Every now and then, I rediscover things on old USBs, compact discs and hard drives, forgotten fragments from art college, old photographs, and scraps of unfinished stories or similar. Most recently, I found a couple of photographs dating back to when I was twenty years old (so just about 29 years ago!) and, given their subject, I have ummed and aahed about sharing them here.
The story goes that I was approached by the wife of a fine art masters student, who was looking for someone to model for him. I was skinny-as-a-rake back then (looking back, it seems all of us were, for this was long before the muscularising effects of Instagram and Tik-Tok), and I can only assume the photographer was interested in photographing bodies that were xylophonic in their visible structures!
The story continues with me agreeing to participate and, hand-on-heart, I did so because a large part of me had wanted to say ‘no’. As the day of the shoot drew near, my remorse at saying ‘yes’ doubled exponentially and I nearly bailed. It just seemed like a very odd thing for me to be doing, but when the moment came and I was under the lights, much of my self-consciousness slipped from me as quickly as my socks and pants.
In the end, I returned three times to the photography studio, and by the third shoot I recall there was a set of feathered angel wings and a wooden plank across my shoulders much like a crucifix or similar, and all a bit Saint Sebastian I suspect. The images here – tasteful and coy, dear reader! – date from that first shoot, where the photographer serves me up as some kind of seed pod or pecan.
This body could belong to anyone really and it takes an imaginative effort on my part to recognise it as once belonging to me! I suspect this is partly why I agreed to shuck my clothes for a stranger – so as to make a time capsule of youth and candour.
Red's Kingdom 
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