SKIN TWO l 51
GERARD MUSY
It was absolutely natural. I started taking photos at the age of
14. I did an MA in History of Art and I specialised in photography.
His thesis was on Robert Frank, the Swiss photographer. After his
MA, Musy left Geneva and made a career in New York. Grard has a
passion for fetish photography and was a regular guest at fetish
clubs before he started taking photos there. The seventies were
more difficult for fetish stuff but there was a golden age in the
nineties in New York, Amsterdam and London. People were gentle,
open-minded; now people are too stressed. In the nineties, people
were so enthusiastic. As soon as you walked into a club there was
warmth. Grard was taking pictures at the first Skin Two Rubber Ball
in 1992. He recalls when Skin Two magazine started up It used to be
a black and white thin magazine. In the eighties, it was hard to
find pictures like that.Grards fashion images have appeared in
magazines including Vogue Hommes, Vanity Fair, Harpers Bazaar and
Glamour. However he has taken on less fashion work recently, to
focus on art photography. He muses that its quite a challenge to be
original with fashion now. Grard has also worked for Emporio Armani
and Paco Rabanne amongst other major fashion labels. With all these
big names under his belt, I wondered if he had worked with many
celebrities. He has photographed Penelope Cruz and Naomi Campbell
but this isnt a big deal for him. I dont give a damn about names;
its more important to have chemistry than the names. We flick
through his fabulous black and white photography book called
Lustre, which has a hand made soft latex cover.
The photos were taken between 1983 and just a few months before
the book was published. I tried to do something original a whole
display, together with an original music score. The DVD is a new
way of presenting photographs. There are only a thousand copies of
the book, so it is a collectors item and is best enjoyed with a big
screen and good speakers, to get the whole emotion and atmosphere.
Within the front flap is an original print, signed by Grard. At the
back of the book is the DVD, which contains a slideshow of a
hundred and fifty images, with the original musical score. Lustre
is mainly sold online and you can see clips of the exhibitions on
www.FetishLustre.com.The text is by William A. Ewing, who takes the
letters of the title Lustre and develops the different ways of
understanding and interpreting the visuals, using carefully
scattered quotes. All of the photos in Lustre are candid snapshots,
trying to take the energy, sex energy from real life situations.
The main two parts in Lustre are in my place, with girls, or at
night clubs, but the energy is the important thing. Never posed,
always natural. Grard tells me that a lot of fetish photographers
are not fetishists at all, but he certainly is and his photos open
a door to his own explorations.After Lustre came the very different
project called Leaves. Inspired by Grards love of walking, Leaves
has 100 pictures, some taken in Switzerland, some in Kew Gardens,
but mostly in the south of Spain and Italy. Leaves will be in
exactly the same format, with a DVD and book. It was launched at an
exhibition in Paris.
Lustre was exhibited like this; the gallery doesnt mind about
the subject matter, how its photographed is the most important
thing. Leaves is also black and white but it is natural, light, a
paradise, a strong contrast to Lustre. A third theme Grard is
working on is Lontano/Lejano, which means far away in Italian and
Spanish. This is about his many travels through the two countries.
The first picture was taken in 1976 and the last a few months ago.
The fourth theme is Lamees which is about the glittering age of
nightlife in the eighties.The fifth theme, however, is a return to
familiar ground Beyond Lustre will have around fifty very explicit
sex fetish photographs impossible to be published in an ordinary
book. (Rest assured that Skin Two will be keeping you fully
informed about this!)Wonderfully, despite his real-life, honest
erotic photography, Grards website currently features a collection
called Kaleidoscope. It is a series of eye-popping neon-coloured
balloons, toys, flags, festival snapshots and designs. Is the
master of black and white fetish photography going the way of
surrealist photographer David LaChapelle, to give us candy-tinged,
posed S&M? Grard laughs and shakes his head they are just for
fun he says.
