Rob, the fact that I agree with you and hoped for more reasoned responses to your posts, still leaves the overriding reason for my having locked the thread:
sadly, discussions such as this are apparently now outside the possiblity of reasoned debate on this forum and elsewhere.
An outside observer might only have to spend 24 hours looking at American television to understand how the deep polarization of opinions and the subsequent inability to find logical and respectful disagreement have poisoned public discourse. This cuts to both sides of the political spectrum.
Chris,
Sorry for the delay in response; I spent time yesterday in hospìtal in discussion with my cardio. and have three more tests set up - for whenever they can fit me in - which left attending to LuLa correspondence a little lower down my to do list!
I imagined that you might have been a little unwilling to close the thread; however, reading what you wrote does illustrate that you have allowed your decision to be made against your better judgement, and solely to the bleat of those who think that life is a simple + or - situation, with identical behavioural rules applying across the board, and the fact that some sections of the population do not live within those tight parameters has to be stopped at all costs, by any means possible. This really is a reversion to nothing other than Puritanical Absolutism.
I can tell you this (and fortunately for me, Farmer, I was
older than six when it happened): I spent about five years of my young life stuck in a boarding school in India, an establishment run by a motley selection of American, Canadian and Australian-powered missionary followers whose antics and rules were to reveal to me, many decades later, that puritanical thought, coming from "Christian" denominations of all kinds, taken to extremes, share absolutely everything with the excesses of any Islamic totalitarianism we see today. No, heads were physically left intact - if bums not (I mean by canes), but minds...
Yes, Chris, I understand your point about US tv and what it breeds; the same is daily fare in British newspapers, and if you ever watch Sky News, you may be left wondering: whither the news?
Now, Sharon and I do not know one another at all, but I will not forget that she commented on my website's professional pictures (mostly calendar girls because I had none of the fashion stuff left) in a very positive manner, pleased that they did not represent an objectification of women, but rather treated femininity in a holistic manner. She was right then, and still is: I have always respected the girls I worked with, even if some, at times, were absolutey not the ones I might have chosen for the gigs had the casting been left in my remit. (I even make reference to this in my website.) What I will say, to Sharon as to any other woman reading this is: have you ever considered the power of diffusing a difficult situation by the simple act of just laughing out loud in the person's face? Derision is a very strong weapon, and that some woman thinks your advances are laughable will crush any erection to zero. Physical attack is something entirely else, and I would imagine far more rare than hopeful flirtation. Which is exactly where Bardot and Deneuve came to the argument. Deny and demonise flirtation and you end up with today's situation where people are scared of making a direct, person-to-person approach: they end up spending their salaries on dating web sites. How bloody tragic; is that what the feminists wanted? You have to advertise you are available instead of doing the reseach in a normal manner? Yuck! How reminiscent of the call girl racket, whose listing are published openly and legally over entire pages of some Mallorcan newspapers.
Photography of models is not just about how they look; even more than that it is about what they are able to give
to you, and what the photographer is able to extract from their offering. That is interpersonal chemistry, and it is not interchangeable, which is borne out by the way some people right at the top can work well together and others equally placed, not.
If you are away somewhere on assignment, there is a helluva lot of money riding on the back of you coming home with good photographs. Anyone but an idiot understands that creating a bad atmosphere on the job will not produce good work, and that all it will produce is your last gig for that client footing the bill. So, what to do? How can you tell what's desired by your model companion(s)? You are not making pictures with her/them 24/24; there is a lot of time together doing nothing photographic. Exactly as Slobodan wrote, there are all sorts of women with whom you have to interface professionally. There is the girl who will sulk if she thinks you don't want to bed her; there is the one who counts photographer and celebrity scalps and the other, "normal" one who just gets on with the job and gives you her best work. As in many cases you never meet the girl until you invite her to the casting, you have as little idea what you are jetting away with as has she. You both work on trust, but as I outlined above, what are the expectations? You have to figure it out pretty damned quickly at the start of the artificial relationship away from base.
My solution? To run away from the problem by making it impossible to surface: as soon as the gigs became big enough budget-wise, I made my wife a partner in the business and she was able to come with me on foreign shoots both to assist physically on the job, but more importantly, to keep temptation out of the way and to moderate model mindsets. In one case, it was the model's
husband who refused to allow his wife to go on trips if the snapper was single. (Note the word "allow"...)
Perhaps model photography is no country for
old married men; perhaps female models should only go on assignment with gay male snappers; perhaps male models should only work with lesbian photograhers. There! at a stroke, all of LuLa's bleeding hearts will be happy at last! Until the next excuse arises.
On a more general note, Chris, reference to the age of six does not imply an absolute; there are those as dumb when they die as old people as there those wise beyond their years at twenty. What the reference was supposed to be applying to was the mindset that never grows up; that thinks life is a set of golden rules, that perfect equilibriuim is attainable, that there exists, anywhere, a standard of spiritual and moral perfection. No, it does not exist and it never will, because in truth, humans instinctively do not desire it. Were it ever attained, it would be the end of the species as we know it and signal the creation of the human cypher.
Why some cannot differentiate the difference between
approving of bad intersexual behaviour and
understanding why it does and will ever exist, defeats me. As I said, it's a problem playing out between their own ears.