There is that famous quote about obscenity from Justice Potter Stewart “I know it when I see it” and I feel like my work rarely crosses that threshold. I get asked about my work a lot and why I photograph so many porn stars and I figured I would take a minute to talk about that and how I see my work as far as pornography goes. Short answer is that I don’t see it that way 

I realized that a lot of the photos I post on this website are pretty photos of conventionally attractive women and that people are going to be looking at them for sexual gratification, but when I am shooting I don’t really think about it in a sexual way. I like nudity, and I know my audience, but the stuff I am mostly interested is desexualizing nudity and putting it in a different context. I often tell models to just do what they would be doing in their normal life and we just hang out in their homes and I occasionally take photos. The only difference is that they don’t have clothes on. 

I have obviously shot more adult stuff like when I used to shoot for Hustler or when I did a webseries for my friends at WoodRocket you really want to be looking at porn you could check out TeenPornHD or something and not my photography. I just wanna document my life as much as possible, even if some of it is posed. Werner Herzog explains his mix of fictional and documentary film work with the term ecstatic truth and I feel like that is something I am going for as well, even if it’s mostly just photos of porn girls butts. 

So why do I shoot mostly porn stars? Well part of the reason is that I dated an adult film actress many years ago and she introduced me to their friends and it just kept going until I was sort of known for it. But the main reason I prefer to shoot them over normal models is because of how comfortable they are naked. It’s so easy to get something that feels very “real” when someone isn’t thinking at all about modesty. There is just an ease there which you can get from other models, but it takes a lot longer. I remember one of the first nude shoots I ever did the girl was so uncomfortable naked that the photos were coming out really awkwardly so I had this idea for us to play Mario Kart for like 45 minutes while she sort of forgot about it. It actually worked out pretty well, but someone who gets naked for a living is always gonna be more comfortable right away and that’s important when you shoot as quickly as I do. 

So yeah that’s about it. I just wanted to write this up since people ask me about it a lot, especially other photographers and models so I figured this would be a good place to point them to if they asked.