Clothed and Nude, 1987
Finally getting out of Houston and moving to Los Angeles in 1986 freed me to begin a long-awaited project of nude portraits. I placed an ad in the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s newspaper, asking anyone, male or female, of any age, to pose clothed and nude, offering $30 for two hours. I went to anyone’s house who answered the ad. As usual, we talked before I photographed, about their lives and why they wanted to do this. Many said it was for the $30 but most also had to admit that it was something intriguing, that they wanted to see if they could do it.
It turned out to be my first head-on encounter with the fact that photographs lie, or at least that they have the potential to mislead. When I was choosing the images to print, I had the option to make a subject appear to have felt more or less comfortable either clothed or nude. I realize I’ve always had those choices when choosing which negative to print, and it has always been true that I could determine what the statement might be from the portrait I chose to make, but this group of diptychs seemed much more in my control. Never wanting to ask someone to do something I wouldn’t do, this series begins with a diptych I made of myself.
