Partnership

I would say, lovely though he undoubtedly is, that this chap was not conventionally beautiful:


But he has clearly done a lot of work as a muse of a particular photographer, who has brought out the best in him -- including in such ostensibly unlikely scenarios as this:


While I quite like the fantasy side of this sort of thing, I'm not very interested in the practice of it.


But here there is something rather engrossing about the sequence -- and, as always, a sequence is helped by what appears to be genuine laughter:


To me it doesn't feel sordid and threatening at all but, strangely, warm.


And maybe that's borne out in the next sequence, which appears to be taken by the photographer on another occasion but features the same model:


This sequence feels to me like it's all about "lolling around"...


... that pleasant state where you roll on the floor, perhaps recreating the feeling of being an infant. A feeling that extends to a curiosity and sense of novelty about your own body.


Your limbs are loose, you are relaxed and daydreaming.


Here, the model's nakedness is about innocence and openness rather than being purely sexual (or even being at all sexual, erection notwithstanding).


And, to me, it feels rooted in the relationship between model and photographer, the strange voyeuristic intimacy of the shoot.

I like this work a lot.