The Monochrome Chronicles is drawing to a close, and for this episode I turn to a very early set of photographs, one which is deeply expressive and personal. The theme is the male nude.
Many photographers have created images of male nudes, of course, so why have I pursued this genre? I never asked myself that question. The series started one day, then expanded and continued.
From the start, I had little or no inhibition to overcome. Curious. As the series progressed, I felt myself giving more free rein to my imagination. And with imagination came freedom.
The other element is simply that the series was deeply rewarding. Enough said. Ultimately, this is my series. Mine alone. That other photographers have trod similar territory is immaterial. This is my series.
Overall, I see this series as a means of expression. Yes, the beauty of the male form is there, but this is secondary. Through this series I am expressing some inner part of me. As a result I’ve become more free behind the camera.
In its way, the series is an outgrowth of the world where I found myself living at the time. By the late-1990s when the series began I’d been living in NYC for 25 years. Earlier, the city had been a playground for gay men – or as the Village People proclaimed, “it (was) raining men.”
By the end of the millennium, sparked in part by my newly-found passion for black-and-white photography, the challenge of photographing the nude became another stage in the evolution of my sexuality. At the time, it was just another step in my development as a photographer. In retrospect, I see the male-nude series as a fusion of creativity and sexuality.
I see that I’m trying to approach my pursuit of the male nude from an overly cerebral perspective. That won’t work. Creative photography comes from the emotions rather than from the mind. Photography of the nude comes from the heart and from a location farther south. This makes it more difficult to describe the experience in words. Maybe I’ll just say that the experience has been highly rewarding and this shows in the photographs.
I guess I’ve put more “me” in this episode of The Monochrome Chronicles than usual. So be it. In a way, The Monochrome Chronicles as a whole has been autobiography.