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INTERVIEW Renée Jaco Jacobs bs
The Nude Issue YEAR - MMXII
Aaron Kennison; Br Bryon yon Paul Paul McCartney; McCartne y; Gar Garyy Mitchell; Klaus Kampert; Kamper t; Mike Cary, Thie Thierr rryy Magniez
The Nude Issue Welcome to the fourth issue of PH to showcase the nude. As a contributing photographer to this issue, I thank Patrik Jandak for providing a “sanctuary” for quality nude photography. With a few international exceptions, most mainstream photo magazines shy away from presenting artistic nude work. A review of the images in this issue wil l leave no doubt that the art of the nude is as vibrant as ever, ever, and the timeless appeal of the female form remains as inspirational today as it has throughout the history of art.
Cover Photo by Aaron Kennison
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Bryon Paul McCartney Gary Mitchell Renée Jacobs Aaron Kennison Thierry Magniez Klaus Kampert Mike Cary
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We’re sure you will enjoy this issue, and hope you will share it with your friends and fellow lovers of photography. They can nd us online at phmag.ca or “Like” our page at facebook.com/phmagazineonline Gary Mitchell Co-editor
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PH Magazine © 2012 Jandak Photography, All Rights Reserved. Image copyrights remain with the respective photographers. Images used by permission. editor : Patrik Jandak co-editor : Rodrigo Bressane co-editor: Gary Mitchell design: art_photo
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ISSN: 1924-9424 Toronto, ON, Canada 2012
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Bryon Paul McCartney Acclaimed American commercial and ne art photographer Bryon Paul McCartney has recently returned to the United States after living for the past 11-1/2 years near Zurich, Switzerland. Despite the fact that McCartney started his photography career in Europe eight years ago, he decided it was time to move back home to be closer to family. “I am denitely not saying goodbye to Europe. I intend to visit often and to keep in touch with my contacts. Of course, I will be back every year for my workshops in Tuscany, Italy, and eventually I will be adding other locations.”
Currently based in southwest Florida, McCartney is teaching photography through the “In One Instant” gallery in downtown Fort Myers, and organizing events and workshops at Boller Brothers Rental Studios, near Southwest Florida International Airport. McCartney is a self-taught photographer and video producer. His commercial work focuses on advertising, corporate and editorial assignments that help successful companies communicate about their people, processes, and products in images and lms. His clients have included Alstom, Chevrolet Europe, Dow Chemical, Sulzer, and Thompson Reuters. In the past few years, client work has taken him around the world with projects in 15 cities. In contrast to his commercial work, McCartney is also a ne art and erotic nude photographer. The images you see here are from a project exploring the sculptural and dynamic form of the gure in motion. He worked closely with dancer and Cirque du Soleil performer Giulia Piolanti on the project. “Giulia is a dream to work with, she will never stop until I am perfectly satised. As a performer, she is so conscious of her body and how to control every movement and detail,” says McCartn ey.
McCartney has won several awards for his artistic photography, including rst place and best of show selection in ne art nudes in the International Photography Awards, and rst place in the Prix de la Photographie Paris. To learn more about the artist and his current projects, please visit his website at www.bryonpaulmccartney.com. You can follow his tweets at www.twitter.com/bpmccartney and subscribe to updates via his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/bpmccartney.photographer
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Gary Mitchell For Gary Mitchell, photography is a celebration. “In my work, I work to celebrate the strength, grace and beauty of the female form, as well as exploring vulnerability and expressions of intense emotions. In many images, the contrast of gure and surroundings is emphasized by the contrast of the images themselves.” Originally from Dayton, Ohio, Gary grew up as the son of an avid photographer and learned both the skills and appreciation for photography from a young age. After years of shooting advertising work and concerts, in 2006 he turned his focus to ne art nude photography celebrating the beauty of the female form. “I keep it simple—I feel it gives the images a more timeless quality. The individual nuances of each model are more than enough to work with. I often concentrate on contrasts — light and shadow, rough and smooth, traditional and unexpected. Black and white is really my ‘native language’ and for me it adds the right emphasis to the light and forms and textures.” His work has been published widely including B&W Magazine, Carrie Leigh NUDE, PHOTO (France) magazines, and Erotic Review magazine in the U.K, which also awarded him their 2009 Readers’ Prize. He was invited to contribute to The Mammoth Book of the New Erotic Photography, and appears in other collections, including The World’s Greatest Erotic Art of Today – Vol. 2. and another upcoming project edited by Maxim Jakobowski. He has exhibited in shows in Ohio, Florida, Vermont, Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Canada and France. “I’d like to thank all my models for sharing their beauty with me, and especially the women who appear in these images: Georgia, Katla, Kelsey Dylan, Mina, Heathe r Elisabeth, Katie Damron Potter, Rebecca Lawrence, Nameste, Lucy, Katie, Alexis, and Char Rose (index page).”
