About a month ago, nearly two months (this school term is flying by as it seems), I teased you all with a little disclosure of a project I had begun work on. It was a collection of Bel Ami screen captures and portraiture that I thought would look great done as old fashioned erotic photographs. I was quite delighted on how well they turned out over all. The evolution of the project began during the time I was putting together the slideshow for my Art of Bel Ami video. Going over all the numerous file folders of images I had collected and making my decisions as to what images I was going to include in that project, the idea for this new project came to fruition. Of all those file folders filled with screen shots, photo sessions and portraiture I chose a sum total of 133 images and set to work with my photo editor and performed my magic to them. Some naturally looked better in this old style of photography than others and lent itself better to it. With the ones that I felt didn’t make it to this gallery, may very well see life again in another gallery project later on. For the final gallery, of the 134 completed, re-edited imagery, I chose a total of 88 images over three final folders I created. These were heartbreaking decisions. Initially I was only going to have 13, the best of the 133, but I found it next to impossible to choose that small of a number to display. Yet, even those 88 images seemed like too little. It’s just not easy to decide these things. Now I know how photographers feel when they’re putting together gallery sets and the seemingly heartbreaking choices they have to go through. You love everything; you know you can’t include everything. The attached video clip represented the best images from the selection.
I’ve had a interest in vintage photography for many years: from classic black and white images that everyone knows creates the artistic effects of light and shadow we’ve come to love in photographic art, to the old fashioned photography of before the turn of the 20th century. From the 1890’s (when photography was invented) to the 1900’s these photographs were rendered in sepia, where the whites had a light yellow tinge to them and the darker colorations looked more brown than black. The shading, known to artist’s Caravaggio, after the Italian Renaissance painter who discovered the technique of using light and shadow to dramatic effect (and would characterize the work of later expressionist painters like Goya, would appear more subtle, almost blending into the other shades of darkened color. This old fashioned style was quite reminiscent of the old family portraiture one would see when you would go to someone’s home. I became fascinated by it, especially when I came across vintage erotic imagery from that same time period, what we’ve come to know as ‘boudoir photography’. These images had an elegance all their own and the way these images were done, so magical in their look, it just added something more to the eroticism of the image. But, of course as always, I think I’ll let you be the judge.
To see the image gallery go here and then browse it to your heart’s content 🙂
All images remain the sole property of Bel Ami Entertainment and no copyright infringement is intended.