Ron Raffaelli is probably the most accomplished sexual photographer to emerge from the pornography industry of the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s. His photographs have appeared in various one-man shows, and in a Smithsonian Institute exhibition. He has produced album covers and still photographs for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Osmonds, and Liberace. He has published four volumes of sexual photography — Desire, Temptations, Passion, and the classic Rapture — not to mention over 70 sex films. His photography has captured an open, exuberant, joyful sexuality in work that is artistic, imaginative, and unapologetically explicit.
I have gotten to know Ron Raffaelli well ever since I contacted him to ask if he wanted to contribute work to the book of erotic photography and fiction I was editing, Erotic by Nature. We shared a perspective on the importance of sex and sexual art that has led to many projects in common, and to both mutual appreciation and a sincere ongoing friendship. This spring, I had the opportunity to interview Raffaelli for two days, at his converted-movie-theatre studio in Southern California. The conversation covered a wide range of topics, ranging from photographic technique to philosophy to personal anecdotes from his life. The transcript of these talks will appear in Spectator as a four-part series.
“Raffaelli’s Secrets, Parts I and II” — this week and next — offers an inside look at the photographic technique behind his work, touching on everything from how Raffaelli works with models (both individuals and couples) to the kind of film he uses and why. These will be followed by “Raffaelli’s Philosophy” — thoughts on the nature of sex and the significance of sexual photography — and “Raffaelli’s Story” — tales on how a young (non-photographic) artist came to become the most accomplished photographer of the sexual revolution.
DAVID STEINBERG: When you’re working with a couple that’s being sexual for the camera, what’s involved in making them comfortable? If you want to have real expression and connection between the people, your models have to be able to relate to each other in front of the camera more or less as they do when they’re alone. You’ve done this successfully with dozens and dozens of people. What makes that possible?
RON RAFFAELLI: There are many things that go into this. Part of it is a matter of designing a physical environment that models can feel comfortable in.
All the other photography studios I’ve seen have a concrete or hardwood floor, bare walls, camera stands and folding chairs — a very cold environment. I design my studio so that it looks like your front room, so that it looks like a home. When people come in off the street for the first time and sit down, it’s like going over to somebody’s house. They don’t feel like they’re in a photography studio. Being in a studio is, in itself, intimidating, and I don’t want my models to ever feel intimidated.
Also, I make sure that my models understand that I am an artist — that I’m not a pervert who’s there to get his jollies by watching them having sex. That’s not my purpose. I have lots of my photographs up on the wall in my studio. The models can see what I’ve done in the past and realize, by looking at the pictures, that I’m not some peeping Tom who decided to put up a photography shingle to give him something to peep at. They understand that they’re part of a legitimate artistic endeavor, as opposed to participating in somebody’s perversion or sexual fantasy.
D: Does that mean that your not tuned on by watching and doing what you do?
R: This is the question I’m most frequently asked: Do I get turned on when I’m shooting people fucking?
The answer is: Positively not! I have so many things to pay attention to when I’m shooting people having sex. The last thing on my mind is being aroused by the sexual activity. After the pictures are taken, when the models have gone home and I’m making contact sheets in the lab, I get a hard on. But when I’m shooting the pictures, the last things on my mind are my own sexuality or my own reaction to the sex that’s going on.
I always spend a lot of time with my models — prior to shooting — wining and dining them. Making them comfortable, so that their natural sexual expressions can come out in a shoot. That’s what I want to capture.
I very rarely shoot models the same day I meet them. Almost always, I interview models beforehand. I have a conversation with them that can last anywhere from an hour and a half to eight hours, during which we talk about all different kinds of things. I get an idea of what kind of people they are, what they mean to each other, what their relationship is about, how they met, what they like about each other, what their turn-ons are, what they like, what they don’t like. And we don’t just talk about sexuality; we talk about other things as well.
Then two or three days or a week goes by during which I sit down and think about these people. I let this Mulligan Stew of information sort of simmer and boil in my mind. After it’s done that for a while it creates its own unique flavor that flavors my idea of what I want to do with them. I come up with a concept: the type of lighting I want to use, the graininess of film, the props, the composition I want to go for, a certain lens or perspective.
I’ve gotten a chance to find out who they are and, even more importantly, they’ve had a chance to find out who I am. They’ve had a chance to go home and talk and tell each other, “Gee, I’m not threatened by him. Are you threatened by him?”
“No, I’m not threatened by him either.”
They get to say to each other, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do this?”
I emphasize to them that the pictures I’m going to do with them will be pictures they will cherish for the rest of their lives. See this beautiful skin you have? These breasts that stand up straight? Someday that skin’s going to be old and wrinkled. Your breasts are going to fall down. You’re going to be able to look back at these pictures and say, “Look at us! Weren’t we hot! Weren’t you beautiful! Weren’t you a stud!” You’ll always have these pictures. You’ll be able to share them for the rest of your lives.
They have a chance to think about that, to realize that, and to come to the conclusion for themselves that this something they really want to do.
Days later, we come back together. When the models show up I have music playing, I have a little incense burning. If they like wine, I have a little wine chilling. If they like hot chocolate and marshmallows, I have hot chocolate and marshmallows. Whatever their taste, that’s what I have.
I never use hard liquor, nothing any stronger than wine or beer. Hard liquor creates drunks and I don’t want to be shooting drunks. Also, I don’t use cocaine or speed, or even marijuana, because that takes the concentration away. Working with me requires a lot of concentration. They’ve got to be able to listen to what I’m saying. They’ve got to be able to respond to what I’m saying. So I don’t allow the use of drugs or hard liquor. I achieve what I need to achieve with wine, soft drinks, hot chocolate, soda pop, and music.
Music is very, very important. I would give somewhere between 40% and 60% of the credit for the quality of my photographs to the music I was playing at the time. Music has a way of carrying everything into another realm, into another state of mind. Music enlightens you; it invigorates you. It’s the best of all drugs.
D: What kind of music do you play?
R: Mostly instrumental. I have used music that, at the time, most people had never even heard of. I’ve played groups like Craftwork and Tangerine Dream. One of my favorite artists is Vangelis. I was using Vangelis as background for erotic photography sessions a decade before he did Chariots of Fire and became popular.
I use music that sets a mood, a mood that isn’t dull. I never use 101 Strings or muzak. I’m not trying to put people to sleep; quite the opposite. I want them to be alive and be moved by the music, but I also don’t want to let the music dominate the session. I rarely use music with lyrics because lyrics remind you of things outside the moment.
