Big conferences are held, usually, in a storyless space: a huge hotel where no one has lived or died, a modern building without ghosts or memories or even cats. But the people at the conference, arriving with suitcases and laptops, wearing black pants and nametags, milling in the lobby or lured into hallways by the scent of free coffee, they carry stories with them, embedded in their bodies.
Thanks to the naked photo project, a woman I’ve just met will tell me how she got this scar or why she wanted that tattoo. A man will tell me how vulnerable he felt that time he was on crutches or why he gave up the sport he played in high school. I’ll hear about what it’s like to lose your hair in chemotherapy, or how breastfeeding can trigger childhood issues, or how it can be painful to water ski naked.
They are not my stories to tell, so I don’t usually put them on the blog. Yep, that’s right. I post the photo and not the stories. Since I’m a writer, not a photographer, that’s ironic. It’s as crazy being a ventriloquist who performs on a radio show.
But still, hearing the stories is a wonderful privilege, and I continued to be amazed by people who are willing to be vulnerable, who willingly take off their clothes for my camera while they confide in me.
I was talking about this with an editor last week as she was stretching back in a chair, letting the soft light from the window spill over her naked body. She said, “Even if you can’t write them, I like that the stories exist in the moment. They become part of the photograph.”
(Readers who want to know the history of the naked photo tradition can check it out here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. )
