Thoughts on Models

Posted on October 9, 2011 in Morals & Ethics Photography Social Justice

Models need to understand that they are part of the creative process and photographers need to treat them as creative peers.

I’ve gone to two photo-shoots with models in the last two months. It’s a new world for me, he who has practiced most of his photography on hiking trails in the Santa Ana Mountains. ((Don’t worry. This will continue.)) I’ve found the world of glamor photography to be quite different from what I have expected. The women are treated well. One professional photographer I know includes a morality clause in his licensing agreement. This prevents him from reusing the photo in venues that might harm the model’s career such as politics, religion, hate, and pornography. ((Note that just because a model does nude work does not mean she wants her image to turn up on a porn site.)) I think this kind of respect is essential, but there’s another kind of respect that needs to be practiced as well.

Models have a reputation for being dumb. I think that what we perceive as imbecility is often reserve and self-protection. Youth also plays a part. You don’t want to say anything that will irritate your prospective employer. So if you ask a model her opinion on a photo, she will either tell you it is wonderful or she will tell you that what is important is what you like.

Models have successfully dictated some reasonable restrictions on what their images may be used for. It’s disturbing when a photographer takes a picture of a woman and then grafts her head onto a nude body for use in the skin trade or when he uses a woman who agreed to pose in a bikini as a barker for more meretricious web traffic. No modeling contract should allow for that and no one should be held for ransom when they find their photos appearing in career-killing places. ((Show up in a porn site and it is goodbye to Vogue.))

It is the timidity which is bred into models that disturbs me. I was taking photos of one young woman. I was having particular trouble because she was black and I don’t have much experience shooting that skin tone. Which was why I chose to work with her. But as I showed her my photos, her answer always was “Whatever you like.”

Now, I like to do justice to a person. I think the problem was she had been conditioned to always go along with the photographer. When one asked her for input, she didn’t know what to do except go into the broken record the modeling school taught her. Which I find tragic.

More experienced models have no trouble responding to this, at least the ones I have met. But this might be because they have been lucky to meet with progressive photographers who see their models as human beings. These models are wonderful to work with. I’d like to see more modeling schools and more photographers promote the idea of a creative interaction between models and the other creative persons who engage in a photo shoot. There’s this idea of photographer as mad genius who must be appeased that I think can and should be done away with. Working with a model should be something more than shouting out positions and moving her body around. ((You should never touch without the model’s permission, BTW, even if it is your girl/boyfriend.)) It should be a synthesis of the kinetic and the visual.