D: So you have music, you have incense, you have a little wine. Then what?
R: I send them off to the bathroom. I tell them to get undressed and put robes on. I always have them go into the bathroom and put on bathrobes. I never want to watch them get undressed because that’s too kinky. That could be interpreted as being perverse in some way. I want them to get into bathrobes and then come out. While they’re putting bathrobes on, I put the music on low, so they come out into an environment that has soft music in the background. When they come out we may talk a little longer while they’re wearing bathrobes.
D: About what you’re going to do?
R: Exactly. I start talking about specifics of what I’m trying to achieve. Variations on a theme: the reality, the joy of their particular relationship.
I can’t explain the technical end of what I’m trying to achieve to a model, or to anybody. I’ve tried to do that, but no matter how eloquent I am explaining what I want technically they don’t get any idea what the photos are going to look like. So I explain the emotional end of it, the psychological end of what I’m trying to achieve and what I want from them.
D: What might that be?
R: I want you to play with each other. I want you to laugh with each other. I want you, the woman, to seduce your husband, but don’t let him have sex with you. Just tease him. Get him hard and play with him and offer yourself, then decide not to follow through and push him back a little bit. Then tease him and jack him off. Tease him and play with him and get his sexual arousal up to a fevered pitch. Then let him penetrate you. I’ll instruct you. I’ll direct you. I’ll let you know what I’m going to do.
I’ll tell them, Just let yourself be carried away by the music. When you hear my voice, listen to what I’m saying as direction, but don’t turn and look at me or get involved with me. I want them to be involved with each other, to not lose their concentration on each other.
We might shoot for 40 minutes or an hour, and then take a break. During the break I’ll say, “You know, when you did this, it really worked. I really liked it when you reached up and kissed him on the cheek and then sat back and slapped him a little bit.” I might compliment them on what they did right, and then say, “You know, when you did this and you did that, it didn’t work too well. You notice I didn’t shoot too much during that time. So pay attention: when you see the strobe going off, you know you’re doing something right, so go with that. When the strobe slows down, try to work with it. Listen to what I’m saying….”
It just works. People aren’t stupid. Because I spend so much time explaining what I’m trying to do and how I’m trying to do it, they pick up on what I’m saying.
D: Are these usually people who have never been sexual in front of other people before?
R: Yes. A third of my models have been professional models going around the model circuit. It’ll be a boyfriend and girlfriend who want to go on vacation, who want to earn some extra money, who decide to do fuck pictures to make some extra money. They come to me through modeling agencies. Two-thirds of my models have come from friends telling other friends about this erotic photographer they know. “He does this and he’s real good. He respects his models and he always gives lots of prints. He’s always looking for models.”
“Well, gee, we’ve never done anything like that. We’ve always been afraid or embarrassed because we thought they were perverted guys or dirty old men and we’d be exploited, or he would try to put the make on my old lady or something. But what you’re describing doesn’t sound like that. Maybe you could introduce us.”
There were who would say to friends, “Well, I shot with [another photographer] and he was trying to feel up my girlfriend during the breaks. We put up with him because he paid us $500 for the evening, but we’d never go back to him again because he’s such an asshole. When we went to this guy named Raffaelli, though, we had a great time. He took us to dinner, explained what he wanted, and gave us these wonderful pictures….”
There are two reasons I always give people pictures. I know that whatever money I pay models will be forgotten a year later. When models come back after six months or a year, they can never tell me what they did with the money I paid them. But when I ask about the pictures I gave them, they can account for every photograph. So I know that my photographs are, in fact, my real payment to the models.
Also, the boy will share his photographs with his male friends, and the girl will share the photographs with her girlfriends, and their friends get jealous because they see all this love and this sensitivity and this art in the photographs that they’ve never seen anywhere else. Then they want to get in on the action. A lot of my models who had never been in front of a camera before came to me because they saw photographs that I gave other people.
D: But aren’t these people self-conscious about being sexual for the camera? You’ve said how you explain your purpose to the models while their in their bathrobes. But then it’s time for them to actually have sex in front of a camera.
R: We’ll sip a little wine, talk a little more, and I’ll say, “Ok, now let’s shoot. Before we get into anything sexual, I’d like to do some portraits of you two. Just head shots. But we’ll take your bathrobes off so that we have bare shoulders.”
That gets them onto the set, naked, with me directing them. I’ll put their heads together and do some nice pictures. We’ll spend 20 minutes or a half hour just shooting two or three rolls of portraits. Then it’s not hard to get her to jack him off, or give him head, or to get them o do something else I have in mind.
The idea is not to jump into the deep end of the swimming pool right away. We start off on the patio, then we put our feet into the shallow end, then we get up to our knees, then we get up to our waist, then we get up to our neck. Eventually, we swim out and get into the deep end. That’s the way I approach the whole thing.
With a lot of photographers, you come in the back door and it’s, “Take off your clothes over there in the corner, get over here on the seamless, and let’s start shooting.” I never ever do that. I often think, “These other guys must be idiots,” but they just want that picture for Hustler magazine, so it isn’t necessary for them to do what I do. They’re looking for meat and potatoes. They’re looking for the crotch shot, or the insert shot, or the come shot. They’re not interested in whether the models are comfortable or not.
I look at my work as art. My photographs are going to have a longer life than the current issue of Chic or Cheri or Hustler. So I take the time, and it does take a lot of time. I’ll do the pre-shoot interview, and then take another two or three hours when the models come back before I ever take the first picture. Other photographers don’t want to spend that much time, and don’t have the consciousness to work differently, even if they wanted to.
So that is really the secret of my success: taking the time to establish a relationship with the models, a professional relationship in which they understand that I am not a pervert, that I have a mission, that I am trying to achieve something and that they are going to participate in it. And their primary reward is getting photographs of themselves to have as keepsakes for the rest of their lives.
Nine out of ten understand exactly what I’m talking about and work very well with me. Of course there are always some people who never show up, or never come back after the first interview, or who never click with me. Either they aren’t able to trust me, or they don’t care about what I am doing — people who just want to do wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Those pictures never make it to print. But nine out of ten times I succeed.
D: You say you have a mission. What is that?
R: My mission is to capture — in these images — to capture this reality, this sensuality, this love, this joy. I guess joy and innocence are the two main things I try to capture. I want there to something child-like — not childish; an innocence.
More important than anything else, it isn’t a man using a woman. It isn’t one-sided. It’s a couple sharing their sexuality, a mutual activity in which both parties are equally involved. Each person’s enjoyment is equally important. It’s not a man using a woman to masturbate with; it’s a man whose sexuality is based on the participation and the feelings of his partner. That’s a very important part of what I’m trying to achieve.
