15/11/2020
What is your definition of eroticism?
For me, eroticism means playing with all your senses. It is an unaffected force between people that creates attention and arouses lust and desire. Eroticism is vital and deeply placed in us.
Although it is part of all of us, eroticism is very individual and subjective and finds endless ways to express itself and to be experienced.
Why did you choose photography as the artform to express yourself?
Photography is a very powerful form of communication. It’s communication without words. A picture is worth more than a thousand words. But more than just that. Photos are information carriers, they convey feelings, moods and emotions and can form, change or reinforce opinions.
As an art form photography fascinates me because it gives me the opportunity to show the world as I see and experience it. It gives me the chance to capture moments forever and to share them. You could say that photos are memories, ideas and thoughts in color. And yet a good photo leaves room for imagination.
The special thing about erotic photography is the possibility to show the beauty and sensuality of the human body. This applies even more to photography with ordinary people than to working with models. In our day-to-day business we have the opportunity to show people new sides of themselves, positively change their self-image and strengthen their self-confidence. To be able to accompany this process is a fantastic experience and an overwhelming feeling.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
I don’t have a special process for drawing inspiration. I just try to be open, to allow inspiring moments and to surround myself with inspiring and positive minded people (online and offline) and to follow what I like.
These moments and encounters can actually take place anywhere. This can be an interesting conversation, a picture, a scene from a film or video, and so on. Social media in particular has also become an unbelievable flow of information that sometimes offers great inspiration, but sometimes just overwhelms the stimuli.
I believe that it is very important to be open minded and to go through the world with your eyes open.
The most inspiring moments happen when you work with people – especially when taking photos. When I see how a body moves, how proportions relate to one another or change, how light and shadow influence a situation or define the shape of the body, I often experience a state of flow by being very creative and inspired.
How did you get closer to boudoir photography?
Talking about inspiring moments and people. Actually my wife was the one who got me closer to boudoir photography.
I started my photography career late and for the first few years I only photographed landscapes and cityscapes. I would say I very much resisted photographing people. I had always enjoyed looking at powerful portraits and admired the art behind it, but at the time I didn’t know how to communicate and how to guide people to create expressive and interesting portraits.
It was the time my beautiful wife Carmen started her own business as a medical therapist and needed portraits, advertising photos and image videos for her company, when I began to acquire this knowledge.
She also gave me the decisive impetus to deal with the subject of boudoir and nude photography when she pushed the collaboration with doctors and in particular the aftercare of scars after cancer treatments and plastic surgery. At the time, she asked me to shoot some classic black and white nude portraits of women for her practice.
In retrospect, it was the turning point from landscape photography to boudoir and nude photography. Since the feedback was overwhelming, we decided to focus on boudoir and nude photography, and set up our own studio and offer our services.
Which are some of the photography projects or shoots you’re most proud of (and why)?
To be honest, the best and joyful thing about our work is empowering people. As previously described, photography gives us the opportunity to show people a new point of view and a new perspective of themselves. Although we photograph the outside of a person, we can touch and change the inside.
We often see women shyly starting a shooting. They have self-doubt and little self-confidence. To accompany the process when they discover new sides and fall in love with themselves again and gain self-confidence is an incredibly satisfying feeling and something that makes us very proud.
If you could shoot with any character, from celebrities to historical, who would your model be (and why)?
That is a difficult question. For me, the Italian actress and model Monica Bellucci is a timeless and sensual beauty. She was famous as a sex symbol in the 1990s and 2000s, although she always had the beauty and class of an Italian diva to me.
Social Media platforms are a huge opportunity for creatives to showcase their work and get noticed. Do you have any personal preferences concerning social media? What worked best for you?
Social media is actually a huge opportunity to get your work published. Unfortunately, the content is often subject to platform censorship and artists cannot freely display their work. Accordingly, it must always be decided whether the objective is to portray the uncensored work or to reach as many people as possible.
We’ve tried a lot of platforms in the past – from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. to more specific platforms like 500px, patreon and behance. I think it is important for artists to recognize which platforms offer which strengths and how they can benefit from them.
At the moment, I would absolutely favor Instagram and YouTube, as they enable by far the greatest reach and interaction. They offer opportunities for inspiration, you can learn new stuff, find and book models and locations, connect with different people and get in touch with potential customers.
Could you tell us more about the service you offer? Who are the women who use it?
My lovely wife Carmen as a make-up artist and I as a photographer founded the company a couple of years ago. We’re known as Boudoir Secrets and we offer boudoir and nude photoshoots for women and couples – called Boudoir Secrets Experience. We’re based in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria and our studio is located in the center of the city.
Our Boudoir Secrets Experience is more than just a photoshoot. It’s an experience that changes the way you see yourself and how you feel about yourself.
The unique thing about our service is that we want our customers to feel beautiful and desirable. We want to create a trusting space in which she can discover new sides of herself, have fun and fully enjoy the experience. To help and guide her step by step through her experience we offer support from finding the best outfits, through hair & make-up, to posing in front of the camera and the in-person photo reveal.
Our customers are women who are curious and want to discover new perspectives on themselves and their own bodies. They are women who want to feel beautiful, sensual and desirable and want to experience something special. They are between 18 and 55 and have very different personal, professional or social backgrounds – they’re doctors, hairdressers, teachers, housewives and mothers, judges or actresses, everything is included. We have customers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland and offer the opportunity to spend a weekend in Vienna, if you have a further journey.
Basically, the majority of our clients doesn’t have a special occasion such as a wedding or a birthday present for their loved one to book their boudoir shoot. But of course there are also situations in which a boudoir shoot for women is a very special and important step out of a difficult life situation. We help women who want to find themselves and their self-esteem again after divorce or after being cheated on. It can also be an important and powerful step after a serious accident or illness – such as breast cancer, in order to rediscover and accept your own body.
In your experience, what is the transformation those women get thanks to getting in touch with an intimate (and sexy!) dimension of themselves?
Many women, but also we men, are shaped by prejudices and often negative experiences from the past. We are shaped by many outside influences and unfortunately we do not always have the best picture of ourselves and we are very hard on ourselves. Again and again I am amazed and shocked how wrong the self-image of many women is and how little they can judge their charisma.
But if you don’t know who you are and where you are, it is very difficult to decide where you want to go and how you get there. In order to find yourself and to recognize who you are – as a woman, as a person and especially as a sexual being – it is extremely important to recognize who you are and to have a good and above all positive self-image.
It is perhaps one of the few possibilities and for many women the first time that they themselves visually perceive their sexual attractiveness and discover that they have a sensual side that they did not know. That they are desirable in ways they never thought possible. That they not only think their body is ok, they even love it. And owning your body, owning your sexuality is a very powerful thing.
Discover More on @boudoir_secrets_experience
Website: www.boudoirsecrets.at
Youtube: https://bit.ly/31GjWiH
