You Drive Us Wild, We'll Drive You Crazy

I really wish I'd kept better notes about some of these photo shoots yjat I did back in the 1960's. Hell, I wish I'd kept better track of where I stashed the notes I did make. I know that my camera was a Leica M4 and that I was using a 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor. I was shooting available light with High Speed Ektachrome Type B, which was ASA 125, so I was likely shooting wide open at 1/15, possibly even 1/8 of a second.

At this point I have no recollection of what the event was. It was the height of the Sexual Revolution and a bare breast at a party wasn't that unusual. The reason for the body painting at the time I guess is just lost, along with the names of the two young women in the pictures. I was probably on asignment for The Daily Planet, and it was visually a lot more interesting than an Allen Ginsberg press conference.

Sometimes I look at photos like these and wonder whatever became of the peopl. These women would be in there late fifties or early sixties today, their own children all grown up. They'd be grandmothers now, that tight young body sacrificed for the realities of procreation and nourishing babies.

Nobody guessed the directions photography would go in the next few decades. Even getting rid of a few wrinkles was a laborious undertaking for the retoucher back then. Now you could as well add the body painting in the computer as with a brush on the skin. I sure miss those asignments, though.