Now remember, a woman doesn’t have to do anything in a pornographic shooting except spread her legs, but a man has to achieve an erection. I have used ordinary, everyday people, and achieving erections under those circumstances is a challenge. I have to be very patient.
I remember sessions that went on for ten hours in which there was a total of half an hour of erection. The other nine and a half hours we spent taking breaks, being relaxed, assuring the man there was nothing wrong with him. I always make sure the man feels very comfortable, and explain that if he loses his erection right in the middle of something, that’s perfectly normal.
D: Was that what usually happened?
R: I would like to say it wasn’t, but it was. That’s the problem with using amateur models. That’s why certain male models get used so often: they’re the rare individuals who can maintain an erection all day long.
I once did a shooting with Mike Stat. He came in at eight o’clock in the morning with a hard on in his pants. We shot for four hours and he had an erection the whole time. When he left he zipped his pants up over his erection and left with it. He came back with it later, shot another three hours with another model, and had an erection the whole time. Now, I’m telling you, as you well know, this is a very, very extraordinary individual. The reason he got used so often is that he had that ability.
The men that I shot could maintain an erection for maybe an hour during a shoot. Maybe half an hour. This has nothing to do with photography or the intimidation of the studio or anything else — that’s just the way men are. I make sure the models know this beforehand. I don’t want them to feel there are high expectations of them that they’re not going to be able to live up to. When it happens, it happens. If it never happens, that’s ok too. I never wanted models to leave my studio feeling they had disappointed me, or disappointed themselves, in any way.
D: How about when you’re working with just a single woman? That’s a whole different story from working with couples.
R: Right.
D: What makes that situation work?
R: A single girl has to believe she’s attractive. 90% of the single women that I’ve shot came into my studio because some girlfriend, who wasn’t any better looking than they were, showed them tremendously beautiful pictures that I had taken of them. So they said, “Well, if he can do that with her, what’s he going to be able to do with me?”
I use the same technique, in a sense, that I use with couples. I interview them first. The only difference is that I take a roll of test polaroids at the interview. With individual models, I’ve got to know what they look like. Not so much how big their tits are, or what their ass looks like, but where their moles are, where their scars are. It isn’t so much what I am going to photograph as what I’m not going to photograph. With a couple, it isn’t that important what they look like. But with a single girl, she’s all by herself.
So I take some test photos and I spend a lot of time talking to her, primarily to build up her confidence. Telling her how beautiful she is, what her strong points were, and being honest with her about her weak points. There’s no use lying to her. If I tell her she’s got the greatest ass in the world and she’s got a terrible ass, she doesn’t respect me because she knows I’m bullshitting her. I’ll be very honest and tell her exactly, “This is your weak point, so we’re not going to emphasize that.”
A lot of women feel they are short, or they’re out of proportion. The greatest tool I have is something called a 28 millimeter lens, because it stretches them out. Girls that think they are short and out of proportion come out looking like Verushka when I put this 28mm lens on them.
I have to convince them of this, because even though I shoot them with a 28mm lens, they’re modeling in a 50mm world. They have to react as if they’re Verushka when in fact they may be dumpy. That’s the skill I have. For the time that they’re in front of the camera, I am able to convince them that they are gorgeous. And a week or two later I present them with prints that prove I was right!
D: How do you convince somebody who thinks she’s not attractive that she is?
R: I go around the studio and say, “You see this picture up here on the wall? This girl has the exact same body that you have.”
“Oh, no she doesn’t, she has this and that.”
“Nope, she has exactly the same body that you have, but I’m using this kind of a lens and this kind of lighting, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do for you.”
They believe it, and it’s the truth. I can’t lye to them because I have to deliver the goods.
The foundation for the whole thing is being honest enough with them to say, “Look, you’ve got heavy thighs. You’re not going to get rid of these thighs by Wednesday afternoon when we have our session, so this is how I can handle that. I’m going to shoot with sidelighting, I’m going to use a certain kind of film.
I use a film that’s called Eastman 2475 recording film. You’ve probably never heard of it. I use it 85% or 90% of the time. It was developed by Eastman Kodak for the FBI, for surveillance. It’s an infrared based film, high speed — 800 ASA — that’s used for night surveillance photography. A photography store special orders it for me. It has some drawbacks. You put emulsion on it and it curls up and it’s hard to get into a negative carrier. After you develop it you have to roll it backwards and put a rubber band around it for two or three days, otherwise it’s impossible to work with.
It’s saving grace is that it doesn’t photograph the skin, it photographs under the skin. Because it’s infrared based film, it photographs the blood, the skin under your skin. It gives everybody a childlike complexion, no matter if they have wrinkles or age lines, or scars, or moles. It just takes away all the flaws and imperfections in the models. 2475 just airbrushes it all away on every shot because it photographs under the skin. They look ten years younger than they actually are.
That’s one of my secrets, which I’m now disclosing to you and to the world, I guess. But you have to learn how to use it. It’s grainy, yet every eyelash is sharp as a tack.
I respect the models, and I have a good reputation. A lot of photographers use their position to hit on girls. That was never my motivation. I’m just as horny as any other photographer in Hollywood, believe me. I lust after some of these girls as much as anyone else. But I have professional ethics that keep me from trying to hit on these girls.
The truth is that by respecting them and doing exactly what I say I’m going to do, by not chasing them around the studio and not putting that kind of pressure on them, a surprising number thought that they should seduce me. But it’s their decision, not me trying to force myself on them. It’s their way of saying thank you. I’ve never had any bad stories floating around about me because there were no bad stories.
Models will tell their girlfriends, “I wouldn’t advise you to get into this business because you really have to put up with a lot of bullshit. He’s feeling you up while he’s doing this and he’s doing that. But there is this one photographer named Raffaelli, I had a great time. He was a gentleman, he treated me well, he gave me these beautiful pictures. Since you’re not going to get into this business, why don’t you go shoot with him?”
D: Say a little bit of how you talk with models about their sensuality so that they can relax about that.
R: All women are born with an innate sense of how to manipulate men by body language, which I call sensuality. It’s not sexuality. Sexuality is cleavage and miniskirts and being overt. What I’m talking about is very, very subtle. It has to do with body language — raising eyebrows and subtle looks. I believe that it’s nature’s way of compensating for women being the weaker sex.
