Here’s one of my more unusual nudes. Here’s the story behind it:

In the summer of 2002, I received a phone call from a photographer who I had met at a workshop a couple of years or so earlier. He lived in New Jersey, and told me that a model would be coming over to his apartment to work with him, and he asked me if I’d want to work with her, too. I don’t think I had anything planned for the day, so I said yes. He told me that I should get to him around the middle of the afternoon, after he’d had a chance to photograph her himself for a while.

Fine. I did as he asked and arrived mid-afternoon. It was a very hot day, but for some reason, my friend did not have the air conditioning on at all in his place. I worked with the model for a while in the heat, and then I decided that we should move into a room of the apartment that was pretty much completely bare and empty. I think it had carpeting, but not a stick of furniture or decoration.

Being as hot as it was, I really needed to drink some water, so I asked my friend for a glass. Before I took a drink, something gave me the idea to try photographing the model through the glass. I think I got a small table from another room and placed the glass on the table. I was set.

Looking back over the negatives today, I saw that my initial photos were of the glass pretty much filling the frame of the image. Then, I obviously decided to recompose the image, including just the top half of the glass with the model visible out-of-focus in the background.

As you can see, the model is not only visible out-of-focus in the back, but her midsection can also be seen in the water, yielding a double image of sorts which I like.

After this, I moved back and photographed the model standing next to the table with her hand on or near the glass on the table, but none of those were as interesting as the one you see here.

By the way, my friend did eventually turn on the A/C when I mentioned how hot is was. Why he didn't do it earlier I wasn't quite sure.