I’ve never been one for pure nakedness. I love to see clothing on a body. It says so much more about personality and mood, and that’s so much more attractive than plain physicality. Not to mention how well it can emphasize the curves on a woman’s body.

Some of my underwear has sharks or skiers on them. I wonder what that says about me.

I tell her she’s beautiful. Over and over again. As often as I can.

But she shakes her head, and says I only think so because I love her.

It’s true. But would I love her any less if she didn’t have those soft, innocent eyes? If she didn’t wear her hair up, or down, or curly, or straight, or different every time I saw her? If her body didn’t curve so distractingly when she lets herself fall into me?

It makes me wonder if anyone sees the same thing that I do.

To me, her beauty is obvious, not subtle in any way.

So I tell her, over and over again.

Sometimes I think she’ll start to believe me if I say it enough.

She is the light, I am the prism.

She is the words, I am the voice.

She is the viola string, I am the vibration.

She is the bud, I am the bloom.

She is the life, I am the living.

She is the heart, I am the pulse.

She is the medium, I am the message.

She is the water, I am the waves.

The woman I’ve been looking for my entire life.

Her name was Christine. She was thin lipped. Frail limbed. Not the least bit camera shy, as she pulled her shirt up to expose a breast, like she had fallen on the grass this way and the folds in her clothes rearranged themselves on her body.

Here she is on a horse in the night. Here she is, grim-faced, cradling her son. There was a scar on her neck from a suicide attempt years earlier, and through a series of photographs, you could see the scar heal.

For seven years she was married, before she successfully jumped to her death from the 9th floor of an apartment in East Berlin.

This is someone who understood his art, his morbidity, his need to capture her suicide in a frame, then publish the image of her body on the pavement, looking down from the 9th floor, along with insouciant pictures of a teacup, a playground, a tank, three plants.

And as soon as I had found her, she’s gone.

Should I be happy that she existed? Should I be sad that she’s gone? Should I be punished for comparing the women I’ve had to her?

Is this painful, or beautiful, or both?

I love this dress.

I love the colours. I love the palette. I love the stripes. I love how they go from thick to thin.

I love how she wears it. I love how it hugs her body. I love how it leads the eye along her curves.

I love how I love this dress.

Usually I don’t post this many pictures of one shoot of a single person because there’s often a lot of redundancy, but Paige has a thousand expressions that must be captured and shown to the world.

There’s a complexity in her face that betrays the layers and layers of her character. By turns ebullient, hopeful, playful, and uncertain — every frame is different. I feel like I could write an essay on her look alone.

Best viewed on large and on black, of course, so click the pictures. Commentary at full size.

One of the photographer’s greatest assets is the nude model. Without clothing, there’s no chance for someone to outwardly project their personality. Only a human stripped to the bare essentials, naked to the world as the day they were born, pure and without bias.

This was an exercise in mixing monochromatic colour channels to bring out details such as cuts, scars, stubble, and goosebumps. Also, some good practice in composition and framing. Best viewed large and on black (so click the pictures¹).

And, of course, it doesn’t hurt if he looks like he’s been carved out of marble.

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I feel utterly intoxicated.

With a hammer and a ladder, we hung my pictures tonight, carefully deciding where to place each one to balance the colours, the orientations, the shapes, and the concepts.

Amongst the wine and the wood, the kids and the colours, we stopped to admire the art in the house. Adrienne dropped by to share her latest graphic poems with us, along with her alcoholic findings. “From The Desk Of” Penelope was written that day, dense and deep, full of details taken for granted. The words must write themselves, I thought.

Misun and I seem to share a kinship through our appreciation of expression, something I’ve never had with my friends. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but I’ve always felt like they can’t relate to me when it comes to emotions or creativity. As I seem to be the creative brother she’s always wanted, and she seems to be the supportive sister I’ve always needed, we agreed to be adopted siblings.

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In a recent interview, Frédéric said, in his ebullient Parisian accent, that one of the reasons he wanted to open the Salon is to promote dialogue and interaction. Perhaps it’s this hunger for dialogue that connects us. He also mentioned to me he was stressed out about being interviewed; being put on the spot made him freeze up. I told him I had the same problem with pretty girls. “You’re affected by beauty”, he said, something I knew, but not something that everyone understands.

I left, feeling like I was a part of something wonderful, something greater than myself.

A reader sent me this letter (posted with her permission, of course):

Almost a year after I had managed to leave the island behind, the room, the floor, the sheets, the rape – I accidently ended up on your blog entry called “The beginning to the end” and it changed my world. It awoke feelings inside of me that I had for a years time tried to suppress and scare off so that I never again would open up to anyone, never trust anyone and therefor never end up in the same situation again. At that time, all men were a potential threath to me.

Reading and watching that very blogentry have had such a great impact on my life and will to become ‘myself’ again, to reclaim my body and to dare to move towards feeling and being ‘beautiful’ again. Your video granted me the sensation of how sincere, pure and giving love and affection truly are when it’s shared and not forced. It made me remember blocked out feelings and situations and it made me start to long for something that I had completely shut out for over a year.

I have been wanting to write you this email for quite some time, but I havent been sure of myself or if the “new” me (which is the old in fact) would survive and I didnt want to make this into a sunshine story if it really wasnt – but after many downhills, trials and tribulations, theraphy and social interaction, I am there, I am back and I am standing strong again. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I made the right choice, for me. I have always been lifeloving in overload and even if I am only halfway there yet, it is still enough to keep me going.

