The Spirit of Lady Godiva. Nude photography by Harvey. Heureka Productions. 260 pp. Available from Borders or Amazon.

What an amazing photo project! In The Spirit of Lady Godiva, a photographer who goes by the name Harvey has photographed scores of nude people cavorting and posing in America’s downtown cities in broad daylight. In many shots, it looks as thought they are trying to blend in with the crowd; in others, they seem to address the reader as if to say, “Didn’t expect to see me at this street corner, did you?”. In the New Orleans photograph “Bourbon with a Twist,” a voluptuous young woman with nipple rings hangs onto a pole and looks right at the viewer. Or does she? Her sunglasses could be deceptive. She appears in all of Harvey’s New Orleans photographs. In one split-lit shot under a restaurant awning, she interacts with a waiter. What could he be saying to her? “Where do you keep your MasterCard?” What went on immediately afterwards? Such conjectures are part of the fun in viewing these reckless caper shots. Many of the shots are humorous setups, like “New Hat,” in which a woman clad in nothing but cowboy boots tries a cowboy hat on in front of a store window.

Harvey doesn’t appear to have gotten into too much trouble with the men in blue, although he does mention a pending legal case in Ann Arbor. (I wonder how it turned out.) In some cases, the police were willingly complicit, sticking around to watch the show. Sometimes Harvey managed to avoid the police entirely, with the aid of a lookout person, who also watched out for the impending approach of children. I wonder why. This book is clearly not recommended for one-handed reading. It’s too whimsical for that. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is family friendly.

For some reason Harvey decided to make all of his pictures in black & white. I think color would have worked in some situations, particularly ones featuring so much vivid 20th century urban architecture, like movie marquees and old store fronts. “Radical Rye” is a near perfectly composed shot of a flat-iron style bakery/coffee shop in which two nudes are peering out the window while seated at the table. Harvey must be a smooth talker of considerable skill, to get a store manager to allow nudes to pose. In other setups, he enlists the aid of store owners, like with his rooftop shots.

This book also has male nudes and the occasional senior citizen, so Harvey is neither sexist nor ageist. In the informative introduction, he tells how he sought press coverage (and got it in some cases), and obtained models for posing. He explains that he used a distractor/blocker to divert official attention from the nudes. He rented an 800 number that volunteers called. I don’t believe he paid anyone, because nowhere does he mention doing so.

I have only a couple of criticisms: in a few of the photos, the model’s clothes are visible. Harvey should have enlisted a clothes-holder in his entourage. Also, sometimes the models are photographed too far in the distance (although everyone is clearly nude). This is probably due to the fact that Harvey liked the urban architecture as much as the devil-may-care attitudes of his models. Still, expressions are hard to see when the object is the size of a grasshopper.

That aside, I recommend you buy and enjoy this book. Its daring attitude is “dancing in the dragon’s maw” at its best.

Interview with Dr. Paul Rapoport, publisher of The Spirit of Lady Godiva

The photographer of The Spirit of Lady Godiva goes by the single name Harvey. As of January 2008, he was unavailable for an interview. However, his publisher Dr. Paul Rapoport of Heureka Productions agreed to talk to us. According to the Web site (www.heurekaproductions.com), “Heureka Productions is a publisher of books about or dealing with nudity, especially naturism/nudism.” Other titles include Au Naturel: The History of Nudism in Canada by Jim Woycke; Theatre au Naturel: A Collection of Naturist Plays, edited by Mark Storey; and Bodies and Souls: The Century Project, photography by Frank Cordelle.

Stylus. Dr. Rapoport, I noticed that the pictures in The Spirit of Lady Godiva all appear in black & white. Was that an editorial decision or an aesthetic one on Harvey’s part?

Dr. Rapoport. Harvey started off with black and white in 1994 and stayed with it. It became an aesthetic decision. I think it fits his “guerrilla photography” aesthetic rather well!

S. Do you know if Harvey’s done nude photography in the past, or was this his first foray into that field?

R. I don’t recall precisely. If he had done any, it wasn’t much, and certainly unlike what’s in the book. He was an amateur in 1994, but he soon became a pro, a real leader in what he was accomplishing.

