by Bill Noble
(03/06/02)
In 1982, after considerable experience shooting traditional nudes,
Michael Rosen stumbled on the theater photographs of the famed Max
Waldman. Something in their immediacy and emotional intensity,
presented in stark black and white, moved him to emulate Waldman's
studio techniques. A few months later he entered a collection of his
artistic nudes in the First Annual Berkeley Erotic Art Festival --
and ended up being invited to photograph a sex session among the
festival's organizers, a first for him.
Since then, he's published four exhibit format books and won wide
recognition. The books are: Lust & Romance: Rated X Fine Art
Photography (1998); Sexual Art: Photographs That Test the
Limits (1994 and 1998, published both in the US and in a French
edition); Sexual Portraits: Photographs of Radical Sexuality
(1990); and Sexual Magic: The S/M Photographs (1986).
Michael is shaven-headed, mustached, and muscular. He is also
remarkably gentle and thoughtful. Recently we sat down with Michael in
the living room of his hillside San Francisco home to discuss his
work. Each room of his gracious home is a gallery of fine photography,
much of it explicitly sexual, representing a variety of artists. In
his basement he maintains a large darkroom, and his studio, which
comes complete with a track system that lets him glide along the
ceiling with his camera.
Michael leaned toward us, speaking softly but with great
earnestness, shaping his thoughts with his hands.
Clean Sheets: Why did you choose to focus on sexual
photography? To push so many edges?
Michael Rosen: I enjoy pushing edges, I guess. I think
creating truthful images of human sexuality is important. I want to
insist that my audience confront two questions: Do sexual pictures
need to be as banal as commercial pornography is? And are we willing
to consider that sexually explicit photography might be art?
Beyond that, I enjoy the subject material immensely -- and enjoy
the technical aspects of my art equally.
CS: Each of your books has explored a specific topic or
sexual community, and your pictures have often been...startling:
piercings, sadomasochism, genderfuck, and more.
Michael: I think of my books as being, in a sense, travel
books. I've visited places that very few Americans -- out there in
Iowa -- have access to. I've brought my photographs, the tender
ones, the intense ones, the ones showing radical sexuality, back to
share. The people I've photographed, and you, looking at the images,
share a common humanity. That's important for us all to know.
My work's a manifesto, too. It embodies what I call the Zero'th
Amendment: I do with my body and my life what I want, and, so long as
I harm no one, that's no one's business.
CS: What about your technique, your style?
Michael: In my first book, Sexual Magic, the
pictures were in a gritty documentary style, grainy and full of
blurred movement. Since then, I've chosen a much more static,
formally composed approach, with nice tonal gradations and
studio-quality lighting.
The third photo in CS's gallery is Annie and Dan, who you're
interviewing about their shoot. It's extremely formal, with the two of
them prone and embracing on a posing bench. It's got a classic calm,
until you see a cock pointing straight into the air in the center of
the picture. It's about sex.
I don't do "erotic" photography. I do sex photography: I take
pictures of people having sex who are genuinely hot for each other,
and I try to capture the full energy of their exchange. (Laughs) A
friend of mine once joked that sex pictures are in color, and
artistic pictures are black and white. I don't subscribe to that
theory.
CS: How do you find people for your pictures?
Michael: Occasionally it's pros looking for publicity shots,
or something of the sort. But for the most part it's either friends or
people who have heard about my work and want to have pictures of
themselves.
My favorite way to work is to do what Dan and Annie did with me:
they liked my work, they asked if I'd do a shoot in exchange for
prints. They got a dozen archival-quality prints that they chose
from some one hundred fifty pictures we shot. What I got are
pictures I can exhibit or publish. I like the motivation those folks
bring, their willingness to take risks -- and I usually get good
pictures.
CS: What are people like, being photographed so intimately?
Michael: Some people are wooden, especially the men. And
the men have the "obligation" of getting it up, too, which they
sometimes find quite difficult in the studio, regardless of their
age. That's why you see the same male actors in porn films, again
and again, because they've proved they can.
Sometimes one of the partners will be very controlling, or in
cases where both of them are used to being photographed, they may
have a pretty immovable idea of what they want to do, which may or
may not work photographically. Or sometimes they get "nice." Or
sometimes they're just two people who aren't soulful for each
other. And sometimes men and women have very different agendas,
because they're men or women.
