I’ve been looking at your pictures of Larva and Marcia and thinking about the critiques you are getting. Here are some digressive musings:
On first look the complementary picture that jumps into my mind is Gustav Courbet's 1866 painting "Le Sommeil".
Le Sommeil
If something like this is your underlying theme then an 8x10 film shoot (in colour, no less) is a monumental undertaking. Combining a strong theme, high production values, runaway costs for studio, models, film, processing, post-production, and perhaps exhibition is like jumping in at the deep end. I would not have the courage to attempt it. My usual working pattern is one amateur model, outdoors, natural light with maybe a reflector, no assistants, and no costs except for film, photographs for the model, and lunch.
Frankly, the world does not need more pictures of pretty girls without their garments. And the nude in art would seem a desperately tired genre that has run out of things to say. But amazingly it isn't so in at least two ways.
The nude remains an eternal metaphoric space in which aspects of the human condition can be explored and commented upon. The unclad figure, taken out of humdrum context, becomes every-man or every-woman at any time or at all times. If you have a broad visual statement to make about humanity, uncluttered by the here-and-now, the particular, and the picayune, then the nude is what you should use.
It is a blessing born of long tradition that most people are familiar with the nude in art. They can accept the surface view, "this is so and so with their clothes off", and then pass beyond to read the underlying message. The tension between the nude as carnal and the nude as sublime has existed for a long time. Praxiteles (4th Century BCE) knew this when carved his Aphrodite for the city fathers of Knidos and employed his mistress, the famous courtesan Phryne, as the model. The city fathers were embarrassed (some knew Phryne "commercially") and grumpy but they paid Praxiteles fee and the statue became the most famous Aphrodite ever. Photography can likewise celebrate the clash between
eros , as felt, and
logos, as thought, and it can do it with wit and wisdom.
The second celebration of the nude that will never run dry is celebration of real beauty for its own sake. I think of "What a piece of work is man... Hamlet, Act 2, scene II" and assert that if we cannot admire our common humanity at its best then we fully deserve the miseries of body-denying asceticism. Heaven forfend! Beauty beyond the cliches of fashion and celebrity is everywhere and everywhere fading. The photographer's tout accosting women in the street with "C'mon luv have yer pitcher done. You'll never look more beautiful than today" spoke more truth than he knew. The ancient tombstone inscription "As you are now so once was I. As I am now you soon shall be" is grimly true as well. It is absolutely legitimate to use the photographic time machine to capture beauty in the here and now, a face , a nude, a sentiment carnal or chaste, and defend it against an uncaring past and an uncertain future.
Asher, don't worry too much about the lighting unless you are pandering to a client's expectations; or if you seeking acclaim by matching the lowest common denominator of popular acceptance. Trust your own eye. If it looks right it is right. I reckon it is often forgotten in the arts that a competent artist in command of their medium cannot, even in principle, be wrong. The lighting becomes right by the fact of you having chosen it. The audience's role is not to fret "Why is the light wrong?" but rather enjoy "Why is the light right?!"
I'm glad you may be able to work with nudes in your personal studio. It is a big advantage to have your own set-up, equipment, and necessaries nearby and familiar. And it is a hazard also. Do you really want to bring your work home? How far do you mix art and life? The history of nude photography is punctuated by cautionary examples. Maybe Flora Weston should have said "No nudes" to Edward in Mexico or elsewhere. Maybe Georgia O'Keefe should have kept Alfred Stieglitz from photographing and seducing Rebecca Strand while Paul was away on assignment.
My casual observations of photo-culture indicate photographers and nude models have sexual encounters more often than chance would allow. And it’s not through severe moral laxity from either party. People who model nude tend to be attractive, to be self-aware, and to be confident in projecting their attractiveness. Photographers tend to be highly responsive to that same visual attractiveness. (That's why they become photographers in the first place.) The scene is set and human nature sometimes follows through. Harm or no, audiences titter.
There are exemplary figures in the art of the nude: Manuel Alvarez Bravo, all serious and intellectual, and Helmut Newton, all fun and naughty games, who never jumped the camera (ok, AFAIK). But even here a suspicion of prurience clings. It comes with the territory, it’s often unfair, and some people can’t abide it. Ansel Adams never photographed nudes but enjoyed looking at Edward Weston’s efforts.
A photograph of the nude is a conspiracy between the model and the photographer. It is not iron-clad certain, Asher, when you work with Larva and Marcia who rules. Perhaps the ladies are performance artists who culminate their art by inveigling a man with a camera, a factotum, to give their talent permanent form.
Asher, good luck with your project. There may be costs: financial, intellectual, social, repute even, but I reckon it’s worth it.
Enough musings. We both have pictures to make.