S. The innovative style and composition of these photographs are matched only by the scope and daring of the project. He mentions in the introduction that he obtained some of his models through successful press releases to the media of each city he visited for the project. (Bulletin board handouts didn’t work so well.) You mentioned previously that “it was never a problem to get people to participate.” What other methods did Harvey use to get people to pose in the nude in public for this project?

R. Mostly it was exactly that on his big cross-country tour some years ago. But also he found that success bred success, so it became easier to get people to “pose.” On the tour, sometimes he got only one person in a city (e.g. New Orleans). In other places (e.g. Seattle), he found a great many, of all ages. Usually, however, it was younger people who were willing to be in his photos. In this society, nudity appeals to them more, often because of its association with sexuality—even if that connection is almost totally absent in the book! The aspect of daring is also a youthful deal, isn’t it?

S. Perhaps you could gives us some particulars of how Harvey attracted people to this project. For example, did he tap into a naturist network? Did he obtain models from art classes? Just sending out press releases to "the media" seems a little vague.

R. He did that for the trip he took to the various cities in the 1990s. Other methods were more informal. He was not part of a naturist network --- excellent question --- nor did he have anything to do with art classes. I'm positive of that.

S. Why weren't people suspicious when he approached them?

R. I suppose that if you meet up someplace and find the guy with a camera about to do what he said he'd do, that's okay. I don't know the details, however, or whether there were problems other than what you read in the book. I do know he was on TV in a few places, which would have given some legitimacy to his plans.

S. So he never got into discussing the particulars.

R. It's not something we discussed much beyond what he wrote about! I guess it's sounding a bit unrealistic; but if you remember he often got college-age people or people actually in a college, it may become a little more understandable.

S. What form of compensation did the models get?

R. A print of the event they were in. That’s all. They didn’t do it for money, there being none, but for the challenge and the fun.

S. In the introduction, Harvey provides extensive information on the typical shoot: employing lookouts and the use of assistants (like his wife) to make the models feel at ease. How did he manage to get cooperation from proprietors of establishments like restaurants (whose interiors he used) and buildings (whose rooftops he used in group shots)? Did he know these owners ahead of time, or does he just have particularly winning and persuasive personality?

R. It was a combination. He’s a gregarious guy, for sure. In some places, he got the premises’ co-operation well in advance, in others less in advance. For some situations, none was needed: many outdoor shots, for example. Even if it’s surprising, many smaller commercial places were happy for the publicity and for the fun too.

S. He writes extensively about his interactions with the police: having them let him off with a warning, having them watch amused, getting arrested and released, even incorporating them unaware. He mentions an upcoming court date from an Ann Arbor arrest. Do you happen to know what happened with that?

R. He was arrested only once and there were no charges pressed. That’s not a bad record at all for many nude shoots around the country! But even towards the end of the period of photography for the book, nudity of this sort in public had become noticeably more acceptable than it had been in the mid-1990s, when he started out. Keep in mind too that in most instances, Harvey engaged in “shoot and run.” He and his models would be out of a scene before most people even knew what had just happened. The stories about others’ reactions (or non-reactions) to the naked people are among the funniest in the book.
In any case, you can’t arrest a phantom. And he was, of course, causing no harm at all.

S. Did he warn his models that they might be arrested with him? Who’d then be responsible for bail?

R. The models entered into these events fully knowledgeable and responsible.

S. Approximately how long did the picture-taking aspect of Harvey’s project take?

R. For individual scenes, from a few seconds to nearly a minute, the latter only for the most involved setup. The photos range in date from 1994 to 2002.

S. Was the project submitted to you complete or as a proposal?

R. I received it as almost complete in materials but not assembled. Harvey and I designed the book together, after a couple of last shots in Ann Arbor late in 2001 and New York City early in 2002.

S. How did he deal with model releases of bystanders? Was there ever a fear that a conservative bystander would sue for appearing in the corner of a published nude photograph?

