The Kindness of Strangers

I never planned to work with models when I started.  I wanted to shoot people off the street the way I always had.  When I got the studio, I thought to meet them and ask them in where I would make pictures of them, just portraits of strangers.  But way led to way, and I started a project that used the technique I had developed for Polaroid film.  And that gave me ideas.

Ideas are dangerous, of course.  First you have them, then they have you.  They take over and begin to live your life for you.  Or so it now seems.  And that is how I began to work with "models."

The models were strangers to me, too, so I felt the same thrill I always had working in the street.  Maybe not the same thrill.  I don't wish to mislead.  But nervous excitement nonetheless.  A stranger walks in, you go through the weird first minutes, explain what you will be doing, size up the person, etc.  Nothing is ever as it seems and everything is a surprise.

The "models" who show up are "models" in many different manifestations.  Some actually make a living at it, working for agencies, shooting for features in magazines and newspapers and for advertising agencies.  Some only supplement their incomes by modeling, often doing promotional work.  Some are new at it and want to do agency work.  Some might, I guess (I am no judge of this) and most won't.  Some come and are just living a dream life getting images of themselves for posterity.  Some are totally delusional.  Some are visual artist who model for others and have no other aspirations.  Some are athletes or yoga instructors or dancers.  Some. . . I haven't a clue.

It doesn't matter to me what they look like.  I am not going for an idealized image of humans.  I am not advertising anything.  I don't need to sell a product.  So for me, they are all wonderful people, collaborators helping me make a story.  The working models have their own ideas and position their bodies in expert and practiced ways.  At first I have to tell them, "no, that is too modern, too sexy."  They laugh and tell me they've never had a photographer tell them to quit being sexy before.  But they get it quickly and begin making the awkward poses that go against everything they know.  In truth, I can only control them for awhile, and when I run out of ideas, I let them do what they do and get a sort of thrill watching them practice their craft.  And often enough, I use one or two of the images.

Others of the models are not so practiced and are truly awkward.  Often, this is great.  For me.  But as I peel the Polaroids and lay them on the table, I sometimes feel a great let down in them, for the pictures are not the sexy, flattering things they had hoped for.  "Oh, these will be great," I tell them, "just what I'm going for.  Don't worry.  Wait until you see the final product."  And it is true, but I hate those sad moments and try to make some pretty images that I can lay out on the table.

The way I work is slow.  Really slow.  We may take forty pictures in two hours.  This, of course, leads to a lot of talking.  I tend to ask many questions about who they are.  I have always been fascinated by other people's lives.  Eventually, a story of them emerges for me, perhaps not very accurate in the larger version of who they are, but something that suits me.  And when we have finished shooting and they pack up their things and leave, I am happy I got to meet them.  Every time.  Of course since I live with their images, I think of them and the stories they told again and again.  I have established a relationship of a kind.  One in which they do not really partake, you know, since when they leave, the only time they will think about me is when they realize I have not sent them the pictures I had promised.  Obviously, we are not sharing the same relationship with the other.

Still, almost all of them want to work together again, and often enough, we do.  For that reason, I am able to avoid any paranoia about my talent or my personality.

Sort of.  There is a fear that is not paranoia but normal and natural fear that either the images do not say what I want them to or that they do but others don't see it.  I doubt that most of the models I work with do.  I say that only because the work they show me which they've done with other photographers are cliches, pretty things done with technical skill, images a viewer can look at without challenge.  Often enough, I envy the technical things I see.  I am working with cliches, too, of course, but I hope in a very self-aware and ironic way.  But these are not ironic times, for irony is subtle and the public taste now favors more overt sarcasm, and if the ironic point of what I am doing is lost, the images I make are very susceptible to the other.  There is that, and there is the fear I have, too, of indulging myself in this image making and dressing up and prancing about like children.  To what end?  As Matthew Arnold proposed, to educate and delight?

As the last project ended, I was weary of it all.  I was silly, I thought, to have spent so much time and energy on that while so many things in my life went neglected.  I didn't want anything to do with any of it any more.  For months, I thought about growing up again (I had once) and getting on with the serious business of life.  But a notion began to take form insisting on articulation.  All those stories I'd heard had great merit, I thought.  They need to be told.  And I thought, "I'm the fellow to do it."

The project took hold.  And I have. . . very tentatively. . . begun.  I will tell you about it after I have worked on it enough to know that I will be able to sustain the force I need to see it through.  It is both exciting and enervating at once, for it requires much on my part.  And I wonder if I have that much left in the tank.  Even if I do, though, I don't know if I have enough talent to tell the bat shit crazy stories I hear.  And as always, other commitments (like paying the mortgage, buying groceries and gas and electricity. . . and cameras and lenses and films) leave me little time.

But I have embarked.  Now I will depend, as Blanche Dubois so wonderfully said it, upon the kindness of strangers.