Who really works? People who are having fun!
CS: You must have some wild stories to tell.
Michael: I do, but I don't tell them, even
anonymously. Respecting people's privacy is terribly important.
CS: Tell us about shooting Dan and Annie. We see them in the
gallery, and hear their experience of the session in the next
interview. What was your experience?
Michael: On the spectrum from lousy to super-duper, they
were super-duper. I've never had a session that was better.
A big part of what I look for is sexual chemistry, and they had
it. They were hot, but they were happy and relaxed, too. For three
hours under studio lights, with me interfering and making
suggestions, they were graceful and 100% engaged. They knew what to
do with their hands -- you have no idea how many shots fail because
there's a hand just lying somewhere in the picture, not
engaged. They could take direction without tightening up, and they
could ignore me and go for it on their own.
CS: Does shooting hot sex turn you on?
Michael: You know, it's my job not to be turned on. The
people I'm shooting are engaged in something pretty major, and I need
to be fully present. So sometimes I get aroused, but I almost always
set it aside and concentrate on my real purpose in being there.
CS: But surely...
Michael: Are there things I especially enjoy? Of
course. Mutual nipple-pinching. I like intense hand jobs, and I
like freestanding dicks. I can acknowledge my own personal turn-ons,
and still be there for the shoot.
CS: How easy is it to tell the difference between what turns
you on as a person and what attracts you as a photographer?
Michael: Pretty easy. I don't think I confuse the two, even
when I shoot what I like. Dicks are important elements in sex
photographs, because they're so powerful and accessible
visually. Cunnilingus can create some lovely body geometry, but it's
hard to shoot otherwise. Intercourse is obviously intense, but a
photographer has to work hard to shoot it in a way that is original
and interesting.
Look at this picture. (He spreads an 8 x 10 on the coffee table.)
It has genitals in full contact, but what makes it a good photograph
is the arrangement of their legs, not the sexual parts.
Does that answer your question?
CS: It does. Here's another question. Has there been any
progression in the sorts of things you're willing to show in your
photographs? Are there things you wouldn't do earlier that you do
now?
Michael: Yes. It took me four books to be willing to show
someone pissing on someone else. In Sexual Art, from 1994, I
showed just after, with a pool of urine on the floor, but that's
all. I was unwilling for a long time to show photographs of men
dominating women, but now I think there's a broad enough
understanding of S/M that it's permissible -- though the first time
I did it in a book, I was timid: on the facing page I placed a
picture of her dominating him, so it was symmetrical.
I'm sure there have been other elements I've eased into. Tattooing,
for instance, has become much more widely accepted than when I began
my career in the 1970s. Remember that I've always wanted to pitch
my work, no matter how radical, to Middle America. I want lots of
different kinds of people to find my pictures accessible.
CS: What's next for you? You've shot S/M, "radical
sexuality," and most recently, "vanilla" sex. Each of your books has
had a specific focus of that sort. What now?
Michael: Good question! The shoot with Annie and Dan came
out of a desire to shoot older people. But it's hard to recruit
subjects. The pool of seniors who are comfortable with sex and
comfortable enough with their bodies to be photographed is certainly
smaller than the equivalent pool of people in their 20s or 30s.
The other frontier I'm exploring is digital technology. I'm
shooting on film, but doing all my manipulation and printing
digitally, in Photoshop.
That raises all sorts of questions about what reality is. I shoot
"real" sex. Of course, any photographer chooses his reality, selecting
some images, rejecting others, playing with light, contrast,
perspective, etc.. But with Photoshop, I have enormous control. Look
at the picture of Annie and Dan again. I've lightened her skin,
softened the focus: I've made her alabaster and nymph-like. I've made
him a satyr: dark and solid. Have I cheated, or have I enhanced
something that was already there?
I always ask permission to make changes, and I always ask myself if
the changes are legitimate in terms of what I want from my art.
Whatever I focus on next, the power that digitalizing gives me will
provide plenty to think about, plenty to do.
Read an interview with a couple who were photographed by Michael Rosen, in this issue
View the new Clean Sheets gallery of his work
Read the review of Michael Rosen's books
Visit Michael Rosen's Web site
