Dear future me,
It’s a mystery to me if each and every one of us ponders upon their “origin story”. Just one of many defining moments, decisions, or circumstances, something concrete, that led you exactly to where you are today. My love for photography was born from my Nigerian heritage. As a child, my mother would place African statues around our home, including statues of nude men and women, or segments of them. As my culture adores the curvaceous, these statues of fertility were quite rotund. I came to appreciate the human body and all its curves. As these African sculptors expressed their creative perception of the nude body, I too sought to do so via nude photography.
My journey into exploring photography has been a long one. My first step occurred in high school where I took an Advanced Placement Studio Art class. Of course the tool of choice here was not a camera, but rather pens, pencils, and paint brushes. Regardless of the tool, the artist must intentionally compose all aspects of the idea in which he is attempting to create. I learned various basics such as lighting, shadows, and subject placement. I immediately applied my newly-formed knowledge to creating nude sketches. I vividly remember using shading techniques that seemed incongruent with nude sketches. It was not an easy undertaking, but I learned how to apply basic tools of composition, even some that seem out of place, for creative expression.
In college, I did not feel yet prepared to dive specifically into nude photography and even if I did, I wasn’t comfortable with publicly sharing amateur work. Consequently, I stepped next into communicating stories through pictures in motion. My sophomore year, I participated in a competition in which participants submitted a video about the benefits of a particular technology. The video would be presented to a panel of judges. I decided this competition would be my public arena to share my work and validate my creative visions. I had purchased my first point-and-shoot camera to create a 4minute stop-motion picture comprised of 800 pictures about the benefits of wireless technology. I learned much from this entire experience, one of which is finding the appropriate balance between presenting information to an audience and gripping their attention, in this particular case I included some bits of comedic effect. Suffice it to say, I won 2nd place. Placement inevitably didn’t matter simply based on the feedback I not only received from the judges, but also my fellow competitors that were enthusiastically commending me. That was more than enough.
Two years after undergraduate school, I purchased my first Canon entry-level DSLR camera. I began first with letting my travels dictate what I captured. Sometimes it would be neon lights on a building superimposed onto a sunset or a lone white lily in a bed of sunflowers. Better yet, a firework captured at the right time to look just like a shimmering flower. Other times, I would ask random people that seemed at first unapproachable if I could take a quick snap of them. The worst that anyone could ever tell you is “no”, and most of my favorite pictures of people were born from spontaneity. During all of this, I was applying basics and learning the camera settings to compose and properly expose the subject, respectively. Once I became familiar with my DSLR, I took my first leap of faith into nude photography in fall 2015. The first person I asked, who was a stranger in a small rural town within a conservative Republican state, said “yes” to becoming my first nude subject. An extremely difficult feat to accomplish and overcome. We met a couple times to discuss my ideas and most of all induce a shared sense of familiarity. One of the meetings occurred in her home because I had the thought to adapt my creative vision to her life, whether it was a location, a story, or an item. Here, I stumbled upon an elaborate court jester masquerade mask she adored, and so I then weaved the mask into how I would capture the model. I applied what I learned in high school: take something that “seems out of place” to creatively express my story. The photoshoot was a success, and the model was beyond satisfied with her very first shoot ever. Even more, once I posted the photos to various social media platforms, I had random people whom I didn’t know from this small town approach me to compliment my first nude shoot. Describing my internal feelings during that time as jubilant is an understatement. What led me to that exact moment of jubilee was simply a matter of chance and heritage; my origin story. Up until the end of high school, my mother immersed me in a culturally Nigerian environment that unapologetically appreciates the human body. Fifteen years later, I’m beyond content with my journey thus far of capturing the human body in all its beautiful curves, and I’m excited for all my future projects of creative nude expression, even in these currently horrible and trying times.
Oyindamola Oluwatimi
COVID 2020