Notes

The Muse

My former profession was fashion photographer, more accurately, fashion and beauty photographer. Fashion photography exists because fashion photographs sell clothes and magazines very effectively, while "beauty" pictures advertise cosmetics and fragrance. A few fashion photographers have been able to make pictures that transcend this advertising aspect and express something personal, but whenever I tried it I alienated everybody, everybody, that is, except the models. They liked my photographs better than my clients ever did. Maybe one reason for this was because they were actually featured in my pictures. The girls were the focus, not the garments, face paint, hair sculpturing, and the decor on and around them that they, ironically, were hired to enhance.

The top Fashion photographers are the ones most often commissioned to photograph celebrities, the idea being that they are the best at making people look good, and maybe it is thought that a famous person should be photographed by a famous photographer. Hollywood film actresses are the darlings of the fashion magazines; in turn, they and their movies are well-served, of course, by the exposure they get from the magazines. I've shot a few of them, as well as singers, dancers, musicians and writers. But the young women of the New York City model agencies were whom I worked with almost everyday. I loved to photograph them. They were often breathtaking to behold through the view finder, and I was at times profoundly moved by their beauty. To my way of thinking, to behold beauty is to behold the divine. It is to be witness to a realm that is beyond comprehension. It is God speaking to you personally.

The photographs I'm making now advertise no product and promote no person. I've tried, since leaving New York, to create advertising photographs for people, but without fail it is as if the gods show up for some fun and mischief and sabotage the shoot. Some of my commercial-less pictures have made their way into magazines, others are in galleries or in people's homes, maybe someday there will be a book, but the reason I make them is because I'm forever drawn to. The girls I put in the pictures these days, my wife Caroline and I approach on the street, or we meet them somehow or another. They are hard to find! No experience is necessary. In fact, nowadays I prefer those with little or no experience, because, even though the pictures are to one degree or another staged, what I'm after is spontaneity and naturalness, as opposed to the practiced moves of a seasoned fashion model, or to the perfected personalities of a savvy movie actress. I usually pay a "modeling fee" and make everybody prints of the best shot(s).

My dictionary defines a nymph as "a mythological spirit of nature imagined as a beautiful maiden inhabiting rivers". The entry below that says: "CHIEFLY POETIC/LITERARY a beautiful young woman". I think that what I'm trying to cast in my pictures is akin to a mythological goddess, similar, but not the same as those wonderful, voluptuous Hindu or Buddhist goddesses of ancient times, or like the delicate beauties painted by the great European masters before painting changed into something I can mostly not relate to. From what I understand, the goddess reigned supreme in most cultures before Christianity, Judaism and Islam came into being. God then became a man. In my pictures, at least, I'd like to give the goddess back her natural and divine role. After all, she is the creator and nurturer of life, and her instinctive, unfathomable essence has inspired much of the greatest art throughout the ages.

Children and the Candid Shot

It could be argued that the purest form of people photography is the snapshot. For me, the uniqueness and beauty of traditional photography as a medium is that it catches life as it is. To put it differently, whatever is in front of that lens when the shutter is tripped is exactly what you get. Photographers may well know ways of altering the reality of the moment, but the camera, as they say, doesn't lie. This is not to say that a photographer can't imbue his photographs with his own feelings or with his perceptions of the world. Editing, what pictures he chooses to print, gives shape to his style and life to his vision as much as does his use of lighting and composition. And then, of course, he is free to point his camera at just about anything he likes.

I started pointing my camera at kids about ten years ago, as my time as a New York City fashion photographer inexorably slipped away. To my surprise, I was well-suited for this endeavor. I'm in a wheelchair (from a skiing accident), and I'm just the right height to photograph children. What surprised me too was how moving the pictures often were. Spontaneity and vibrancy were immediately there, of course, especially when I could catch them unawares, but added to that was a profoundness apparent in the little creatures I have rarely seen in photographs of children. They were often contemplative or seemingly far away from their surroundings.

It has taken me me a long time to get together a body of pictures of children because I'm shy about aiming my camera at anyone except those who willingly choose to be photographed. As much as I admire and love the photographs of the great photojournalists, I could never have pursued that profession, and only rarely can I shoot on the street as did the master of that metier Cartier-Bresson. At the critical moment, when I should have my eye to the viewfinder, I more often than not leave the camera hanging from my neck fearing that I will offend my would be subjects. Having said that, candid photographs are obviously wonderful recordings of our busy human race. Through the unadulterated photographic image do we get to look back through time at the true characters and actual goings on of our ancestors. And through the rare photographs that reach the level of art, do we get to behold their souls.

Steven Falconer

Ventura, California, 2008