Women are definitely the weaker sex. They’re smaller, they’re more frail. They’re the childbearers. Men are the guys who go out and kill the lion and drag it back to the cave, and the women are the ones who cut it up and cook it. Women are the weaker sex, and over the centuries and eons nature has compensated women by giving them this manipulative power in their inborn sensuality. I discovered this over the years in working with so many women.
D: What do you mean by “manipulative?”
R: To be able to get a male to do what a woman wants him to do. It is a rare father whose female child has not wrapped him around her little finger at a certain age — usually between eight and nine, 12 on the outside.
Between the ages of eight and 12, little girls discover their sensuality. They discover their sexuality later on, but they discover their sensuality quite early — before puberty. They discover that they can manipulate their fathers by their body language. By the way they tilt their heads. By the way that they tilt their shoulders or their bodies. By just becoming sensuous and being sedate. By being cute. By being adorable. These are all aspects of sensuality.
I believe that, at a very early age, a very high majority of women discover this. They learn that they can manipulate the male of the species. They learn that by giggling the right way, by tilting their heads — by just being coy, for lack of a better word — they can get their fathers to grant them favors they would never grant their brothers.
After a girl is 12 or 13, she gets changed by what society tells her. Her sensual ability gets mixed up with sexuality, and since sexuality is bad, she begins to feel guilty about it and suppress it. But between the ages of, say, eight or nine and 12 or 13, it’s not suppressed.
That’s one of the charming things about girls that age. They’re so uninhibited about their sensuality. It just bubbles out of them. Where the boy will be inhibited and shy, the little girl will be bubbly and bouncing around, having everybody do her bidding because she just exudes this sensuality.
By the time I get to the model — when she’s 19 or 20 or 25 — this sensuality is often very repressed. When they get in front of the camera they’re stiff and cold and there’s nothing I can do with them. But I’ve learned that I can get them to come out by telling them the whole story I’ve just told you. I remind them that this is an ability they’ve had since they were pre-pubescent, that it’s something all girls have.
You know you have this ability, I tell them. You’ve used it as a child. Even today, when you’re in the office and you want to get the boss’s attention, you can do it by just rolling one shoulder or raising the other shoulder, tilting your head a certain way. This is not sexual. This has nothing to do with wearing a low-cut blouse and bending over his desk so he can see your tits. This is using another whole aspect that you learned how to use when you were nine years old.
I have yet to find a model who says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” As soon as they know that I know, then I say, “That’s what I want you to do here. I want you to flirt with this camera. I want you to turn this camera on. I want you to get its attention. I want you to lower your shoulder, tilt your head, look away from me, shake your head like this, and then turn around and give me that look and raise that eyebrow just enough. Bring your shoulder forward just a little. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” And they all go, “Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Ok.” They go from being stiff and uptight to being loose and sensuous. From there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to being sexual and not feeling inhibited about it.
I get them out of that frightened, uptight, inhibited stage by letting them know that I know that they have a sensuality that’s a natural part of evolution, an innate instinct all women have. Reminding her that I know that she knows that we both know now that she has this ability, so let’s not play games. If you’re ever ever in the world going to use this ability, now’s the time to use it. And you don’t have to be embarrassed about flirting with me because I want you to use it. And they all do it.
I’m giving up my life’s secret to you now, so other photographers can benefit from it. It’s something I discovered early on, to my advantage, and to the models’ advantage.
D: Well, you give her permission, and if you don’t put the make on her, she can flirt with you all she wants and not have to then be sexual with you.
R: Exactly. She doesn’t have to worry about me jumping over the camera and fondling her. When they know they’re in that position, they’re perfectly safe. It’s like going to the aquarium and looking at the shark behind three inches of plate glass. You can get as close as you want and that shark is not going to mess with you. That’s exactly how they feel. They can do anything they want and I’m not going to be affected by it.
It brings them right out of their shell. And once they’ve done that for a while, they’ll put a dildo in their pussy, they’ll do anything. Once they know they’re safe, and that I understand that that’s what we’re here to do, they’ll take it to the limit.
A lot of photographers want you to take your clothes off as soon as you walk in the door. Two and half minutes after the door closes, the camera is going off. That never happens in my studio. It is hours before I photograph a model, and it’s establishing this relationship that puts them in a position where the real them, the unique them, the sensuality and subtleness of them, can be photographed and captured in a way that other photographers can’t do.
That why I am able to capture an aspect of female sensuality that is subtle but lasting. People will be able to look at my pictures long after I’m dust and say, “Now that is a beautiful woman.” And she’s really no more beautiful than anyone else in town.
All women are beautiful. All people all beautiful, if you capture their essence. We all are born with a shell that is dictated primarily by our parents’ genealogy. But under that shell, we all have something unique and wonderful to offer. It’s that uniqueness that I look for. But you can’t get to that if you go right from the back door to the seamless. There has to be time for the model to relax and divest herself of the inhibitions we all walk around with all the time.
My secret is that I had the knowledge and I took the extra time to make sure that I stripped away those inhibitions and photographed the real beauty of all women. I try to shoot women who are beautiful to begin with, but beyond their physical beauty, there’s another beauty, even more important to me, that can be captured by the magic of photography. That’s the beauty I go after.
D: How did you get into erotic photography?
R: I didn’t start out as an erotic photographer. I started out as an advertising photographer. I went to a commercial photography school, Art Center. When I graduated from Art Center I was supposed to work for advertising agencies where an art director would give me a drawing of a new Chevrolet parked in a stream with a model standing next to it, and I was to find that location, hire that model, put the car in the stream, have the model stand next to it, and make it look as much like the art director’s sketch as possible.
Now, this was not why I had gotten into photography. I was not going to be a button-pusher for some advertising agency. I got into doing album covers because the pictures on album covers were not art-directed. They were representations of what the photographer thought the music in the album was about. It just so happened that when I got into album cover photography, the rock music business was really exploding. This was back in 1970 and 1971.
D: How did you come to do album covers?
R: I was showing my portfolio to advertising agencies, and I decided to go to some record and poster companies as well. One poster company was doing posters of musical groups. They called me up one night and told me to bring my portfolio to a house where they introduced me to a recording artist named Jimi Hendrix.
At that time, I had no idea who Jimi Hendrix was; I didn’t even know he was black. He was in a rented house in Beverly Hills, in a wonderful room. There was a Tiffany lamp hanging down from the ceiling with a 25-watt red light bulb in it. The room was very dark. All the photographers were waiting outside the room, with all our portfolios. We went in one at a time, and he sat with his legs crossed, put the portfolio between his legs, and flipped through the pictures, one at a time, very quickly. He went through a portfolio of 25 pictures in 25 seconds, closed the portfolio, handed it to you, and out the door you went.
