This surely has a lot to do with the family I grew up in, the culture that family was immersed in, my own personal experiences, and my own temperament.

While some may consider both my interest and inner conflict easy to explain, my own experience around the subject through decades of my life felt confusing, complex, and constantly changing.

I know, though I have not often admitted, that photography and other visual arts drew my interest from the earliest point in my life because of the promise of giving me access to visual representations of women.

When I began photography as a hobby as a teenager, I remember secretly hoping that I might someday, decades in the future, have the opportunity to express myself through nude art photography. In fact, I did so much earlier than expected, as part of my final thesis in my photography minor at university.

Having explored nude art photography then, I did not expect to do it again.

When I started photography again in my 40s, I was certain that I was now “far too old” to go back to that primal interest. Surely, women would distrust my motivations (certainly, with my continued sense of guilt and shame, I did!).

As the poet says, though, the heart wants what it wants, and I found myself moving towards the subject after having re-built my skills with the camera and processing aspects of photography on less emotionally charged subjects.

Once I started working with women, both taking clothed portraits, and later working with the nude, I felt so grateful and honored by the trust that women showed me, and the fact that many of them were free of the turmoil that I struggled with around my interest.

Eventually, working with women became a thing of innocent joy that I had always hoped it could be. To my astonishment, the angry retribution that parts of me feared would come from exposure of my interest never came.

Some people liked the work I produced, some didn’t, some were mostly indifferent.

None, however, attacked me for having the interest, and that has allowed me to largely let go of the associated burdens of guilt and shame.