Doyle Wesley Walls' photostream  

BEFORE YOU ADD ME, READ MY PROFILE, especially the section one screen below titled "Will I block you? Perhaps."

I took all the photographs in my Flickr photostream. I have, of course, admired the photographs taken by many other photographers, including photographers who display their art here on Flickr. When I see the work of someone else I admire on Flickr, I say so on their site with a comment and/or I "favorite" that photograph as a compliment to the photographer and the model. If I see a photograph outside of Flickr, elsewhere on the net or in a book or magazine, and I want to post it, I will post it on my Tumblr site, with as much credit as I have available to me, for example, name of photographer, name of model, title of work, site or title of work where that photo can be found. But if you see a photograph in my Flickr photostream, that's my photograph, not merely something I've collected from some other site on the net. That's a photograph I worked hard to arrange, to take, and to "finish" in Photoshop. I have noticed that many people on Flickr do not observe these rules and post--as if the shots were their own--photos they have merely collected elsewhere.

E-Mail address: doylewesleywalls@hotmail.com

This was once my primary blog:
doylewesleywalls.typepad.com/
Now I post primarily on my Tumblr sites listed below.

My vodpod:
doylewesleywalls.vodpod.com

Professional Listing (Creative Writer):
www.pw.org/content/doyle_wesley_walls_1

My Model Mayhem site.

My new Tumblr devoted solely to photos I have taken of women: Tumblr site.

My Tumblr site that is not primarily about my photos.

My music mixes at 8tracks.com.

HOW TO SEE ALL THE PHOTOS:

My Flickr account is reviewed as "safe" by Flickr staff. I have marked many of my photos "safe"; but I have marked many more "moderate," and some "restricted," so you will not see all of my work on Flickr unless you already have your settings cleared for such photos or you follow the Flickr method outlined below to determine your own content for viewing. If you are interested in these "moderate" and "restricted" photos on my site, then you can choose to see them.

(1.) Scroll down from "You" and click on "Your account."

(2.) Click on "Privacy and Permissions," and then, at the bottom of the page, under "Content filters," at the far right of the "search settings" line, click on "edit" and select "SafeSearch Moderate" if you want to see both "safe" and "moderate" photos and are "OK seeing the odd 'artistic nude' here or there, but that's the limit" or select "SafeSearch off" if you want to see "restricted" photos as well as "safe" and "moderate" and you are "over 18, and take full responsibility that you're comfortable to see whatever turns up." (I take those quotations directly from the Flickr language provided by the administrators.) Now...concerning "whatever turns up" in my Flickr photostream: you will see only nudity of the female variety; you will not see any sexual acts; you will not see anything violent; you may well see, in the restricted photos, the kind of visual information that would have alerted the great 19th century writer John Ruskin (so knowledgeable about art!) to the fact that his wife would have pubic hair. That bit of information, according to some biographers, most likely would have helped him have a less disastrous relationship with his bride. One might argue similar points today, but thinking of human sexuality as something more celebratory and human than toxic and evil is, apparently, still very difficult for some people.

(3.) Then click "SAVE CHANGES" at the bottom of that page.

(Note:) This action will clear you to see all my Flickr photos, and this action will also clear you to see all photos by other photographers, too: safe, moderate, and restricted. I stand by my photos--all of them. I wouldn't post them here if I didn't. I do not necessarily "agree with" or "enjoy" everyone's "restricted" photos (for that matter I don't even "agree with" or "enjoy" everyone's "safe" photos; in fact, I find many "safe" photos "offensive"); however, concerning the restricted photos of others, whether or not someone else has posted photos that are to my liking or not is not the point. I do support freedom of expression, and I do support and defend the right of other people to express themselves. But just because I believe in your freedom doesn't necessarily mean I want to see what you do....

Will I block you? Perhaps.

1. I will block Flickr sites with nudes of men--in your photostream or in your favorites. Not interested.
2. I will block Flickr sites with photos of men who dress like women. Not interested.
3. Female nudes are fine with me, but if your photostream contains shots that strike me as either artless or mean-spirited toward women, then I will block that, too.
4. If you make me a contact yet you have nothing good to say of any of my photos or you do not favorite any of my photos, then why have you decided my site is worth another look?
5. If you make me a contact yet you have no photos of your own I can see, expect to be blocked.
6. If you make me a contact yet you have no favorites from Flickr I can see, expect to be blocked.
7. If you present web-find photos as your own photos, instead of having the decency, at the very least, to collect those finds in your “favorites from other Flickr members,” expect to be blocked.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:

I live and work in Oregon (on the west coast of the United States). I usually take photographs in and around Portland, Oregon, but I also arrange shoots when I travel.