I was sitting outside, watching this happen. I thought, “Whoa, when he gets to my pictures he’s going to take time to look at them. These guys must just have pictures of dull stuff.”
All the art directors spent a lot of time with me because my pictures were so unusual. At Art Center, I always managed to break all the rules and yet achieve the goal of an assignment. I had what I thought was a hot portfolio. I figured that Jimi Hendrix was really going to take time looking at my pictures.
He sat down, flipped through the pictures in 25 seconds and, bang, out the door I went.
A few days later the phone rang, right in the middle of one of the first nudes I ever shot. I had gotten the job. I was on an airplane to Hawaii the next day.
D: Based on those 25 seconds?
R: Based on those 25 seconds. I told the model I was shooting that I had just gotten a job to shoot Jimi Hendrix and she was all excited. “Jimi Hendrix?!?” She knew all about Jimi Hendrix, but I didn’t know anything about who he was. The only musician I knew then was Lawrence Welk, because my parents were big Lawrence Welk fans.
So I got my stuff together and flew to Hawaii the next morning. Jimi Hendrix had rented a house right on the point at Diamond Head, a big mansion. A room was set aside for me there. The band was going to do a big concert a week later. They were under contract not to perform during that week, so they had to just stay around the house and practice. I followed them around, and took pictures when I could.
The second or third night there, it was real hot. At one or two o’clock in the morning I decided to take a walk on the beach. I was walking out behind the property when I saw somebody sitting under a palm tree. I went over and it was Jimi Hendrix. In the sand he had sculpted a face with holes in the sand between the eyes and the ears, the mouth and the nose. He would inhale from his cigarette, bend down, and blow smoke into the mouth of the face, and then he’d sit back and the smoke would rise up through all the holes in the ears and the eyes and the nose and the mouth. It was real eerie.
So we started talking. It was the first time that we had talked one on one. He talked about my portfolio. He described every picture in my portfolio with incredible detail, and asked me about the symbolism in them. It was the first time I understood what a photographic memory was. He had gone through the portfolio quickly, but he had recorded every image in his mind. Two weeks later, at one o’clock in the morning, he was describing my photographs in detail and asking me about particular aspects of them. Why did I do this? Why did I put that there? What does that mean? I was really impressed! I discovered we both appreciated the significance of symbolism. We became friends that night.
He made me admit that I didn’t know who he was, that Lawrence Welk was my idea of music. He said, “Well, tomorrow, we’re doing a sound check at the auditorium. I want you to come and shoot it. I want to play something for you so you will know who I am.”
The auditorium was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. There was a wall of speakers eight feet high. Amplifiers everywhere. Static electricity in the air, all this power. It was all new to me. I didn’t know anything about it.
He walked up on stage. I had gotten down on the ground and was shooting up at various things. Right where I was sitting there was a little pedal device that he plugged his guitar into. He bent down to plug his guitar into a little pedal device right where I was sitting, and he winked at me. He looked down at me and he gave me a look that I realize now was: “I’m going to change your life!” I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the look he gave me.
There was this loud crackle, static, everything. It was deafening, and he hadn’t played a note yet. I thought, “Oh, god, what am I in for?” Then he raised his hand and played All on the Watchtower and it did indeed change my life.
I had never heard anything like that in my life. I was completely blown away. It was a baptism of fire, to say the least. I went from knowing nothing about him to becoming his biggest fan.
D: How did that change your life?
R: It opened a whole new world for me. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. All of that had been behind a closed door until the day he played that song. From that moment on, I was part of the counterculture, part of the rock ‘n’ roll industry. That was my baptism into rock ‘n’ roll. Jimi Hendrix is the person who let me know, in no uncertain terms, what music is all about.
So I was a rock ‘n’ roll photographer for about five years after that. I traveled all around the world. Jimi and I remained very close friends until his death. He’d call me on the phone at night from all different parts of the world, and just talk to me about his problems and the different things he was thinking about. I’m convinced that if he had lived, we’d be good friends to this day. I’d probably still be doing rock album covers if there weren’t so many assholes in the music industry.
Every group I shot wanted their picture on their album cover. Now, these groups all looked the same: four scruggy-looking guys with beards. I’d say, “Why put your picture on the cover when you look like everybody else in the business. Let me illustrate your music. We’ll put your picture on the back, where it belongs.”
They’d say: “Yeah, you’re right, you’re absolutely right. But where is our picture going to be on the cover?”
That’s what got me out of the business. I just didn’t want to be a portrait photographer for bearded guys.
At that time I was flirting with the idea of becoming an erotic photographer. I was experimenting with movies. I always wanted to shoot nudes. I was young, I was horny, I wanted to look at pretty girls. I had no spiritual goal, no message to tell. I just wanted to have access to pretty models and get them out of their clothes. I was, after all, in my very early 20s. I had the fame of being a rock ‘n’ roll photographer. There were lots of groupies; it was a natural opening that was available to me. So I did it, I enjoyed it, and I found that I had a talent for it.
I had done an experimental movie, a black and white erotic film that a friend convinced me to send to the first Erotic Film Festival in New York. There were about five or six black and whites and about twenty color movies in the festival. I won best black and white. More importantly, they used one of my still photographs on the poster for the festival. A publisher named Karl Brussels noticed the poster and found out that a guy named Raffaelli in Los Angeles had shot it. He called me up on the phone. He sent me a ticket and I flew to New York to talk about this erotic book he wanted to do. That’s what later became Rapture.
D: Rapture was his idea?
R: It was his idea to do an erotic book. What was in the book was my idea. I never made a dime on that book. He fucked me. We didn’t even have a contract. He said, “You’ll just have to trust me; I’ll pay you.” He never did, but it started my erotic photography career.
Rapture clarified for me what I wanted to do, what my talent was, what my insight was into sexuality. By that time I had matured a little bit and had started looking at erotica more seriously. I was able to focus myself and get into touch with what about sexuality was important and personal to me.
There was another important piece to the puzzle. As a result of being a Rolling Stone photographer, certain doors opened up to me. I met some people who were making pharmaceutical mescaline and that, as much as Jimi Hendrix (maybe even more so), changed my life. As a result of using this drug I learned that there was more in the invisible world than there was in the visible world. I learned an awful lot about myself and about my body, and about how spirituality and sex go together.
D: What did you learn?