I still watch that video every now and then, to remind myself that anything is possible and that you can recieve “help” from the most unexpected sources. It used to make me cry, now it makes me smile instead, isnt that beautiful? I know perfectly well that you never meant to post that entry for me, but it helped me in one of the most difficult times in my life and for that I will be forever grateful. Thank you.

Yours sincerly,
Emma

I’m at a loss for words.

If you gave me the hypothetical option of photographing anyone I wanted, I’d ask if it could be someone who had already passed away. If so, I’d choose a Byronic hero like Mikhail Lermontov, or another one of the 19th century Russian Romantics, or even Lord Byron himself.

If I could choose someone living though, I’d choose Tiana.

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The art of longing’s over, and it’s never coming back.

—Leonard Cohen, Death of a Ladies’ Man

They ask me why I’m crying. I tell them the song is too good, not to cry.

They ask me why there’s a bounce in my step. I tell them I’m in love, and I don’t care.

They ask me if she’s taken. I tell them she is.

They ask me if she knows. I tell them it doesn’t matter as long as I feel this way, and I’m never letting go.

They ask me, “Why her?”.

I tell them she makes me happy without trying.

I’m not going to deny it anymore. It’s always been you. But I understand, you don’t need to explain, I get it. Work, our lives, we’re busy. You’re about to go off on a grand adventure. And I can see why you think that a relationship with me and that adventure are mutually exclusive but I just want to say my piece. Getting lost with each other could be the greatest adventure we’ve yet to embark on and I just want to say that if you want to get lost with me I’ll always be here perpetually lost without you.

I read his letters, some dated, some titled with expressions of forlorn hope. Familiar words that cut me to the bone.

They’re beautiful. I never knew he was capable of such poignancy, such emotion. It fills me with envy.

Sometimes I just want to be noticed. Not often, but sometimes late at night when I’m thinking about the “what-ifs” of the day. Being too obvious would be dangerous though and so I slink away, back to my cave to think, rather than do. Such a coward, I loathe myself. You’d say no, every rational scenario I’ve played out ends with that.

He’s trapped, perpetually lost in the thought of another. This time, I’m on the outside, looking in. It’s all new for him, and I can hear in his voice how much he detests it.

His angst is unbecoming. He’s not a writer, but he writes these letters, hoping the catharsis will save him. I’ve been here enough times to know that it’ll be alright, but that there’s also nothing I can do to help, so I resign myself to helplessness.

And now I’ll be pre-occupied and jealous for the rest of the weekend. Me, jealous and not trusting myself to speak, me. Not me, anymore. This love is like leprosy, pieces of myself are falling away. It’s ablative.

Yet his tone is so unfamiliar, so unlike him. Me, he writes, Not me, anymore. He doesn’t even believe it himself. The sanguine friend, reduced to an enfeebled state he wants desperately to cast aside. Even with the wisdom I’ve gained, it still surprises me how attraction, infatuation, love can make one so irrational.

In these letters he shares his feelings, wholly, as if to say, “Here is my heart. Please hold it gently”. The words would strip him bare if he spoke them to her, so he writes them where no one but me will read.

A prisoner, he lives in this cage, caught between the will and the risk of expressing to her how he feels.

Crashed at Aaron’s last night, and my god how beautiful the sky was at his place. His unblinded windows were filled with an intense gradient, and it really emphasized the stark nakedness of the trees that were barely peering above the horizon. It was the brightest night of the winter, and the room was filled with orange-pink light. I lay on his couch, wishing I could keep my eyes open for just another second longer before I succumbed to exhaustion.

I finally printed off my picture of the glasses on the sill and framed it, which is quite something considering the fact that I have barely any decorations in my room. I was lucky enough to have been given a nice metal frame as a Christmas gift a few years ago, but have not had a decent picture to put in it. Since I don’t have a career going yet, I try to keep a minimalistic amount of furniture until I can afford to invest in long term sets, and for now the picture rests on my coffee table. I wanted a physical manifestation of the image because of the poignancy it evokes in me.

Every time I look at it I can’t help but think of the morning sun seeping through the cracks of blue venetian blinds, of the flourish of green leaves outside the window. I think of lying on a swollen bed with my back to the wall, noticing the brightness of the sun fill the room, talking well past the break of day. I think of sleeping next to someone, holding her head, drawing on her face, seeing the early light bring out the sunflowers in her eyes. I remember how we’d go to sleep, placing our frames on the windowsill before succumbing to exhaustion.

Perhaps I’m so affected by this image, this bittersweet memory, because of how much I relish the act of sleeping next to someone. One of my favourite parts of a relationship is being able to hold someone before losing consciousness. I suppose it betrays a vulnerability, a certain unparalleled intimacy, and vulnerability is something that I’ve always been attracted to.

But how odd it is that this may mean so much to me, yet mean so little to another. That even someone sharing this experience with me may think of it in passing, as some ephemeral experience, not worth remembering.

What do we take with ourselves when we fall apart? Do we keep the memories or the emotions? Do we only take the good and leave the bad?

With this picture I try to take everything. I don’t want to hide from hurt, I don’t want to neglect any feelings. I choose to see the image as a beautiful thing, a frame in time when I felt something greater than most things I’ve felt in my life. I try to turn the pain into productivity and gain from my experience. I look at this picture and become affected by everything it means to me.

Even if it means nothing to anyone else.