The opposite of a muse | Hacker News Reader

The opposite of a muse

newyorker.com

60 pointssmacktoward20 comments

This is fascinating, but I'm not sure it's as unusual as presented. I've done a lot of studio photography, including a lot of nudes. Many serious art models actively seek out photographers they admire and lobby to work for them. Many of them have other careers, and don't depend on modeling for income. For them, modeling is artistic expression itself, and they are building a portfolio, a body of work. This leads to a much more equitable division of control between photographer and model, as opposed to the more common situation of models paid to do as the photographer wishes - putting the photographer fully in charge and in control.

As an aside, I've found that models fall into two broad classes - those who refuse to do nudes, and those who prefer to do nudes. My first model who didn't come from within my own circle of friends (we were introduced by a mutual friend for a project I had) was actually kind of baffled by the idea of non-nude modeling - why would anyone want to wear clothes for art? And she was stunning. She actually rarely works with other photographers, mostly photographing herself (I refuse to call that work "selfies"). At any rate, the impulse to model nude, and to build a personal portfolio, is just as normal as any other artistic interest.

Note to those reading instead of working, this article contains NSFW pictures.(art nudes)

And once again having my own office pays off.

And I wish that I would learn to read the comments BEFORE the article.

I've learned that lesson, and it often leads to just not reading the article at all, when perhaps I might have gotten something out of it if I'd read it before the comments.

It's a double-edged sword.

I don't understand why she is the opposite of a muse. I imagined that meant that she had the curse of ruining a photographer ( making them quit afterwards; obsessing over her alone, etc) after they took their first photo of her.

She's the opposite of a muse because a muse is someone photographers would all be chasing to photograph, whereas in this case she's the one who does the chasing. She identifies photographers she likes and reaches out to them, not the other way around.

Isn't a muse traditionally a source of inspiration that fuels your creativity?

I've been watching a lot of Project Runway lately, and they muddy the word muse, too. Sometimes you can stretch it and say it's still the source of their inspiration, but something they're given a "muse" and forced to work with them, which to me isn't a "muse" at all, but instead they're a "client".

That's the definition I was thinking of. I was expecting it to be about people in your life that sap your drive and inspiration.

Agreed. I expected what you described. I'd call her more like the inverse of a muse, rather than the opposite.

Then I asked another question, one that had played in my mind since I first learned about the collection. Did the interest of her photographers in the sensuality of her body ever extend into real life? She counted. There were two artists she had slept with. I silently calculated this number, over the twenty-two years that she worked, to be around one per cent of the artists she had worked with. “In life, this sometimes happens,” she said.

Interesting lady.

Money poisons art. :( I've met so many artists - musicians, actors, painters, models, etc - who feel that money validates them artistically. It soon turns into the opposite. You do what the person paying you wants, and then it's just a job.

This is so interesting. Where do you find these musicians initially? Soundcloud?

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