R: I learned that intimacy in sex was more important than just getting my rocks off. I learned that having a relationship — a close relationship, an intellectual relationship with a woman — was far more exciting and meaningful to me than sexual conquest.
Up until that time I was, like every other man, just putting notches on my belt. How many girls can you sleep with? How many girls can you deflower? How many girls can you pillow? The whole scene that was happening at that time.
After I took mescaline — this was in Laguna Beach, by the way, in 1973 or 1974 — I met some very wonderful women and had not only a sexual relationship but also a deep spiritual relationship with them, under the influence of these drugs. I’ve literally spent the rest of my life focusing on relationship rather than just sex. The sex is an aftereffect — an adjunct, an appendage — to the relationship.
By the time I created Rapture I had had these experiences. I was shooting Rapture from a spiritual sense. I don’t think the publisher had any idea what I was doing. He just wanted to do a [sexual] position book that was more explicit and more artistic other books that were around at that time.
There weren’t any erotic photography books around then. The only photo book you could publish was a book that was disguised as a sexual education book — a position book. Brussels wanted to do a position book shot by an artist.
I wanted to do twelve chapters, using different models for each chapter, and different locations. I wanted there to be a story for each chapter, stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They could be humorous, interesting, psychedelic, whatever — but I wanted each one to be different from the next, not just shots on a bed someplace.
He said, “Sure. Fine, fine. Go ahead and do it.”
D: He didn’t care what you did.
R: Exactly, as long as it had people fucking in it. So I did Rapture. It was supposed to be twelve chapters. I shot 13 so he could take out the worst one, but he printed all 13.
By the time I finished Rapture, I had decided that I wanted to be an erotic photographer. That’s when Dick James came into my life.
Dick James had a mail order company three blocks down the street from me. He started in his garage, selling dildoes, French ticklers, and X-rated movies. At that time — this was probably 1975 — everybody was getting busted for X-rated movies. Eight millimeter was the medium. It was just starting and it was very hot.
Dick James thought that if he could get a photographer to shoot loops with artistic value, he would have a better chance defending them in court.
Now, when I was at Art Center, I had shot some nudes that I sold to Charles Cropsey at Elysium Press, who edited a nudist publication. He was a very intelligent man — spoke nine languages fluently. After he got out of publishing, he became a college professor.
He invited me over to his house to have dinner with him and his wife, and that relationship went on for 25 years. He became my surrogate father, my mentor, my intellectual and spiritual guide. He died a year ago. I can hardly stand to talk about it without crying because he was someone I was very close to.
Dick James hired me to do eight millimeter loops because I had artistic talent and he felt he would be less likely to get busted. That absolutely turned out to be the case. Everybody else in the business got busted over and over and over again, but none of my movies were ever busted because the prosecutors knew they couldn’t convince a jury that they were without redeeming social value. So Dick James made a wise decision, and I did very well.
That launched me into erotic photography. Doing films put me in contact with lots of models, and money to buy more equipment. I would say that 70% of my still photographs came as a result of doing those movies.
D: What were you trying to do with the loops? Were you just trying to get people to fuck on film? What did it mean to you back then?
R: I was trying to do art. I had seen a lot of fuck movies, and they really turned me off. The girl would have her legs spread, the guy would be getting down on top of her to fuck her, and in the middle of everything she’d look over at the camera. You could tell that they weren’t into each other, that they were listening to somebody off-camera giving directions. You could tell they weren’t involved. They were just being paid to fuck and get out of there as quickly as they could.
There was no intimacy, and I was embarrassed to even see the films. I felt like I shouldn’t be watching this. These people were humiliating themselves, and I was having to be a witness to it. I certainly didn’t find it sexually stimulating.
Now maybe, if I hadn’t had the experience with mescaline and gotten the idea that the real turn-on was intimacy, maybe I would have been like everybody else and thought these films were erotic and fine. But when Dick James showed me the movies he was selling and asked me what I thought of them, I had to be honest. I said, “I don’t understand why people buy these.”
I guess I can understand a bunch of men in a smoky room watching these things up against the wall, laughing, and saying, “Look at the big tits on her!” or “Look! He’s gonna fuck her real good!” But I said, “If I did this, I would want to do movies that couples could watch, that would be romantic, with the women just as turned on as the men. That would act as an aphrodisiac.”
He said, “That sounds real good! That’s exactly what I want you to do. Do you think you could do that?”
I said, “Well, sure. All it takes is the money and finding the right models.”
He said, “I’ll give you the names of all the agencies; I’ll get you on the agency list. We’ll have models sent over to you. This is the budget you’ve got. I’ll invest in doing a series of five or six movies.”
So I did my first series for him. He put together a nice little brochure on it, and it did very well. It was very artistic, to say the least. Very spacey and psychedelic. One of the first movies I did was with Serena and the guy she was living with, Bill Margold. I shot them fucking in the mud, all wet and covered with mud. It was far out, very artistic looking.
D: People often say that artistic sex films won’t sell.
R: These did well because they had some of the qualities that my still photography has. I would talk to the models and inspire them. I did things that felt real. I did things that women could watch as well as men, that weren’t embarrassing to couples, not just a man exploiting a woman. My films sold as well as Swedish Erotica, and Swedish Erotica were the top of the line in terms of sales.
You’ve got to remember that at this time, a movie — a loop — was six minutes long, which was how long an eight millimeter reel lasted. So I was limited to these six-minute vignettes. I would make up a little story, and just make sure that I shot it in an interesting way — with good lighting, good angles and all that — and make sure the people were having a good time.
D: At that time, nobody was having a good time doing sex on film. You were the first person to achieve that, or even to try for that.
R: Absolutely. Nobody was having a good time, and nobody had the sense of composition and artistic lighting that I had. A lot of the movies had shadows and high contrast. You couldn’t see the penetration; you couldn’t see anything. They were terribly done.
D: And nobody cared because, as terrible as these films were, people were buying them anyway…
R: …because they were the only sex films around. That’s right. The brochure for my films hyped the fact that this was something you could share with your wife. We recommended music to be played while watching the movie, and emphasized that these were being done by an artist. (The films were all silent then. They were in color, but there was no sound track.) And, as I said, they did very, very well. They actually made the company.
I have to say that when I look back on those movies now, I’m embarrassed by some of them. A lot of the artistry in photography, after all, is editing. But with film, you have to keep shooting. You’re trying for a certain feel, a certain look, a certain expression. But you can’t wait until it happens to shoot because then it’s too late. It’s like trying to shoot a batter hitting a ball. You can’t wait until he hits the ball because then you’re too late. So you shoot, and if he misses the ball, you’ve got all these pictures of him missing the ball. When you do movies, you end up with a lot of shots of people missing the ball.