R. There are practically no releases from bystanders, understandably. There were no fears and no problems.

S. The text Harvey included for his photos is alternately funny, informative, perceptive of human nature, even corny at times. Did it need much editing on your part?

R. Not much. Just simple things.

S. Do you know if Harvey has future plans for a sequel?

R. There are no plans.

S. Harvey says his purpose is to make people smile. Is there more to what he does?

R. There certainly is. There’s a major need in this country to release bodies from the purgatory they’ve been put in by a combination of media narrowness and political and religious misunderstanding and manipulation. The body phobia and sex negativity in America are wreaking havoc. Kids, especially girls, are brought up to dislike their bodies and remain ignorant about them. Fear and loathing of nudity are very much linked to that. So is needless censorship, which is what most of it is in this country. Harvey shows that it doesn’t have to be so. The liberating aspect of this book is considerable—almost as much as being in one of his photos. I speak from experience, having been one of his models!

--Peter Bates

Drive-Ins, Gas Stations, The Bright Motels. Wendy Drexler. Puddinghouse Press. Chapbook, $10.75, 32 pp.

What a savvy concept for a chapbook: growing up in Colorado, seen retrospectively through the eyes of a child. Wendy Drexler’s Drive-Ins, Gas Stations, The Bright Motels, although only 32 pages long, is a thoroughly sage portrait of her as a child, her thought patterns, her trying to make sense of her parent’s divorce and her mother’s dating, and her own maturing body. There is humor too, as when she satirizes ‘50s mores in “Mommy’s Boyfriends”:

“. . . I tell him
I want her to marry Jack.
After, Mommy says I can hate
Norman if I like, just be polite.”

To add authenticity, she includes a poignant letter from her childhood: “Letter to my Mother on her Honeymoon.” Nice choice. It’s got memorable lines that only a child would write, like “Fellow cut his hind foot and it’s a bloody mess.”

Drexler includes the mundane, like her difficulty with knives and dishwashers, as well as the highly confounding component of growing up. In “At the Drive-in I Ask My Father About Sex," she zeros in on the her father's candor. To his credit, when asked at the drive-in how babies are made, he gives a clinical rather than typically deceptive reply:

“there’s another hole that’s not
for peeing where the penis goes in
and where the baby comes out.
I want to see, I run to the ladies room . . . . ”

I’m not sure “Western Motel” quite belongs in this collection, since it’s inspired by an Edward Hopper painting and has nothing to do with Wendy’s youth. However, it’s notable for its asking of powerful questions, like: “Which is hardest? To be the one/or the only one?”

You’d expect a book of this sort to have an apt concluding poem and it does. In “Leaving Colorado” the author exhorts herself to leave the past, down to the physical topography she remembers, the rocks, and finally the river: “Love the river for daring to leave.” This is a stunning first collection, one that presages enhanced profundity and irony in the future from Drexler.

Order by check from:

Wendy Drexler

60 Glendale Rd.
Belmont, MA 02478-2922

--Peter Bates

THE DIGITAL COLOR PRINTING HANDBOOK. Tim Daly. Amphoto Books . Trade paper, $24.95, 156 pp.

If you ever found yourself a bit lost navigating the tricky terrain of digital printing, this book should help you out. It certainly did me. I immediately benefitted with Daly's advice to obtain a third-party aftermarket driver for my Epson film scanner. This product, Silverfast, does a better job of getting the picture in shipshape than does the driver that came with my scanner. It has also saved me hours of fiddling around in Photoshop. That is only one of the many tips this book provides. Each one follows a set format: a one-to-three page tip, complete with procedures and sample photographs. With this book, you get practical tips like how to replace color in a picture and how to deal with the new duotone and Photo Filter features of Photoshop CS2. There are also generic tips culled from the old analog photography days, like using test strips and taking proper care of your lens. The book does contain arcane artistic tips, like using inverting color, creating "distressed color," and using the Channel Mixer. Toward the end of the book, some of the tips, like "Using Transfer Paper" and "Autochrome" become so specialized I can't imagine using them on a regular basis. But perhaps they'd be fun things to try. This book is worth purchasing. If you end up integrating one tip into your photographic arsenal (as I did with the scanner software), it is certainly worth it.