www.garym.com or facebook.com/garymphoto
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Renée Jacobs
PH – Renée, you studied Photography/Journalism at Pennsylvania State University — was photography always your dream job? RJ – I never thought of it as either a “dream” or a “job.” It was a passion. It was as vital as oxygen.
PH – When did this passion begin? RJ – High school. I would take the train from the suburbs to Center City Philadelphia for my rst darkroom class. I was hooked.
PH – You don’t see photography as job. It has to be hard to make living with this approach, isn’t it? RJ – Everything is hard. Manual labor is hard. Nursing is hard. Everyone is struggling. I have to do this and I’ll do it as long as I can.
PH – During your studies you received the Robert F. Kennedy Photojournalism Award, and after you nished college, you freelanced for newspaper
and magazines such as The New York Ti mes, Philadelphia Inquirer, U.S. News and World Report. You had a promising photojournalisti c career, but decided to attend law school at Lewis & Clark Northwestern School of Law, what made you to drop photography and switch to Law? RJ – After I graduated college, I started working on a photojournalistic story about the Centralia underground mine re in Pennsylvania. What I thought would be a weekend magazine project evolved into me moving into the town for 6 months and spending the next 3 years working on a fulllength photo & oral history book project that was published in 1986 — “Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania.” Slow Burn was re-issued in 2010. As a result of that project, I became very interested in environmental issues. The next thing I knew, I had a scholarship to study environmental law at the best program in the country for that discipline and I packed my bags and headed to Portland. It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop shooting. At that point, I thought I could do both. I obviously had a slightly unrealistic expectation of what law school was about. 34
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PH – After practicing law in Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, you came back to photography and in 2006 started to shoot again, this time a different subject than photojournalism. Why did you decided to become full time photographer? RJ – Let’s just say I had enough of the law and the law had enough of me at that point. As the song says, “I fought the law and the law won…”
PH – Do you think that taking a break helped you when you came back to photography? RJ – Absolutely. My whole focus was different, no pun intended. But most importantly, I had life experience that was complicated and that fed the ame to shoot. PH – So you became a ne art nude photographer.
What is it about nude photography that interest you the most? RJ – After all that time practicing law and all its confrontation and hard edges, I needed to immerse myself in beauty. I wasn’t even aware of it at the time. I certainly could not have articulated that or even known it was important for me as a balm. I had been a federal court civil rights and constitutional law litigator.
PH – So it’s beauty that attracts you the most about nude photography? How do you describe beauty? RJ – I don’t. I can’t. Beauty is so ephemeral, such a product of an individual moment and experience shared.
PH – In your opinion, is it advantage for you to be a woman photographing women’s bodies, or do you feel that male photographers h ave an advantage in this eld of photography?
RJ – I think there are both men and women doing extraordinary photos of women. And I think there are both men and women taking horrible photos of women. I think the only “advantage” is where a photographer—regardless of gender—has a strong enough relationship with their subject to allow the 35
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woman to be completely, effortlessly honest. I am a big believer in letting women tell their stories and letting them drive the level of eroticism in the work. It does neither of us any good to have the model feel uncomfortable. More than anything, I think they feel, understand and deeply appreciate that I’m not judging them. They have stories to tell and I want to hear them. It’s an incredibly joyful thing.