D: Couldn’t you edit afterwards?
R: Then you get a jump cut from one shot to the next. I did dissolves. Nobody else did dissolves, but I thought jump cuts were terrible. I wanted to move smoothly from one scene to another. So with each new shot, I had to backwind the film while the couple was still fucking. I had to fadeout 64 frames, backwind the camera 64 frames, and then fade in 64 frames. Lots of times, the really good action was happening while I was backwinding the camera.
When I look back now and it’s embarrassing because I was just learning how to do it. I was experimenting. Compared to what I could have done in video, it’s relatively crude. I didn’t get to shoot three or four or five or ten different takes, pick out the best one, and combine that with the best takes of other scenes. The whole movie was shot, beginning to end, over an hour and a half or two hours.
Taking all that into consideration, I’m real proud of what I did because what everybody else did under those circumstances was trash. With the same budget, the same models, and the same limitations, I managed to create interesting, beautiful, romantic movies that couples could look at. I get letters to this day from sex therapists who want to know how to get hold of my movies so they can show them to couples and not have the women run out of the room screaming and yelling. I’m just disappointed that I never got to do what I started to do in video. I wanted to produce video features.
When I decided to get into video, porno movies were selling for $100 each. Nine months later, when I got my video lab together — invested all this money, bought all this equipment, educated myself in the technical end — porn movies were renting for 99¢. Even with my reputation, I couldn’t find any producers who would put up the money it would take to do the kinds of movies I wanted to do.
I wanted to take three months making a movie; they wanted it done in two days. (One day, ideally, but we’ll give you two days because you’re Raffaelli.) I wanted to do a production. I wanted to go to different locations and hire models and shoot them for a week at a time, edit out the absolutely best material and come up with something classic, something that would last a long time. It’s one of the big disappointments of my life that I was never able to do that.
If it wasn’t for Jeffrey Michelson and Puritan magazine, I would have died on the vine right then. My career would have been over. I went back to where I started, which is still photography.
Today, if I had money to work with, I would do still sessions, but differently than I did them in the past. I would spend more time and focus in on the intimacy of sexual relationships. The foundation of erotic photography — the erection, the moist pussy, the insertion, the climax, and all the fondling that happens in between — would be there too. But there’s something else that’s very, very important, and that’s the relationship of the people who are having sex.
D: You have said that you are only now coming into your own with your photography. Could you say more about that?
R: Yes. When I was doing the majority of my work [in the 1970s], I was like an intern. I was practicing, experimenting, trying different things. I had some idea of what I wanted to do, and I was lucky — eight out of ten times it would turn out fine. Today, I know exactly what I’m doing. If I want a certain effect, I know exactly how to get it. I’m not winging it any more. I’m more creative today than I’ve ever been in my life, yet I’m not doing anything because I’m outside of the mainstream of the industry.
D: If you could do whatever kind of work you wanted to, what would you do?
R: Good question. This may sound strange, but I would do an erotic book that I would consider spiritual. I would do a more creative, more exciting, better version of Rapture. I would do pictures with a lot of spiritual symbolism. I would use nature, do pictures in outdoor scenes, superimpositions of cosmic photographs with nebulae, stars, galaxies. I would try to give the feeling, at least symbolically, that sexuality is actually spiritual.
Our culture equates sexuality with sin. Somewhere in the Bible, our sexuality got mixed up with shame. The shame bugaboo has been woven into our sexuality so strongly that Catholics believe you have to have sex in the dark and not enjoy it. Otherwise it’s a sin and you have to go to confession and tell the priest that you had sex for pleasure, which is inherently dirty. That thinking has spilled over into our entire culture. This burden of sexual shame has warped our psyches, and as a result of that psychic stumbling block we’re really not able to relate to ourselves.
Before I leave this earth, I would like to illustrate a positive chapter in the encyclopedia of human sexuality. I’d like to do a book that illustrates both sexuality and love, not just sex for sex sake — a book that looks at what sex and love are all about. Have it be visually apparent that these people are in love and that love has brought this joyousness.
You cannot have that kind of feeling with somebody you meet in a bar and take home and sleep with them. That’s a physical thing; there’s not much difference between that and masturbation. It’s just masturbation with another person. But after you have a relationship with somebody, sex becomes something else entirely.
I had a friend who lost his job in Los Angeles and moved to Las Vegas. Now he’s a horny old guy and there are a lot of girls running around Las Vegas, and he got all caught up in that and started talking about divorcing his wife. I said to him, “Look, you’ve been married to your wife for twenty years. If you get involved with one of these Las Vegas bimbos, eventually sex is going to become old — two months, three months, two days, three days, whatever the period of time. Then what are you going to talk to her about? The things you have in common are with the woman you’ve been with for twenty years. Sex is something that’s transitory. The relationship you have with an individual, that’s where the intimacy comes from.”
And he said, “Yeah, you’re right, I never thought about it that way.” He reestablished his relationship with his wife and drives 200 or 300 miles a weekend to be with his her because he realizes the intimacy he has with her is something he’s never going to have with anybody else.
That’s what relationships are all about, and I’d like to be able to do a book that shows — by the expressions, by the body language, by the intimacy — that people need to have the kind of sex that goes hand in hand with real intimacy and love. It’s not that I would do anything tremendously different from before, but I would narrow my focus to illustrate love and intimacy, as opposed to just how hard and how sexy people can be. There would be a tremendously hot sexuality and sensuality, but also a tremendous intimacy and love because the people really care for each other. I want people to have to be blind not to see that these people are in love, that there’s a genuine relationship here.
D: Haven’t you worked with real couples in the past?
R: I’ve tried to work with couples. 80% of the time I would work with boyfriends and girlfriends that were in love — but not necessarily people who had long relationships. In that “in love” stage, there’s a certain fascination with each other, a certain joy that comes from the newness of the relationship, which is wonderful. That’s always been the foundation for my photography. Now I would like to focus on people who are in longer relationships.
When people have been together for a long time, the man knows that his wife likes to be touched in a certain way. There’s more interesting foreplay. People in the industry have always thought that foreplay was dull. Well, I think I can shoot foreplay that’s exciting. I have the sensitivity and the insight and the skill now to make foreplay as exciting as sex. I would show the sexual dance starting even before couples got out of their clothes, because all of that has to do with love and how you respect one another, how you take care of one another, how you treat one another. I think older audiences in particular would understand and realize that this is in fact sexual. Once you decide you’re going to have sex, then the whole thing becomes a sexual dance.