--Peter Bates

FLASH MX SAVVY. Ethan Watrall, Norbert Herber. Sybex. Trade paper, $50, 746 pp. With companion CD.

This is a good beginning-to-intermediate course on using Flash MX. It begins, as it should, at the beginner's level, introducing the novice to the Flash interface and explaining each tool in detail. It's pretty hard to get lost and confused when the authors take a concept like the timeline and give you instructions how to use it, complete with labeled screen shots. Each major part is followed by a "Hands On" section, a tutorial that walks you through the concepts explained in the collection of chapters. What type of information does the book contain? Here's an example: Chapter 7, Creating and Manipulating Reusable Content , explains how to create symbols and how they fit into the Flash MX library. A tutorial for each chapter would have been nice. As a reference book, Flash MX Savvy is fairly good, if you know where to dig. This is one example where a quick read of the book may be helpful before you use it in daily problem-solving. For example, I wanted to create a sequence in which an imported bitmapped image darkens on the timeline. But you cannot simply import a bitmap and use the Properties panel to darken it. You have to convert it to a symbol via the library. The "bitmap" entry in the index doesn't point you in this direction to a procedure you can use to get around this issue. However I did find out how to automatically link to an URL fairly quickly. As an introduction to the complicated world of Flash MX and as a provider of some tips, this book is a good resource.

--Peter Bates

ERIC MEYER ON CSS: MASTERING THE LANGUAGE OF WEB DESIGN. New Riders. www.newriders. Trade paper, $45, 322 pp.

This book is an excellent way to learn CSS. But beware: Its tutorial approach is time-consuming and occasionally frustrating when the examples don't quite match those in the book. (You can download them from his web site.) Yet if you just read it, you don't absorb everything. Cascading style sheets are a subset of HTML and offer the best way to format documents and apply the changes to an entire web site. The best way to learn from this book is to go through it and mark up the items that interest you, such as creating your own CSS rollover buttons without using graphics. Then apply them to the next web page you create. I never knew about the "fixed no repeat" variables that forbid a background image from repeating itself and scrolling with the text. Sometimes Meyer is a little too entranced with the technology and in the case of Chapter 12, "Fixing Your Backgrounds," he actually creates an example that can't be displayed in Internet Explorer for the PC, which 65% of the populatio nuses. (Someone supplied a javascript hack, but I couldn't even get that to work.) Despite such lapses, Meyer's approach is chatty and even fun, if you have the time. Before buying this book, make sure you have a fundamental knowledge of HTML. If you do, it's the best introduction to CSS I've seen.

--Peter Bates

PHOTOSHOP RESTORATION AND RETOUCHING. Katrin Eismann. New Riders. www.newriders. Trade paper, $49.99, 276 pp.

This book, more than any other I've read, has helped me sharpen my photo retouching skills. Don't be mistaken, this is not a beginner's book. It presupposes some Photoshop knowledge. Yet even the opening chapter is helpful, because it not only provides keyboard shortcuts but explains why to use them (to save your wrists, naturally). In this book you'll learn how to use tools like Adjustment layers to use the Threshold and Curves features, which improve tonal range and contrast. The "Working with Color" chapter is most helpful, providing helpful charts like a CMYK representation of various skin tones so you can reproduce them in your photos. Eismann shows how to forge creative effects like soft focus, which helped me touch up a man's pocked face recently. She also shows how to rebuild old damaged photographs, while supplying no illusions about how hard the work can be. She also helps you develop good work techniques, such as telling you never to work on the original layer, but always on a copy. The book has a companion web site that allows you to download the practice images. If you follow the tutorials, the lessons do stick. It would have been good to have an appendix with information about helpful Photoshop plug-ins (such as Auto FX software). Still, this is an excellent book to provide the intermediate retoucher with the tools needed to accomplish the job.

--Peter Bates

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