jaroslaw studencki

I began the series of images by placing open ended classified ads on local websites in order to find people to photograph in their own home. Because I am not targeting a particular gender, body type, age or race, the statement becomes a kind of ethnographic survey. Each person that I worked with has a different idea of how they want to be perceived and a different agenda for replying to my ads. This ranges from the exercising of one's exhibitionistic or sexual tendencies, getting images for personal use, to the basic need to get a quick monetary compensation, which I often offer. This is why it is important for each portrait to take place in the intimacy of each models home, with the hopes that the background, the gesture(often chosen by the models themselves), and level of comfort will poetically inform the brief relationship and the motives behind each model's willingness(or perhaps need) to participate. The process is vital to me in my photographic practice, and that is why I choose a large format analog camera, which further slows down and strains each composition, forcing the vulnerable model to further consider how they are being looked at. Finally, with the inclusion of the environment and still life images, the series to me began to be more about underlying class issues, geographic location, and perhaps my own agenda when photographing nakedness.