PH – How do you choose your models? RJ – A hodgepodge of ways. Oftentimes, they nd me. I’ve had women commission me to do private shoots from all over the world. I’m always astonished at the different ways they nd me. Friends of friends. Online. The incredible woman that served us hot chocolate after a very cold shoot outside in Paris… two days after she served us that hot chocolate, we were running around Paris on Christmas day doing nudes all around the city. And she’d never done nudes. We probably shot 3 more times on that trip. And, true to what usually happens and what is so rewarding, we are still in touch, I consider her a friend and I’m dearly hoping we get to shoot again. So Rosy, if you’re reading this…
PH – Your work has been awarded and exhibi ted worldwide. How would you describe market for nude photography? RJ – Fickle. We are so inundated with images these days. And more than most other genres of photography, people gravitate towards certain nudes for all sorts of diverse, deep-seated reasons. Again, it’s difcult to articulate but people know what captivates them instantly. Photographic “analysis” comes later for nudes, if at all.
loathe the phrase “boudoir photography” and I’m not really fond of “ne art nude” either.
PH – Do people sometimes compare your work to any big names in photography, or do they look at your work not knowing it ’s you and say this can be such and such photographer? RJ – Sometimes. Often, people coming across my work for the rst time think I’m a man. Occasionally, people think I’m one of the models. My biggest collector accidentally picked up a box of vintage Westons at Kim Weston’s place in Carmel once thinking they were prints I had made for him. But it was a driving rainstorm and they were in a similar looking box. We all had a good laugh when we realized that mistake. But I’m sure that’s about as close as I’ll get to having my work confused with a master photographer. PH – You said you are not fond of term “ne art nude.” Do you feel that nude is not ne art? RJ – I nd when people self-describe their work that way, it’s too easy of a short cut. It’s not particularly humble.
PH – You visit Europe quite often. What difference do you see between North America and Europe when it comes to nude photography? RJ – I only really have Los Angeles and Paris to compare. Shockingly, both cities are probably equally difcult in terms of bureaucracy and the silliness that seems to pervade ofcialdom wherein photographers are viewed as terrorists. But hands down for me, Paris inspires me. The women, the architecture...it’s ridiculously romantic.
PH – How would you describe your style? PH – Besides Paris, what else inspires you? RJ – Nonjudgmental. I think that sums it up as well as I can. I’m not one for assigning labels or elaborate technical discussions to my work. Although I do
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RJ – Women, light, music and the moment. [continued on page 40]
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PH – You photographed in Paris and the result was “Mes Petites Femmes de Paris.” Can you tell us more about this project? RJ – Well, that book is still very much in progress. The title may change as well. Since I was very little, I dreamt of Paris. I went and I did some shooting. I went again and did some more. The next thing I knew, more of my life was in Paris than in LA. I became intrigued by the idea of what Paris does to women. So the project expanded way beyond simply Parisian women. Women have come from Norway, LA, London, Italy, Brussels—all over—to be part of the book. It’s what Paris does…
PH – It seems like you start with simple ideas that gradually develop into long term projects. Is it better for you this way, or do you sometimes plan a long-term project all the way from beginning to end? RJ – It’s an extension of the way I shoot. I want to hear what women have to say and I never presume I know what the hell that will be. So I’m open to go wherever that discussion takes us.
PH – It seems l ike European models want to come and work in USA and American photographers love to go and photograph in Eu rope. If you could compare European and American models, can you point out any differences? RJ – I can’t really speak to that because it’s a question that goes more to “pro” or “agency” models. But everyone I speak to seems to want to be somewhere else. LA people want to be in Paris; Parisians want to be in NY…the grass is always greener, I suppose.
