#NSFW

It started with a t-shirt. I was sailing, I had run out of clean ones with no way to wash any, and the replacement I found in Latvia had a naked woman on a skateboard printed across the front. Years later I decided to make printed shirts of my own, and did. Somewhere in the middle of that it became clear the pictures were not really about t-shirts.

After the first shoot the model told me that being photographed naked had left her more confident about her body, not less. Every woman I have photographed since has said some version of the same thing.

That is the part I did not expect, and it is why the project is still running. Most of us are not especially comfortable in our own bodies, and it turns out there is something useful about seeing yourself through someone else's eyes for an hour.

It began under strict rules. Studio only, black and white, nothing in the frame to place the picture in a season or a life — a body against nothing, which is closer to how we look at our own. Those rules have loosened since. Some of the newer pictures are in colour, and some were made well outside the studio.

What has not changed is that nothing is retouched. A conversion to black and white where I have used it, small corrections to light, and that is all. The bodies are as they were on the day.

The project is ongoing.