PAUL’S PHOTOS || Terence

The only skills I have are my clumsiness and ineptitude. I’m not interested in creating art but in seeing what I can see in the men who sit for me. I was annoyed when Trevor told me that this was another man who would only be shot wearing a jockstrap. Worse, his presence was confrontational: he was annoyed that I wasn’t “directing” him, giving him poses.

Trevor had given him an orange. He ate a small bit of it and then said that any more would throw off his stringent diet. We sat, facing each other, both of us unhappy with the other.

He didn’t want to talk, but in the long silences would occasionally let out bits of information about himself.  He’s from wealth but now lives in self-imposed poverty.  He’s performed on stage, though he wouldn’t say when or where.  He now works with ex-addicts, the homeless.

He didn’t like that I asked questions. They seemed irrelevant to the process: he was to be posed and photographed. In my most bumbling way–why do I aim to annoy people who are annoying me?–I said “Let’s try something with one foot up.” He gave me this. You can see his tension in the hand gripping the chair. I waited, then moved his foot on its side. He was a million miles away.

Earlier in the shoot, before he’d taken off his pants, I took shots of his tattoos. On the right side of his torso were the first two stanzas of Robert Browning’s Abt. Vogler. On the left side of his torso were the next two stanzas. Here they are:

And at the end of what had been a frustrating shoot, I turned him around and had him face the backdrop. I turned off all but one overhead light. I know he had hoped to be conquered, or to have his beauty somehow perfected by my vision. But I have no vision. What I do best is stealing. And in this shot, the last, I got his wariness, his softness, his fear and arrogance–and his sex. I walked out without a word.

Later, Trevor told me that Terence had offered to come back for a nude shoot. I said no.

– PAUL MORRIS