Grand Dame
Posted On September 8, 2010
FM: What inspired you to pick up a camera?
TW: I first got interested in photography in college. I was an art education major and enrolled in a photography course as an elective. It didn’t take long before my professor’s realized that I had talent and suggested that I consider studying Photography as a major. As a result, after receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education at Millersville State College, I applied and was accepted to graduate school in the Master of Fine Arts program for Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Photography became a life long passion and avocation as a result of the education I received at Millersville State and R.I.T.
Partygoer
FM: What particular challenges do you face with erotic photography as opposed to other genres?
TW: There are a multitude of challenges. The main pretext was to make a clean break away from the way I was operating in business during the early 90’s. I knew with certainty that I would loose a certain number of “traditional” Fortune 500 clients that I grew accustomed to servicing, when I started to shoot for Penthouse Magazine for example. However, I felt that I was producing original work at the time and fortunately other business opportunities evolved as a result of the way I approached erotic photography during my days at Penthouse.
It has always been my position that my main intention is to produce Erotic Art not Pornography. There are always legal, moral and ethical issues that present themselves when delving in to anything of a sexual nature in most cultures. The hypocrites come out of the woodwork when artists delve in to anything of a sexual nature in societies at large. I discovered that the visual sexual arena became the most compelling subject area to explore and as a result, Erotica as a subject matter continues to invigorate my creativity within the context of legal, moral and ethical issues. It is the ultimate challenge of my oeuvre.
Stud Face
FM: Do you prefer to shoot with film or digital?
TW: I loved the days of shooting film. Processing the black and white film in the darkroom. Making contact prints and ultimately finished prints. The zillion’s of trips to the labs that in many case’s, the lab technicians who I worked with day in and day out, became a part of my extended family.
The digital age transformed the way photographer’s approached the photographic medium. I am fortunate in that I adapted to digital capture early on, but I do miss being in my darkroom and going to the lab. The darkroom is not only a place of solitude for an artist to create prints, but to think and wonder what he or she will produce next through the process of alchemy.
Wasteland Digital Montage
FM: How did you become interested in fetish/BDSM?
TW: When I produced for Penthouse, part of my responsibility was to continually challenge Bob Guccione to publish visual material that he didn’t publish in previous issues. The burgeoning fetish/BDSM scene worldwide was not being published or talked about much at Penthouse during my tenure (1995 – 2005).
I had the opportunity during multiple trip’s to Amsterdam, to photograph the largest fetish party in Europe, twice a year, which resulted in my recently published book entitled, Wasteland. Slowly I started to show Bob some of the pictures from the Wasteland collection, and eventually I started to produce “fetish” sets specifically for Penthouse within this genre, and later for Larry Flynt’s Taboo magazine.
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FM: Do you enjoy fetishism/BDSM play in your personal life, and if so what are you into?
TW: At the present time, I am not interested in discussing my personal sex life.
FM: Do you think pinup and fetish are becoming part of the mainstream culture?
TW: Pinup became part of mainstream culture with the advent of Betty Paige. Fetish became part of mainstream culture when Madonna started to wear latex corsets on stage and in her videos in the early 80’s. Both of these iconic figure’s propelled the adoration of female eroticism to new heights and permeated mainstream popular culture to a certain degree.
Thierry Mugler, one of the preeminent international fashion designers of the 1980s – 1990s attended the early Wasteland parties, which undoubtedly had an influence on the collections that he later marketed through his boutiques in Paris, which I often frequented during my travels.
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FM: Are there any other creative mediums you work in?
TW: In recent years I have been directing adult films. And I also have an interest in collaborating with fashion designers.
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FM: What kind of music do you like?
TW: I listen mainly to R&B, hip-hop and jazz
Book Cover
FM: What do you like to do for fun?
TW: To create the next picture and to promote other artists at TONYWARDSTUDIO.COM.
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