PH – What are your plans to near future? Any projects we can look forward to? RJ – I have some projects coming up that are so wonderfully exciting that it amazes me I can’t even sleep until they’re completed. First, I have a
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monograph of work edited by Jock Sturges to be published by Alexander Scholz at Galerie Vevais in Germany. There are no words I could possibly come up with to encompass my joy and thanks to Jock and Alex for this opportunity. The books that Alex does are magnicently crafted….true works of art in and of themselves. And Jock is simply brilliant, kind and wise. Spending time with him working on this project was extraordinary. He’s got an amazing family. He and his wonderful wife, Maia, welcomed me and his two little girls are so whip-smart and beautiful. That he would take time to work on this with me is simply an incomparable gift. I get to meet Alex in June in Germany to work on all of this. Of course, I’m also nishing up the Paris book. I’ll have some work in Taschen’s next erotic photography anthology and waiting to hear the details for another anthology which the editor, Maxim Jakubowski, has asked me to be a part of. I have a body of work that’s very secret at this point. Taschen is considering it for a full-length book, so we’ll see. It’s still very much a work in progress. And, amazingly, a friend has invited me to his house in Saint Tropez at the end of June to have free reign and stay and shoot with as many models as I can bring for a week. Needless to say, this is a very different life than I had as a lawyer.
PH – What is the most important thing you can recommend to young photographer that is interested in nude photography? RJ – It depends on how “young” the photographer is. Too young (and I don’t mean just under-age) and the photographer doesn’t have enough life experience to have a clue what women have to say. I suppose it’s not an age thing, but a life experience thing. But regardless of age, I suppose the advice would be the same…shoot what makes you happy, what takes your breath away. Why bother with anything else?
www.reneejacobs.com
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Renée Jacobs Renée’s work has won awards and been published around the world. She is the recipient of the prestigious 2008 International Photography Award for Fine Art Nude (the Lucies). Magazines that have featured her work include Silvershotz, Adore Noir, Fine Art Photo, Nude Magazine, Photoicon, B&W Magazine, Focus, FHM Germany, Esquire Turkey and numerous others. Her two calendars in 2009 and 2010 went to #1 on Amazon. Her interviews and photographs of Araki, Lillian Bassman, Shelby Lee Adams, Douglas Kirkland and others have been featured in magazines around the world. Her book of Paris nudes, “Mes Petites Femmes de Paris” should be available towards the end of 2012. Taschen will feature her work in the next “New Erotic Photography” and Galerie Vevais in Berlin will be publishing solo monographs of her work, both also set to arrive in late 2012. Her early photojournalism included assignments for The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and many other newspapers and magazines. She received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Disadvantaged and her work is in the permanent collection of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Her solo monograph, “Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania” was originally published in 1986 and re-issued in 2010 to favorable reviews in The New York Times Review of Books and photo-eye. After a 15-year detour as a civil rights lawyer, she returned to photography. “My journey through nude photography is highly motivated by the fact that the genre has always been male dominated. Many people looking at my work assume I’m a man and I think that’s very telling. But the reaction of women— models, subjects and viewers—has propelled some of the most interesting dialogue about my work,” says Renée. “My desire to embrace and understand the relationship between photographer and model led me to interview and photograph Charis Wilson, Edward Weston’s former wife, shortly before her death recently at 94. Charis was astonishing in discussing the view from the other side of the lens. And of course, not just anybody’s lens, but Weston’s. One of the great mysteries and ongoing discussions always seems to be about how much of the image is the photographer, how much is the model. Charis’ view about that changed over time. Initially, she couldn’t really see herself in the photos. Much later in life, she did. That’s one of the many fascinating things to me about this type of work. I don’t think I know the answer, and I’m sure it will change over time, but more than the photograph being about me or the model, it increasingly feels to me like it is—at its core— really about the moment.
http://www.reneejacobs.com/
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Aaron Kennison I have been photographing the nude for more than 25 years. My rst experience was in a small hotel while serving in the military. The response to those rst images encouraged me to continue to explore the nude. I consider the nude to be the pinnacle of aesthetic challenges. My style has grown over the years, while being faithful to the photographers who inspired me, including Peter Gowland, Marco Glaviano and Jeanloup Sieff to name but a few.
