erotic awareness: states of self-awareness, what it would feel like to sense one’s existence, or to see a new vision of oneself for the first time.

Five years passed between the last of the Luscious Photos and the beginning of the Book of Blue. I was now working in digital instead of 35mm or medium format. I was also doing all of the photography, using much of what I had learned from my former collaborators, Neal and Maria, and what I had learned as their photographic model.

From the first sessions, there was a sense of discovery and adventure. Aimee, at the top of this post, was the first photo subject. She is a model and actor in Montreal. We did most of the photos outside, including some at the Canada Day parade with dozens of people watching as we worked.

The results were stunning: I felt like I could slip inside that space between what a woman looked like and how she saw herself. I could see expressions that were invisible looking directly at her without a camera or a mirror: the sensation of doubt, of searching, of discovery, and sometimes moments that looked like she was seeing herself for the first time. Some expressions looked like bewilderment and wonder; others seemed to be peaceful coexistence or self-acceptance.

In the photos, it often seems that thin, even transparent layers are dissolving gently, and the complexity of self-awareness is revealing itself in a way that seems to be mystical but is really human.

Photo by Eric Francis.

YOUNG WOMEN are intriguing, among other qualities, because the layers of their personalities are often packed so tight, it’s difficult to imagine they are there, including, it seems, for them. When someone “feels something but doesn’t know what it is,” especially about her own existence, that is what I would describe as the “packed layer” phenomenon.

As the Book of Blue photos progressed, those layers seemed to peel away gently. In witnessing women seeing themselves, I began to feel the ambiguity, the confusion and the quest for awareness that characterized so many of their psychic journeys. I gradually cultivated a quality in myself of holding space for this metamorphosis; of being as wide-open as possible when confronted with the awareness of another.

And I learned to look, and to see, both in the sessions and at the resulting work. In some images, I would see a child looking back. In the image of Nina, pictured above, I kept seeing a girl recognizing herself as a woman for the first time.

I can tell you that at this time in her life, Nina, the model above, was not truly comfortable being a woman. Being perceived as beautiful or desirable were alienating to her, and she seemed to struggle with the truth of being female, with its specific power, its attractive force, and the sense that she could not control the outcome if she let go into that quality of herself.

Here, she seems to be looking through a crack past the defenses of her self-perception, unsure of how to feel about it, but tentatively accepting the woman she sees.

Many people ask me about older women—where are they? There are some sessions in my files, and I’ll get to talking about them soon, with the photos. The age range of the project is currently 24 to 46. I love photographing older women; it is however generally the younger ones who show up.

I also get asked about where the men are; generally I’m the male subject of the series, though occasionally I work with others.

I BEGAN posting to Craig’s List when I visited someplace. Depending on the city, it was easier or more challenging to find models; the contrasts are always interesting. Sometimes the people who show up are professionals, other times, amateurs and often university students who wanted to model and were looking for a little extra cash. Others were friends or former lovers who wanted to do a session. Most possess what I consider real modeling talent, which is a kind of gentle sincerity and ease with the camera.

Mainly, the real art is how each reveals her beauty in her own way; with greater or lesser ease; being able to hold the space more or less comfortably; more or less selfconsciously. For many, a gradual seduction happens, as she works out the way she is going to reveal herself, and at times, her surrender.

Sometimes the models pose nude, others times they are dressed or partially dressed. Often I hear about the values involved in the choice to be dressed, or not, which lends insight into the face I am photographing. What surprised me at first was how willing so many women are to be photographed nude. I then began to figure out that it’s something of an archetypal desire to be photographed nude—something that many women think about, but relatively few do.

Sometimes the sessions venture into more adventurous erotic states. When they do, it’s usually a surprise, something that happens spontaneously, and it’s always got that feeling of it being not really possible, but actually happening. I focus on breathing and taking pictures.

With most models, the session and the conversation go on for several hours, so I tend to hear quite a bit about their lives, their relationships, their upbringings in places from Italy to Dubai, their sexual histories and preferences, and their sense of who they were or were becoming at the time. These are normally very secluded worlds, concealed even from lovers and therapists, sometimes revealed in diaries but often not for fear of being found out.

Through the sessions, there has been a phenomenon that recurs and is always intriguing. This is how the face looking into the mirror is at times so different than the one looking back out. Sometimes it seems like another person.

Whatever is revealed, one by one, women take my hand or take their own and walk us through their inner world, exploring their in-the-moment responses to their existence, and sharing as best they can some inner elements of their relationship to themselves.

When the model leaves, I am left misted in her presence, seduced, sometimes in love, always in a room doused in her psychic essence. And I have pictures that I can share with you.

Commenting is closed for this article.