Experimenting with symmetrical form but asymmetrical lighting to make complementary patterns. I was standing on a desk to take this shot, looking straight down. This is from a series of abstract nude photos taken in 1971 of my art student girlfriend in a makeshift "studio" using a very basic set-up of a single "angle-poise" light in a dark room. We felt we were being quite daring and avant-garde as in those days art nude photos by amateurs were very unusual - they were generally the work of professionals and either standard drawing-class-type coy poses or supposedly sexy "pin-ups". Several of our photos were published in student, art and "underground" magazines in London over the next few years. Nowadays this kind of photo has become fairly standard so it's probably difficult to imagine how exciting and new it seemed at the time. I was amazingly lucky to have a model who was both beautiful and brave enough to launch into this exploration with me. Tech. note: taken on Ilford FP4 film with a Leica IIIf and Canon 28mm F2.8 lens. The home-processed film has survived remarkably well and this is a recent scan from the neg. using my trusty Nikon LS-5000 scanner with updated VueScan software - it's nice to be able to make a good quality prnt and be taken back to those heady days 45 years ago. PS: As a newcomer to FB I feel very honoured that this has been "Community Featured" as well as being featured in the "B&W Artistic Nude" group – many thanks to those concerned.
