I had first seen Kay, an outdoorsy blonde from Southern Oregon, when her boyfriend began taking pictures of her and she started making forays into the modeling scene. Their pictures were intimate in the way of partners and were immediately striking. We made our acquaintance online and the two of them came up to shoot with me. In a funny coincidence, when they finally excused themselves to meet the aunt who was putting them up I got a note from an old friend exclaiming "you just shot with my nephew and his girlfriend!" It's a small world!
Sarah, on the other hand, had never modeled until reaching out to me online. She, too, was staying with an aunt but it was to escape and she was looking to shake off a religious upbringing by exploring herself. We shot a few times in the studio as we got into autumn that year and her playfulness and intense delight in her body was obvious. She began shooting with other photographers and was flooded with offers, honest and otherwise, almost immediately. Her beauty was a physical thing — seeing her naked for the first time took my breath away. I don't believe I ever managed a picture of her that really caught the force of that beauty.
The holiday season began with unseasonable sunny days and Sarah was coming over to my house to shoot when Kay dropped me a line that she was in town and at loose ends. I quickly invited her and we spent the day playing with lace curtains, the sunlight alternately exploding off Sarah's intensely pale skin or disappearing Kay from the image when a cloud would interfere. I remember it mostly as a frustrating day of "too bright! too dark!" LOL.
The girls both ate as if no-one ever fed them and then broke out my Dad-bong (as a friend referred to the tall glass smoker). They were dedicated stoners and could smoke quantities that would leave me incapacitated. I did not join them. Later in the afternoon, another younger friend showed up to join in and by mid-afternoon the girls were into my wine cellar. At various points each of them felt comfortable enough to hit on me, which I gently refused. While they were all adults, technically, the age difference was far too great. And I recognized that they were feeling safe to be flirty, probably knowing that I wouldn't actually pursue them.
This period, in particular, has given me some food for thought in the matter of young women and photography. Certainly we chase youth in many ways — our entire commercial/advertising realm is built upon it. I won't say it's WRONG. But there is a fine line between the power imbalances of older men and younger women and the sort of exploitation that results in abuse. I was terribly fond of a group of young women who spent time with me during those years — they were experimental, exploring new parts of themselves, each gorgeous in their own way and I certainly adored each of them. But they were young enough to be daughters. I take pride in having provided a safe place for them to BE something that they wanted to be in that moment and keep my teenage-self crushes in my own head. They were all remarkable young women and deserved that respect. I ran into one of them, for about a year a weekly visitor, coming out of a coffee shop with her mother one day. She gave me a hug and then turned to her companion and said, "Mom, this is the photographer I was telling you about!" and I saw the look in her mothers eyes of "oh REALLY" as she evaluated whether I was a danger to her daughter. I must have passed because our sessions continued, my model often calling me to say that she had bought a bag of oranges or some other random item and was on her way to the studio with an idea.
The downside to amateur models, of course, is that they are not invested in the thing and eventually they succumb to the larger world — boyfriends, parents, jobs, travel. Life begins to happen and they disappear. The worst outcome is hearing about bad experiences — one young friend was attacked by a photographer and cloistered herself away (not unreasonably, but leaving a number of us missing her and saddened at her experience). Another was flooding by offers from pornographers who saw the innocence as something to package in stages of degradation. No, not all porn is degrading but the vast majority is. One unique and remarkable young model seized the whole concept and began a process of body-modification that took her from a lithe and playful beauty to a duck-lipped, over-breasted caricature with hair extensions and a fake butt. Also a lot of popularity but horrifying to those who enjoy natural beauty. And Sarah, whose story and beauty still haunt my memory, was reigned in by a controlling boyfriend and disappeared into obscurity.
Perhaps something I see in each of them, captured in photographs, is the potential they had to be special. Sometimes that moment is fleeting, as quick as a glance over the shoulder and a particular light. Sometimes it burns so brightly that it consumes everything and everyone who sees it.