This is one of my early works created in 1968 or there about. I was twenty and so was the young lady. She was an early muse who’d let me try different things with her photographically. We did a lot of fashion and worked in a lot of abandoned building. We were attending college and became friend’s through a mutual acquaints. Actually another model I was working with who was more conservative. Mary was more laid back, she like us all at the time was striving to find herself and got a joy out of being photographed. So between classes and on weekends we’d find out of the way spots to do our work.
I could talk her into trying a number of different poses and tried different lighting with her most of which were available lighting. Without a reflector I might add because they hadn’t been invented yet. We were all working with flashbulbs and they were so erratic and expensive. This shot is about the only one I have left because when I left town to go explore the country I gave the shots back to her. I was such a fool then but I didn’t know better.
We were working in an old house along the river that was a favorite spot of mine. Out by the mission’s on what at that time was a pretty lonely stretch of nowhere. I was able to tempt a couple of girls out there to have them all to myself and my ideas. I look back on it now as an adult and I think how dangerous, without any means of contacting anyone. But I was young and bulletproof and so were the girls and nothing happened anyway. I got some good shots that way, working alone with the girl’s and getting a chance to know them. Thinking about it now it took a lot of trust on their part so I guess I was trustworthy then as now. But I never put the hit on my models, it was always about the work. Same as my poetry, I never use my poetry to get myself laid, after was another story altogether.
Anyway, this shot brings back a lot of memories of a time a place in my life. Almost at the beginning of my photographic life how much I’ve learned and how much I have left to learn. I wonder who I’ll have become when I’ve finished living my life.
