Visitors from Google

Since I put up a post that mentioned The Great Gatsby, I've had a lot of hits for people searching Google for "Gatsby's shirts," or something of that ilk.  People want to know why Daisy cries.  I imagine that most of these people are high school students who are writing papers for their English classes as was I in the period about which I was writing.  It is nice to know.  But I think about the confusion I am causing them if they stay on the site and read about my high school years.  It is not an audience I imagined at all when I began writing.  It is just another thing to consider.  

I also get a lot of hits from people searching for "Liliroze," my photographer friend in France.  I say "friend" because she was so wonderful when I got those prints, but we do not stay in touch.  I need to write her an email, I guess.  I sent her a Christmas card and she responded, but nothing since.  Yes, I will write to her.  

Lots of visitors come only for the photos.  Many are searching for nudes.  Those people do not stay long.  It makes me sad a little.  I don't know if they are disappointed in my photography in general or if they are only interested in seeing naked girls.  I know the nature of that, of course, but it saddens me nonetheless.  I like the bold honesty of portraits of naked people, but there is a lot of that on the internet. It is difficult to do well, more so than portraits of people with their clothing on.  Peter Gorman did a fantastic project that resulted in the book Naked in Apartment 7 that pictured women who answered his ad photographed in his New York City home.  Natasha Merritt's book Digital Diaries was the culmination her fascination with the new digital photography and her own graphic nakedness.  Peter Hegre focused his camera on his wife's intimate life in a most revealing portrait resulting in the book My Wife (and a divorce).  Around the same time, young women began exposing themselves in public in large numbers and the internet was full of smiling, healthy, seemingly happy girls flaunting the beauty and their youthfulness.  All of this (and more) at the turn of the century made "the nude" seem silly and redundant, though the works of Sally Mann and Jock Sturges continue have the power to inflame.

Still, people like looking at nakedness.  As long as we wear clothes, I guess, it will remain something of an exotic taboo.  

In truth, I'd like to photograph all of you naked.  I'll come to your house and stay awhile just hanging about and seeing what you do.  And then, after I've photographed you for a couple of days in the courses of your lives, we will make a portrait.  It will be a document of those days.  That is what I would like to do.  

I've rambled and strayed from my original purpose today, but it OK.  Everything is.