Gallery Carre
SF: Chasing the Erotic Portrait with Michele Serchuk
Jul 10th, 2008 by Viviane
Photo: Midori by Michele Serchuk
Date: Sunday, July 20, 2008
Time: Noon - 4:00 PM
Location: Center for Sex & Culture
1519 Mission near 11th Street in San Francisco
415-255-1155
Cost: $15 for Photo Club members, $40 for non-members. ( CSC can accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, plus
personal checks.)
RSVP: Please RSVP at mail@sexandculture.org with “Photo Club” in the subject line.
(Please plan to come a little early if you want to sign up to be a Photo Club member onsite. What’s the Photo Club? See below.)
Have you ever looked at a beautiful, erotic photo and wondered how that shot came to be? What’s the story behind that seductive image? How does one make art from interpersonal connections and life experience? How does the artist’s approach change when working with the personal boundaries and emotional issues encountered when exploring sexuality and eroticism?
Perhaps you’ve begun shooting your own erotic imagery — your personal artwork, or sexy photos of a lover. Anyone can pick up a fully featured, pre-programmed camera and make technically credible images, but you want put passion and emotion into the shot. How can you use the erotic and/or creative connection you have with your subject to shoot stronger, more personal images? Learn how to put your lover or model at ease, draw their own sensuality out and create a dynamic conducive to making powerful, sexual imagery.
Michele Serchuk, working collaboratively with her subjects, has been shooting a wide range of erotic portraits for over a decade. Using a slide show of her own images as a framework, Ms. Serchuk will discuss how she puts her subject at ease, draws out their own sensuality and creates a creates a safe and exciting space conducive to making powerful erotic imagery. There will be time to ask plenty of questions and discuss students’ own creative goals and quandaries, and of course time for students to shoot their own photos after we’re done talking. Whether you are shooting sexy pictures with your lover or are working with a friend on your personal artwork, this workshop will help you to develop your approach to creating exciting, erotic images.
Michele will give a presentation about her work including lecture-style teaching, then oversee/teach a two-hour shooting session with at least one model.
This class will include a slide show of the artist’s work, lecture & discussion, plus time for students to shoot their own work with a model.
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Our motto “If you don’t like the erotic pictures you see, go out and make some of your own!”
We always want to see more good sex and culture, so The Center for Sex & Culture is initiating a photo club. We are seeking new club members, volunteers/officers, models, and photographers.
Here’s how it works:
Every month, CSC will book a photo class at our San Francisco space. Mostly we will be using Sunday afternoons for this, but some photographers’ schedules may mandate our using a different time. After a few months, we hope the photo club members will take over from us in choosing the photographers they’d like to work with.
Photo club members will pay $200 per year to belong to the club (this can be paid in $20 monthly installments if desired). Club members will have priority when we book each photo class, and they will pay less per class than non-club members. Monthly classes will cost $15-$60 (this also depends on the model fee and the photographer’s fee, with the non-member fee for the same class set at $40-$80 by club members). Member fees will be used to develop and maintain the photo club materials, provide award sums for the yearly juried show, and to support the administrative and space costs for the Center for Sex & Culture. The club will be a direct part of the Center for Sex and Culture’s programming.
Just as members will be able to solicit the photographers they’d like to learn from, members and photographers will work together to select models. We’ll begin with volunteer models and pro models known to the photographers who will teach with their assistance: but over time, we’d like to give the photo club the ability to seek out noted models, with the understanding that if they choose, for instance, a world-class fetish model, the club may have to pay more for that class than they’d ordinarily pay, to ensure that the model is compensated at her/his going rate. (Certain photographers, too, might charge more than others.)
Photographers will be chosen based on their artistic and topical specialties; their special skills (working with amateur models, working with varying types of lighting, etc.) Most, if not all, photo classes will involve direct photography practice with models — just like the photo clubs in New York that used to hire Bettie Page!
Can the photos taken be used professionally? Yes, under one condition — that the photographer arranges separately with the model/s in question to arrange legal permission via a contract and release. In some cases this will involve an additional model’s fee; in some cases the model will feel s/he’s already been compensated adequately by the photo club. In NO case will it be acceptable to use photo club pictures for public (and that includes Internet) display without getting appropriate releases. Members who have been found to do so will be removed from the photo club.
Once a year photo club members will be able to submit their work to a juried show. The jury consists of artists and aesthetically-aware sex community members including Betty Dodson and Annie Sprinkle. Winning work will be displayed in the yearly show and awards event at CSC. Prizes will be awarded — yes, money and acclaim can be won via the Center for Sex & Culture Photo Club!
We have already lined up other exciting professional photographers who will teach some of the important how-to’s in the field of erotic and fetish photography. These are people who make a living doing this work, so this is a rare chance to receive high level information about photo-making, including technical questions, lighting, methods about hiring and working with models, and developing professional-quality portfolios so that new photographers can get their work into the hands of people who’ll want to see it.
To join the Center for Sex & Culture Photo Club: Send a check for $200 to CSC, 2215-R Market Street, San Francisco CA 94114; please put “photo club” on the memo line. If participants would prefer to bring the membership fee to the first session, they can let us know when they RSVP to their first class that they will be joining the Photo Club onsite. CSC can accept Visa, MasterCard, and Discover, plus personal checks. Participants preferring to use PayPal can go to our website at http://www.sexandculture.org and use the PayPal button. To spread membership fees over a year, participants are asked to talk to us so we can arrange that; a monthly check can be sent, paid with Photo Club workshop fees, direct-debited from a credit card, or made as a monthly PayPal payment.
CSC Photo Club members and models must be 18 years of age or over.