She always told me she hates her body, and that she never likes how she looked in pictures. I would pester her about it from time to time – “you need to document your youth Lydia. You will regret later if you don’t.” There was no getting through to her though and i just accepted the fact that for some strange reason she hated how she looked. Months after I had given up however, she contacted me out of the blue saying “I have decided you can photograph me.”
Now of course I started to freak out. “I am no photographer! She needs a REAL photographer to do this. If i don’t make good pictures of her she will hate her looks forever!” I decided, however, that she and I should make a project out of this, that we could both use this opportunity to get over some personal fears, and maybe learn about one another in the process (I have known Lydia for a few years now, but she is a tough nut to crack – never offering her opinions freely. She is hard to read. It works for her though obviously – i was intrigued).
I was swamped with REAL work the week before we shot unfortunately and didn’t have time to prepare a real shoot – i had no props, no location, no solid ideas. I felt like ‘guy with camera’, and maybe I was, but fuck it. My friend’s apartment had slightly better light than my house so we went there to shoot. She brought a selection of clothes (the fact that most of them were under garments told me that she did in fact want to push her limits and was concerned with documenting her youthful figure before it left her). We shared nervous laughs, and I just started clicking away.
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