One of my favorite nude fine arts photographer is Jeanloup Sieff. The simplicity of his style and the aesthetics of his images make a compelling argument against the fancy, overloaded frames that I see in numerous other fine art nude photographs. The clarity of his images, where the artist takes up the center stage and remains as the only subject in the frame, is one of the uniqueness that I have followed in most of my fine arts projects.
He puts his philosophy behind his fine art nude photography very succinctly.
All aspects of photography interest me and I feel for the female body the same curiosity and the same love as for a landscape, a face or anything else which interests me. In any case, the nude is a form of landscape. There are no reasons for my photographs, nor any rules; all depends on the mood of the moment, on the mood of the model.
Jeanloup Sieff
What I have personally struggled with in designing some my my own fine arts projects is to be able to express it in a way that is detailed enough for the artist to articulate, yet vague enough for me to improvise and change courses as the project evolves.
Artists who are hustling for every dime are unsuitable for my type of work. Creative work, to whatever extent the creativity is, cannot be boxed in time and space. Jeanloup teaches me a great lesson when he says:
The impulse that led you to make an image is a thing that you cannot share with anyone, even if you explain it. What remains is a surface that will live its own life, that will belong to everybody. I accept that surface.
Jeanloup Sieff
There is also something very uplifting in the way Jeanloup worked with his models. With very broad sketches, sometimes confusing and apparently conflicting directions, he strayed so far away from traditional fashion photography where the artist mostly walks the tightrope already set up by the photographer.
Having the model as a co-creator is a strong motivation to create something unique. Something so powerful that one could have missed the possibilities entirely at the early stages of designing the project. Simplifying the frame & letting the model be the one and only one in the frame strongly suggests that when done right, the model artist does not really need any support to hold the frame together.