Chuck Samuels writes:
“Established long before the advent of the camera, the conventions of the representation of the female nude in art have grown, over the centuries, to seem quite natural. Not surprisingly, practitioners of fine art photography have, for the most part, conformed to and upheld these traditions. This project directly addresses such conventions.
“I have studied a dozen famous nude photographs of women made by well-known male photographers, and I have faithfully and earnestly reconstructed these images, except I have positioned myself before the camera. By rendering obvious the function of gender difference in how these photographs are perceived and by undermining the traditional, hierarchal roles of viewer and viewed, the project attempts to, with its curiously reverent irreverence, cripple the genre.”
Before the Camera was supported by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.