Dirty Show
February 4th, 2008
I made the drive up to Detroit this weekend to drop off photos for the Dirty Show. This is the photo the jurors selected to include this year. I also dropped off quite a few prints for the “store” that operates during the show.
I’ll be attending the show this coming Saturday, so if any of you readers are there, be sure to find me and say hello. Mindy, the model in this photo, will be there as will several other friends and models who are going up with me for the show.
There’s a story that goes with this photo. I have an old friend from high school days who went off to New York City when we graduated and lived there for more than 30 years. She married a Brazilian artist and they raised two sons in Greenwich Village. But she tired of city life and decided she wanted to return to Ohio and run the family farm. So she did.
This presented something of a problem for her husband who needed to figure out a way to live and have something to do in small-town Ohio. He’s a very talented and skillful carpenter, so they decided to buy old houses, fix them up and sell them. I was visiting my friend and she drove me around to show me the houses they were working on.
When she pulled up in front of this house I said, “I tried to buy this house, many years ago when I was looking for my first house. I made an offer, but it was rejected and we never came to an agreement. I bought another house, but I loved this one and always wished I could have photographed a model there.”
“Well, bring a model and have fun,” was her reply. So I did. Mindy and I spent a very hot day there in the summer with no utilities working…but the house was beautiful inside and we got a lot of good photos. This one was just one of those “throwaways” that we did because it was fun. Mindy was really sticking her head into the “oven” up there in the attic. But it did make an interesting composition. I have no idea what the Dirty jurors saw in it that made them want to include it in the show, but I’m happy they liked it. For me what makes it interesting is all the angles and the light playing against and over the curves of Mindy’s lovely body.
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