Art Erotica Exhibition
28 Cork Street
London W1S 3NG
www.arteroticaexhibition.co.uk
January 19 -27, 2012
Open daily 10:00-18:00
As part of my submission to the show I was asked to write a statement:
As photographer, it is my role to promote and bear witness to moments of acquiescence. The exchange between camera and sitter is, at best, a sensual exchange; a willing trade of consensual energy and not an imposition.
I wait and share moments with the sitter until we reach a point of unspoken consent when we can join together in the act of image creation. Nothing is taken from the sitter; all is freely given in mutuality. So the intimate and authentic truth offered comes from within the frame and is not enforced from without.
To illustrate this further, the compliant bondee sheds any resistance and gives themself over to the act of restraint; wholly immersing into and fully inhabiting their inner reality. Not passive victim, but complete in their own understanding; allowing themself to be held in that volume of space and also suspended in that moment of time.
The process of witnessing the light within the sitter can be helped by encouraging a spirit of playful adventure, a journey into the here and now where an inter‐personal alchemy can bring forth an inner fire usually hidden by daily niceties. Giving the sitter this freedom to explore and express their essential truths can lead to spectacular displays of flamboyance or moments of pure stillness and reflection.
I would like the viewer of my work to be drawn into these scenarios and explore their own sensual response without deliberately guiding them to any foregone conclusion of my own, but opening them up to the tangibility of the inner worlds.
What drew me to explore the visually erotic was a desire to show the beauty of the human form as complete, fully sentient and rational with an emotional depth. The truly erotic exists below the surface.
