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All my life I've taken photographs of people who are completely at peace being what they were in the situations I photographed them in.
Jock Sturges -
Physical beauty is such a strange thing.
Jock Sturges
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I've had to relearn how I work with people so that if and when I do avoid different things I don't send any messages in doing so.
Jock Sturges -
In fact, I don't believe I'm guilty of any crimes, but I've always been drawn to and fascinated by physical, sexual and psychological change, and there's an erotic aspect to that.
Jock Sturges -
I'm the last person who has any desire to instruct anybody in shame. That's no errand for me.
Jock Sturges -
There's no particular evidence that any of the lower mammals or any of the other animals have any interest in aesthetics at all. But Homo sapiens does, always has and always will.
Jock Sturges -
That's my ambition: that you look at the pictures and realize what complex, fascinating, interesting people every single one of my subjects is.
Jock Sturges -
A virulent, aggressive minority has decided that Americans don't know themselves what it is they should see, and need to be protected by people who are wiser than they are, even if they are only a tiny sliver of the population.
Jock Sturges
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The images I like best are parts of series that I've started, in some cases, with the pregnancies of the mothers of the children in question, and I continue that series right on through the birth of children to the child that resulted from that first pregnancy.
Jock Sturges -
I'm an artist that's attracted to a specific way of seeing and a way of being.
Jock Sturges -
As soon as you forbid something, you make it extraordinarily appealing. You also bring shame in as a phenomenon.
Jock Sturges -
But the truth is that Homo sapiens is a sensual species. I think all species are, to one degree or another.
Jock Sturges -
I am fascinated by the human body and all its evolutions.
Jock Sturges -
I don't photograph any two people who are remotely the same.
Jock Sturges
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Any artist that's involved in their work is inevitably going to have a focus in what they do.
Jock Sturges -
Now, I recognize that there are certain postures and angles that make people see red, which are evidence of original sin or something, and I avoid that. I don't shoot that any more.
Jock Sturges -
That dichotomy between the public consumption of the work and my intent and practice in making it is an uneasy one for me, on occasion.
Jock Sturges -
Before, I'd photograph anything. I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body.
Jock Sturges -
Some of the people that I photographed as sticks became much more voluptuous, much rounder, in some cases dramatically so, and I think they're even more beautiful.
Jock Sturges -
The kids really enjoy what they do. I check with them constantly to make sure that they're really happy to be there.
Jock Sturges
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I became good at defending myself, but as far as I was concerned, that was a transient skill.
Jock Sturges -
I know the families that I photograph extremely well, and I've known them for a very long time.
Jock Sturges -
I'm guilty of extraordinary naivete, I suppose. But it's a naivete that I really don't want to abandon, not even now.
Jock Sturges