It began with an individual lady who came to me after a presentation I was doing. It was a seminar of some previous work. And she said to me you're working with a particular body-type model, which was true at the time. She said, I'm not of that type; I'm of a different body type. Will you be interested in working with me? And she was a very, very large lady. And this was in Northern California - I have a home up there - and we invited her to our studio in the home and photographed her there.
And that was the first time I had photographed a person of that size and shape, that kind of body type, and it was scary. I was uncomfortable, nervous - my wife was there to help. I was not sure exactly how to go about it or whether I would do her justice. I didn't know quite how to treat this figure.
And I think that's a reflection of something that's prevalent in our culture. I think, in general, we are sort of conditioned to see a different body type as acceptable and maybe look away when the other body type arrives. It was my first introduction of that kind of work. And when I showed some of that work, there was a lot of interest. And it led me to a new consciousness about the fact that so many people live in body types that are not the type that's being sold by fashion models.
