These images are part of: Nude | Outdoors | Rock | Water | Muses | Lovers
One of the hardest things about working with the Nude and photography is the social stigma attached to the body. This stigma is more than doubled when two bodies are used in the same image, and multiplied many times more if they are in an intimate setting. All that said, such a situation can generate incredibly powerful images.
All of the people who've modeled for the work in this folio are either in relationships together, which provides an instant rapport between the models, and helped make the sessions more comfortable for all. That being said, a small number of the couples I have photographed have been strangers who came together for the session. Unlike much of my other work with models in the studio, the couple images (even the work between friends, or even strangers) seem self-generating, with little direction needed from me for the images to work.
All the images here were either produced using studio flash or available light light. Couple nudes are about the only figure work which I find to be truly suited to the studio - they do not seem to suffer from the same staleness which I feel eventually resides in my other studio nudes (more on my frustration with the studio can be found here).
In some ways, these are the most powerful of the figured based work I do - challenging the notion that images of two lovers nude have to be sexual. The only drawback is that there are not a huge number of people I know who are comfortable enough with themselves, their partners and the intimacy revealed to model in this way.
It only occurred to me in 1998 how important hands are to most of these images...food for thought....
Other images of multiple modes can be found in the friends gallery(friends and siblings).