(Note: “The Housewives” was a term I fondly coined in 2006 after I started getting shoot requests from private, individual women who became my clients. Many of the women who contacted me were married and in their mid 30’s and were doing the shoots as gifts to their husbands. The folder in my archives is still called this and so I’ve stuck to it, in part just for the irony: most of these women are not “housewives” at all, but strong independent and forward thinking women who I have had the honour of documenting.
All are private commissions and the demographic has changed substantially over the years. Some I’m still in contact with, others I’ve totally lost contact with, some have become friends, some may wish not to have their real names used, others don’t mind, some may have their faces obscured for privacy reasons, others have generously shared their experiences of being photographed.)
I photographed Berel in December 2009 in the Ruth Prowse Photography Studio. It was at the time when Cara, one of my good friends, was shooting her own graduate body of work and had this stunning carnival pedestal rented for use in her images and made an awesome prop for this shoot, adding so much atmosphere and a dynamic object to pose with.
We shot one or two pics with a Santa hat on which she has had the idea to use as her husbands Christmas card,- the shoot was his Christmas present… Love this pic + snowflakes, cute and fun, but sexy!
The shoot was fluid, she was wonderful to work with and open to the suggestions I’d had. The outcome was a few different sets of images: the carnival, fetishy ones, a series of standing nudes with pearls and a couple of sitting nudes, which were incredibly simple and very classic in nature.
Playboy South Africa published a story on my work a little while back and had asked for a selection of images from my “Housewife” shoots to print. The below image was printed, with her happy permission, as a full page.