After a long hiatus through the 1990’s I again returned to photographing women, naturally leading to rediscovering the nude. By this time in the early 2000’s the ability to work with a much larger, more experienced and diverse range of women allowed me to explore the nude as never before. I have a fascination with contrasts. For me contrast is more than black or white; I nd the most meaning in contrasting textures, colors, shapes, forms, and ideas. When I create contrasts in a scene I feel there is a special beauty to it. Contrast can invoke both tension and balance, and even contradiction. My work with the nude form explores these themes. The pure beauty of the human body I feel is a perfect counterbalance to the contrasting elements I frame in my photographs. I respond in a visceral way to the way light interacts with the environment, whether in the studio or on location. The light guides me, inspires me, and pushes me to capture it. It’s a game that we play; I am always chasing the light hoping it gives me the pieces of a story to be told. When it does and the contrast is right, I simply cannot wait to see the result. The photographs shown here feature the nude primarily in natural settings, where the simplicity and familiarity of the human form contrasts the wilderness. With the tness models that I sometimes work with, I love the extra contrast of their strength, which I nd very beautiful. It’s not the typical view of the female body, but still very feminine. I’m looking forward to creating more images like these this year.
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Thierry Magniez I think it was the feeling of magic that I had in my youth when I saw a picture appearing in the developing uid that rst aroused the wish to capture the world around me with my father’s Foca Sport. Ever since then I have taken photographs and developed them, but it has only been in the last few years, since the emergence of digital photography, that I have really engaged in what has become a passion, a means of artistic expression and even a profession. Encountering the woman who has become my muse and partner has also crystalized my urge to to work in nude photography. My sources of inspiration are in Jeanloup Sieff, in Dominique Isserman or Paolo Roversi via Jean-François Jonvelle or Francesca Woodman. Enjoyment of developing and printing has remained from my initial love of photography. Most of the photos presented here are from a series entitled “Itinéraire d’une Femme libre” which was on show in Arles in 2010. For my part this series brought a change of perspective: Takala, my model and my partner, can be seen in the photos, and she also presented her own photos. My view of her, my entering into moments of her daily life or staged scenes, where the natural light is highly important. I am currently working on a new nude series entitled “Eve et le paradis perdu”— a series which examines the place of the woman in the contemporary society. I see photographic art as an indivisible whole. It begins with thinking out a project, staging it, doing the shoot and nally implementing it in high-quality enlargements and ne-art prints.
www.thierrymagniez.com
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Klaus Kampert Born in 1953, lives and works as a freelancer in Duesseldorf, Germany. As a photographer he is self-taught. After working for many well-known photographers in the advertising eld, he established his own business in 1981 in Duesseldorf. His main interest is people photography, focusing on beauty, portrait, nudes and dance. He works for leading advertising agencies and companies but also indulges in artistic photography. Many of his images, especially nudes and ballet dancers have been printed in international publications and are highly sought by collectors. Membership in Bund Freischaffender Foto-Designer, BFF ( leading german Photographers’ association ) since 1984. My work is mainly concerned with the human body. Still, I do not consider my images to be classic nudes or erotic photography, although these genres may have an impact on my work. I am not interested in showing beauty as an outward phenomenon. Rather I would like to present the human being as a whole: Body and mind united. By picturing nakedness in an image, it is to reveal mind and emotion, not only showing the body as such. Among my models, especially the ballet dancers, are those who succeed in expressing this wholeness in a particular manner. Their bodies bespeak the constant pursuit of beauty, grace, achievement and perfection. It is my intention and my passion to display this to the viewer.
www.klauskampert.com
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Mike Cary Born Kansas 1961. I can’t remember exactly when I rst became interested in photography, but I can remember the reason: the little black and yellow plastic 126 camera that I received as a Christmas present one year. My interest or rather love of capturing (or to put it hon estly, my attempts to capture) the beauty of the female nude didn’t start until 30 something years later after taking a refresher course in photography. The course ended up being mostly about studio lighting. For the rst several years of shooting I mainly concentrated on shooting glamour and studio style nudes, only later nding my love of natural light and working outdoors. Over the past number of years I’ve worked with a mix of digital and lm equipment, sometimes using them side by side, sometimes using one or the other for several months or years all depending on how I felt at the time.
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