Morning Dance (2010)

Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar. -Helmut Newton

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]We, photographers, like to talk and behave in public as though we’re all about the art. We’ll extol the virtues of natural light as though it is the holy grail of photography. We’ll compare our work to that of truly great artistic masters as though anyone will actually give a damn about our work once we’re dead. We try to take an academic approach to what we do and find some philosophical justification for every shot we take whether it actually exists or not. To talk to some photographers, one might think that it is possible for a photograph, the right photograph, to solve all the world’s societal problems.

What really makes me laugh is when a young photographer who never had a chance to actually meet him attempts to invoke the name of Helmut Newton as though they were good buddies. It almost always happens during a conversation about natural light, and how they’ve  “studied” his work and apply his “philosophy.” I value the time I had with Helmut, whether working or just having lunch, like no other. He certainly had much to teach and opinions about everything. But, you know what? Helmut was every bit as real as you and I and the exact same struggles and challenges we face were those he had to tackle. Want to know what Helmut was really like? Try this on for size:

I say to a person, I want to see you naked, and in my head I say, Well I would like to fuck her but the reason I don’t is because I’m scared to gets AIDS or something…

Helmut really struggled with finding the line between what was socially acceptable and what wasn’t. He tended to blame his German upbringing. Even though he contributed to Playboy for some twenty-odd years, he had a tendency to sometimes go too far, to be too provocative for even a men’s magazine. He claimed (magazine publisher) Hugh Hefner once told him to shoot something nice, not that “kinky stuff you do for French Vogue.” Helmut also despised anyone calling photography art and one might want to duck if they even uttered the words “good taste.” Those were two things that would get his temper up in a hurry.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Want to know the real power of natural light photography? It gives the viewer the feeling that they’re actually present. Art nudes may be popular with the intellectual crowd because of the studies in form and light, juxtaposing muscle and tissue with highlights and shadows. Let’s not pretend, though, that there isn’t a salacious element to what we shoot, especially when we do it in color and especially when we do it with natural light. While I may want to proclaim the artistic value of today’s photo, and I do believe it has more than a little of that, don’t think for one moment that I’m not aware of the base appeal found in the fact that it is ultimately a picture of two people who, as far as we can tell, are fucking.

Stop and think critically for a moment. When digital photography started putting “real” cameras into the hands of more people, why was it so much popular among young men than it was women? There have been many women, such as Eve Arnold and Annie Leibovitz and Diane Ackerman and Diane Arbus, who could shoot circles around any male photographer. Why didn’t more women jump at the chance to pick up a camera as quickly as did young men? Easy: young men were less interested in the art and more interested in the possibility that a camera might be an easy way into a young woman’s pants. The same answer explains why more men give up on chasing a photography career after two or three years. A camera is not an aphrodisiac.

After 30 years of this mess, I still love photography and still prefer natural light but don’t think for one moment I don’t consider how “sexy” a photo is before I post it. I watch the statics for these pages carefully and you can be sure I’ve noticed how much more attention is paid to a nude photograph versus a non-nude. Tuesday’s photo, as lovely as it is, received less attention than any image the past 30 days. I’ve all but stopped posting landscapes because they’re often ignored altogether. What makes natural light photographs popular? Because they’re the best thing next to being there.[/one_half_last]