Selina Mayer has been taking photographs since she was a child, her father was a photographer and she used to have a darkroom in the house she grew up. She started shooting when she realized that photography was the most honest and direct way to express something that was very personal.
«For me, taking photographs is a personal thing and something I put a lot of myself and my emotions into. If I haven’t made some sort of relationship with my subject I feel disconnected from the images, like they’re not my photographs. And if I don’t feel a connection to my photographs, how can I expect others looking at it to? Capturing people as individuals, and making a connection with them is crucial to that process».
In her tumblr, Mayer talks about the existence of a grey area between pornography and nude.
What does nudity mean to you?
Nudity to me means vulnerability, intimacy, openness and freedom. I find clothes evoke assumptions about the subject, so when I do shoot clothed people I tend to keep the clothing as neutral and nondescript as possible, so the focus of the image is on the subject; their face, their form, their body language, and so on.
Is porn marginalized in contemporary photography?
I definitely think that there is a stigma attached to the label “pornography”, as if images taken primarily to arouse the viewer are lesser than those taken for artistic purposes. Personally, I don’t think the categories of pornography and art need to be separated. I would love to see more art pornography — beautiful images that are both aesthetically engaging and arousing. That’s not to say that all nude images are pornography. A lot of nude art is more figurative in nature, focusing on the form of the body rather than having any erotic intent. But I certainly don’t think than non-erotic figurative art is more legitimate than pornography, I’d just like to see more better looking pornography.
I found a lot of self-portraits in your portfolio. Why do you shoot so many?
My self portraits are part of a process of introspection and self scrutiny that I’ve been working on for years. Taking self portraits has helped me understand myself better in many ways, and it enables me to express certain things that would go unspoken otherwise. A lot of my work is very personal and using my own body seems to be an appropriate way to articulate those feelings I think I took my first self portraits when I was about 15/16, and my first nude self portraits at 18. For a long time I didn’t shoot anyone other than myself, as I was too insecure about my own abilities as an artist to ask another person to pose for me. As I grew more confident and started shooting other people regularly I still took self portraits in order to experiment, and to express things in my images that I can’t through other people. One great thing about shooting self portraits is that I only have myself to answer to. I have the freedom to screw up, make mistakes and experiment more without having to worry about explaining to another person why our shoot didn’t work out. Is it possible to reinvent nude? Nude art has been around as long as art has existed, in a multitude of forms for millennia. It’s been reinvented and revolutionized thousands upon thousands of times. It’s an old subject, but artists have myriads of ways of seeing the world, and there’s so much to see in the nude human form. That’s what makes it so interesting. Is making nude art original? Of course not. But is it possible to creative new and innovative nude art? Absolutely.
Who or what do you feel more inspired by?
I spend hours upon hours looking at photographs from other photographers, contemporary and historical. I watch a lot of films. I love performance art. I try to get to exhibitions as much as possible. But I think the majority of my direct inspiration comes from direct interaction with my subjects, their personalities and the way they move or talk. Engaging with my subjects means I end up coming up with ideas that would have never occurred to me on my own, and that’s wonderful.
Selina Mayer | tumblr
(Selina Mayer was featured on Fluffer Magazine issue 3)