I have been fortunate to work with women who have allowed me to photograph them. I thank them all here, not only for their stunning good looks, but also for their creativity, intelligence, good humor, bravery, and hard work. If any woman's photo appears even once on my site, that automatically means I think there's something exceptionally compelling about her look. And I mean "compelling" in a thoroughly positive way.

I'm trying to make photographs of women that interest me--the so-called "beautiful" and the so-called "erotic" and anything that appeals to me between those zones so commonly accepted as real and quite separate. (There is the "public" and "private" divide even on Flickr.) Those common categories of the "beautiful" and the "erotic," for me, are not two polar opposites: one supposedly "safe"; the other, supposedly "dangerous." For me, the beautiful and the erotic are more like a Möbius strip. So "the beautiful" is merely a subset of "attraction" which is a larger, more ultimate, category. A nude photograph of a woman could be off limits for the public side of Flickr and yet "beautiful" in a very safe manner. A different photo of a woman completely clothed could be aflame with eroticism because of her arched eyebrow or her fist grabbing one of her stiletto heels.

What I try to do when I photograph women can best be described as a mix of three genres: glamour, casual, and art.

The following quotations will help describe what I'm thinking of and trying to do with my photographs of women.

"When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice."
--Robert Frank, taken from an exhibit of his photographs at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, 2002

"The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on."
--Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

"Appeals to the eye are frivolous and superficial in an orderly, practical world whose values are conformism and respectability. In the interests of social harmony and equilibrium, the imagination has been flattened out and censored: 'People are not going / To dream of baboons and periwinkles' (10-11). Sleepers in this landlocked Northern town are insulated from the dangerous energy and baffling mysteries of primal nature."
--Camille Paglia, on Wallace Stevens' poem "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" in her book Break, Blow, Burn

"My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time."
--Garrison Keillor, quoted in Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society by Peter Williams

"...the formal qualities of style--the central issue in painting--are, at most, of secondary importance in photography, while what a photograph is of is always of primary importance."
--Susan Sontag, On Photography

"Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot."
--Groucho Marx, on the sleeve of Sports Illustrated Knockouts: Five Decades of Swimsuit Photography

"Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude."
--H. L. Mencken, The Aesthetic Recoil

"I don't believe in God, but when I see Laetitia, I'm tempted to change my mind."
--Vivienne Westwood on Laetitia Casta, the epigraph to the book Laetitia Casta, published by Viking Studio (Callaway Editions, NY)

ONE MORE THING:

Women rightfully denounce the stupid, unwholesome, narrow-minded, false dichotomy that would categorize them either as "madonnas or whores." That either/or placed on women is grossly unfair, stifling, and insulting. Women are mind, body, and spirit--just like men. (As it so happens, I am interested in women in all three of those categories; men only interest me as mind and/or spirit.) It's puritanical, unrealistic, sexist, and anti-life to classify women as either "angels" or "sluts." Women, like men, have a right to be "whole." I encourage, of course, all women to reject such restrictive nonsense (as it is currently imposed on them by so-called "holy" religions and so-called "respectable" communities).

In a similar fashion, I argue that men who are honest about their attraction to the sexual appeal of women cannot be relegated--by anyone, women included--to the category of "dogs." Once again, this situation cannot be reduced to a simplistic either/or: "either you're with us in 'the feminist movement' or you're such a retrograde outlaw that you actually enjoy a photo of Adriana Lima in lingerie." Such a categorization of men is grossly unfair, stifling, and insulting. And it's also laughably out of touch with reality. Just because a man appreciates an attractive woman does not mean he isn't also capable of intellectual and/or spiritual accomplishments himself. It doesn't mean he is incapable of appreciating and admiring intellectual and spiritual accomplishments of women (no matter what they look like). And, of course, beyond his thoughts, he is quite capable of being responsible for his actions. Unfortunately, even in the academic realm--where one might have thought he would find more sophisticated, worldly people, knowledgeable about art and sensitive to complexity--one must occasionally bump into censorious morons who bring little more to the conversation than their own ignorance of art (including literature) and prudishness about the human body and a fascistic desire to stifle others for ideological purposes.

If I am going to be critical of those who would demean women--even if they didn't think they were doing so--by leaving a classless "compliment" on the photo of a woman (indeed, even on an unapologetically sexual photograph of a woman), then I am also going to criticize those who demean men by making self-righteous, self-serving, holier-than-thou, and dreadfully boring criticisms concerning every instance of appreciation for the various kinds of feminine beauty that have been practically worshipped in art for centuries.