D: Would you use older models?
R: Older people, yes, although I think that thing can happen with people who are in their 20s also. But they’d have to be people who are intelligent, people who are mature enough to have a committed relationship.
D: Would they need to be monogamous?
R: Well, monogamy is not necessarily important. We get sex and love mixed up, but they’re really two separate things. There’s a time to enjoy and explore your sexuality, and there’s a time to love. When you think that if you have sex you have to be in love, that’s when all the jealousies come down.
Couples who understand the difference between sex and love can go into a swinging situation, thoroughly enjoy their sexuality, and keep their love totally intact. Their love can even grow and become stronger because they’re able to do this activity together. A man can be turned on by his wife being with other people. He can enjoy that whole thing because she’s getting pleasure from it and it makes him happy to know that he is open and responsible and mature enough to let that happen and make their relationship even stronger.
A wonderful thing about photography is that it can capture the essential humanness involved in being sexual. It may be a fleeting thing, but the camera can capture it, and once it’s captured, it’s captured for eternity.
Now, film is different. Film isn’t as intimate as a still photograph. You can hold a still photograph in your lap and there’s a first reading, a second reading, a third reading. That doesn’t happen in video or film. With moving images, you don’t get to go back and appreciate the twinkle in the eye, the soft touch of the caress on the shoulder. I love still photography because it takes very special moments and freezes them in time. Generations far in the future will be able to look back and still see how special those moments were. They’ll be looking at pictures of people long dead and be thrilled and delighted at the joy and the innocence and the love they see in those pictures.
D: Is there anything else you’d like to do differently?
R: I’d like to take more time doing the photography itself. In the past, I usually have had to do everything in one shooting session. I’d like to find couples to work with for three or four days at a time — on location or here at the studio — so that we could set up certain compositions, and do it in a very relaxed manner. Go for a particular shot or a particular idea, and work at it until we got it right, rather than trying to catch it on the fly.
I’d also like to do more work with women together, not necessarily lesbians. I think there’s a sex between women that’s very different from sex between a man and a woman.
D: What is that difference?
R: I don’t know if I can put it in words. Anything I would say about women can also be applied to men, because men can be very caring and sensitive and so on. But there’s a certain something….
I know married women who are very happy in their marriages, very happy in their sexual relationships with their mates, who also have a fantasy of having sex with another woman. It’s very rare for them to get to live that fantasy out because our society doesn’t make it easy.
In the past, I’ve gone to some of these women and said, “I know another woman who has the same fantasy you have. I’ve shot you once or twice; I know what kind of person you are. I’ve shot this other woman once or twice; I know the kind of person she is. I think you two would work well together.” And they couldn’t wait to get together.
I’ve brought women together like that and it has been very, very intense — very hot and satisfying for both people. They had tremendous sex, had lots of orgasms, thoroughly enjoyed it, maybe even got together once or twice after the photography session. But then they went their separate ways, went back to their relationships. The sex between women I’m talking about doesn’t have to be an ongoing thing; it’s more of a fantasy fulfillment.
I’d like to be able to shoot more of that because there’s a certain freedom, a certain openmindedness, a certain excitement, that I like to capture. It’s also very exciting for the men, not necessarily as participants but as voyeurs. It can make the relationships between the men and the women stronger because the wife knows she has the freedom to be able to live her fantasy without there being any jealousy.
D: Why do you think so many men like to see women being sexual with each other?
R: I don’t know. It may just be just curiosity — the sexual curiosity of seeing what women to do please each other, how they interact with each other. A man knows that to satisfy a woman sexually he basically has his hands, his penis, his mouth, and his personality. But what can a woman do? How does she do it? How do women find each other sexually attractive? Where is the excitement in that?
If you’re openminded enough and have a strong enough relationship to not be threatened, it can be very, very satisfying for the couples involved, something they wouldn’t trade for anything else in the world.
D: Let me ask you to talk about the work you’ve done in the past. What do you think makes the work you have done different from the work of other photographers? What do you think makes your photographs particularly successful?
R: Several things, some of which we’ve discussed already. I pay a lot of attention to expression. People have to be having a good time. I’m not interested in sweaty, grungy, moody kinds of photographs.
I’ve always wondered, for example, about David Hamilton. I’ve wondered why he was so popular because he always focuses on these very moody looking girls. Without exception his models look like somebody has just walked up to them and whispered, “Your mother just died.” They all have this very sour, melancholy look to them.
I am interested in the exact opposite. I am interested in the joy of sexuality. I like people who look like they’re enjoying their nudity and their sexuality.
Other photographers seem to be interested in the mechanics of the penises and the vaginas, the hands placed so you can see what’s going on, and so on. The expressions aren’t always that important to them. Now, when I edit my work, the expression is the most important thing to me, not that you be able to see everything from all the different angles.
Composition is also very important to me. I want to have the eye captured by the image so that as you look at the picture you notice the second and the third meanings which, as I say, you can’t get from a movie or a video. I have a professional art and photography background, after all. I’m a professional in that sense. But the thing that separates me, in addition to my competency, is the fact I pay a lot of attention to expression because I know that expression communicates.
Anybody can shoot pictures of people fucking. You can put a camera on automatic and achieve that. The art is in composing the picture to begin with, and then capturing that very fleeting expression.
D: You have talked about having a photographic mission, about wanting to promote a sense of joy and innocence about sex. Would you say that your photography has a social purpose? Is there a way you want to affect the world through your work?
R: I can sum it up in one phrase: I want to dispel shame. We have been branded with the concept that shame and sexuality are one and the same. I want to overturn that notion.
When I was real little — six or seven years old — I was, like any six or seven year old, curious about the differences between little boys and little girls. The girl next door, who was the same age as I was, was equally curious. We went behind the garage, took our pants down, and looked at each other. I was discovered doing that by my mother. She spanked me and sent the girl home. She told the girl’s mother what we were doing, and the girl got spanked by her mother.
I went from then until I was in college and took a psychology course somehow thinking that sex was dirty. That by seeing her little vagina, and by her looking at my penis, somehow we had made a sin against God. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that was not the case. My mother was a very loving woman, and would never do anything intentionally to fuck me up as an adult. But that’s exactly what she did.
So my work is an attempt to undo that shameful attitude about sexuality — to focus on the joy, the innocence, the intimacy, and the love that are part of being sexual human beings.
Spectator, September 2-23, 1994
Copyright © 1994 David Steinberg
Leave a Reply