Here's a picture of Steve that really speaks to me alot about my work. I don't know if you can see just how much freedom he has in this image - but to me it's very apparent.
Steve has learned to close his eyes and just fall in with me when we're working - and that's why I get the pictures of him I do.
He's not worrying about his hair here - he's not worrying about how his muscles look or if he's got his best posture going on. This is Steve so comfortable with who he is and with who I am that he can just drift away into wherever it is he likes to go. There's no protection here - no sense of holding back, no preoccupation with the camera.
This image, as much as any other image I've created in the past many years, really sums up for me what my work is all about - the freedom to relax and let go and just be wherever we are in the moment.
As you can see, it's not about his body and it's not about his face. It's about something that really transcends all of that - this is about a guy who in this moment feels no need to protect himself in any way. Steve is as naked to me in this picture as if he had no clothes on at all.
He's standing on a street in the middle of the day in downtown Los Angeles with his shirt off. And yet he's so comfortable and at ease that he could be standing under a palm tree, alone at the edge of a beach somewhere in the South Pacific.
Because I'm somebody who is so free within myself, that's what I often find reflected back to me in the people I photograph. That's what I'm always looking for and that's where some of the magic in my work comes from. If you have a trace of anything in you that's been set free, I'll find it. Water finds its own level and I find in the people I work with that which I know best in myself.
That's not me up there in the picture - that's Steve. But I know where he's at and where that sense of calm is coming from.
