the wonders of television

they finally broadcast a segment on television last night, here in Singapore, that included a photo taken of me by a student photographer. in the promo to the show they said that the show would be about the art vs porn debate, and showed the nude photos that had been taken by the local photographer Djie. Naturally when 10:20pm came and The Big Picture stated there was no debate around art or pornography – CNA obviously is not interested in debate  – instead they just interviewed the photographer and asked her about the more risque subject matter of her photos. she gave some answer about exploring her own comfort level as the reason why she had chosen to do nudes.

Of course the art/porn debate would have been far more interesting than three photographers stiffly trying to explain their art.

now the thing was, as one of the models, she never said that to me at the time. she also stated in the interview that she maintained a connection with the models via eye contact etc. As far as i remember, this did not happen. when i asked her at the time why she was doing this project, this was not the answer i got. nor did i feel particularly comfortable modeling for her. her rapport with me was not very good, and as a model standing there naked she did not tell me what she wanted. i got a vague ‘be as you would be naked’. sure i get naked, but i don’t flop around in someone’s studio doing it, in front of strangers all the time. she had to realise the artificiality of the situation and that asking an amateur model to be natural was not the path to take. as a result i think a lot of the photos she took were not good. although i must say the few that were good, were very good. I do not doubt her technical ability as a photographer, but her rapport was less than satisfactory.

the video of the show can be seen here: