Tag: nude photography

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Projects Women I've Shot

PORTRAITURE: A nude in pink

Nude-Portrait-of-a-Girl-in-Pink-photographed-by-Leah-Hawker-2012

This was one of the few personal projects I shot in 2010. Lexi, a dear friend, was visiting from the states and I asked her if she’d pose in studio for two creative portraits using a one-tone colour palette of pink.

I’m not quite sure anymore where or why I thought up this quite random idea but the shoot was none the less very fun and a great creative process assisted by friends.

We spent an evening in the studio painting found (in a dumpsite) objects pink as well as an old metal bath tub I’d seen in a derelict yard outside our studio. I shopped a number of stores empty of pink razors (of which I still have a bag stored somewhere) and bought a selection of other random (pink) items to fill in the fantasy story line look of the shoots (buckets, towels, rented candy floss machines etc).

Candyfloss-Girl-nude-photographed-by-Leah-Hawker

It was a fun and messy shoot and one of those experiences that I guess adds to ones creative experience.

The images had no particular function except to exist, really. The building, sourcing and thinking-up of a scenario for the brief amount of time it takes to actually document it (making it a brief reality) has always been one of my joys of the photographic process.

Nude-Portrait-of-a-Girl-in-Pink-photographed-by-Leah-Hawker

A snap of some of the people who worked together on this shoot and also a bit of a "behind the scenes" look at the scenario before its post processing stage...
A snap of some of the people who worked together on this shoot and also a bit of a “behind the scenes” look at the scenario before its post processing stage…
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Interviews & Conversations Projects Women I've Shot

Shooting Godiva: Lynette Bester’s Whole Body Print and the documentation of the nude act

I properly met and first photographed artist Lynette Bester in 2008 while she was preparing to print her entire body with printers ink for an art work to be showed at the Association for Visual Arts in Cape Town.

A detail from my visual diary of the time. A working page with test strips created while I was processing "Shooting Godiva" images of Lynette Bester.
A detail from my visual diary of the time. A working page with test strips created while I was processing “Shooting Godiva” images of Lynette Bester.

Lynette  tells the story…

I had just come out of a long abusive relationship that had left me questioning my own body confidence and self acceptance. Serendipitously Leah, who had been a student of mine was now my colleague and for the first time we found ourselves in the little staff room talking about art, body politics and our up-coming bodies of work. I knew Leah had for a long time explored, quite successfully, the photographing of the erotic female body and most importantly I understood that she sought to empower the women in her photographs. Her photographs were meant for the women who posed for her to cherish and not for any implied male viewer. Leah and I were not friends yet, that was still to come.

Lynette Bester's whole body print titled "Godiva", 2008 for the Association of Visual Arts group show "Baring"
Lynette Bester’s whole body print titled “Godiva”, 2008 for the Association of Visual Arts group show “Baring”

I had been invited onto a show at the AVA, Church Street, Cape Town, called Baring curated by Eunice Geustyn. For the show I wanted to do a nude body print of myself on a single sheet of paper. An aggressive act: dirty, naked, confident. My sister was going to roll me up with printer’s ink and print me onto a single large ream of cotton paper.

Leah was interested: she wanted to photograph the process. That was the first time she came to my home, meeting my mother and sister, and the first time I was able to be naked in front of anyone for the better part of a year. My body print was called Godiva – a nick-name my father had for me because as a child I enjoyed being naked so much. My father had passed away in the previous year. Leah’s photographs were called Shooting Godiva, there close up details revealed an ambiguous sexuality and tautological strength. Leah was also curated on to the exhibition Baring with three photographs of my body covered in ink and in the process of printing.

I hadn’t looked at these images for years and found the negatives again the other day. Below are a selection that I had rescanned.

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--01

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--10

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--11

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--06

It was a new experience from two perspectives: It’s not often you get to witness somebody acting out such a scenario, including all the logistics that go with actually landing on a giant sheet of (expensive) paper to make a perfect print first time (which Lynette did) but also because the way the light hit the printers ink and highlighted the details of her skin and shape was remarkable and very very beautiful.

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--12

The element of nudity is played down by the ink coverage but the tactile nature of the images is highlighted….

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--04

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--07

Lynette-Bester-GODIVA-by-Leah-Hawker--02

Categories
Interviews & Conversations On other Photographers

“WOMAN” An Article by Amelia Burger

This is an article written by Amelia Burger for One Small Seed Magazine, Issue 08, 2007, pages 46 through 53.

From One Small Seed Magazine Article

Woman

SA Photographers Leah Hawker and Michelle Prinsloo are constructing  a fuller, more multi-faceted understanding of female sexuality through their personal and provocative interpretations of the female form. Amelia Burger tries to bear it all.

While both these female photographers have their own philosophy which influences their approach to their work, it all comes down to expressing all of who you are. Their work rings true for women universally, but this is certainly the work of two young South Africans breaking through the visual barriers of female photography in ths country.

Leah interprets being a woman in South Africa objectively and almost as if from a distance, addresses the communal generalisation of the female archetype. There is a “very strong compartmentalisation of our supposed gender responsibilities, be it African, Afrikaans, English or Muslim communities, we’re all so aware of what is expected of use. Women in South Africa are becoming a bit more open-minded and educated about our sexuality and gender, and I’m trying to facilitate this in some ways in my work.”

Michelle goes even further in dealing with some aspects of female stereotype liberation and is more intense, raw and personal in her approach. “I feel we have a stength within us, but we still have a lot to prove in society within these conservative constraints. We need to be ourselves and allow ourselves to be heard clearly and express ourselves as individuals…I want to provoke my viewers, I want them to have their own individual perception of the image”

This image by the talented Michelle featured in the article.
“When you reject me”- image by the talented Michelle featured in the article.

Artist and photographer, Leah Hawker incorporates concepts of beauty, seduction, gender stereotyping and restriction while working primarily with the female nude. She aims to get women thinking and questioning their own archaic, set ideas about their sexual identity. “I think that some ideas are so ingrained in our social and cultural genes that we don’t question whether they should even apply to us reasonably anymore.”

“The patriarchal base from which much of our thinking and actions are situated doesn’t suit both genders , so women are begining to develop more feminine approached and so balance society.” As seen in these pictures, her work is sensual but never crosses the line into explicit. It’s feminine, beautiful and celebratory.

Shooting provocative images is a starnge thing really,” she says “because in one way or another, the model agrees to play out and pose for an idea or concept which is initiated by the thinking and fantasy on the part of the photographer. I always find this fact somewhat disturbing. Maybe thats why I deal with the subject matter so conceptually and detachedly.”

Tear sheets taken from One Small Seed Magazine published in 2007
Tear sheets taken from One Small Seed Magazine published in 2007
Categories
Women I've Shot

“The Housewives”, Nude Private Commissions:
This is Ana

(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.)

Studio Nude

I met and photographed this client in March 2008 at both Llandudno beach and the Ruth Prowse photo studio while I was still still part time lecturing there.

Our studio shoot was based mostly on ideas of body symmetry, movement, dramatic lighting and form. Her body, which to this day is one of the most lean and toned ones I’ve ever worked with, definitely leant itself to this and many of the images came out very beautifully.

Nude with movement

Backlit nude in chair

I remember that this was one of those shoots where I was still grappling with lighting even though I got it right, I was frustrated.

The shoot we did on the beach was fantastic: early morning light, rough gigantic granite boulders and the lithe sculptural shapes of her athletic body which were even more defined with oil.

Sculptural Nude

Nude on Granite rocks