Photographer McCarson Jones could make models out of all of us. Her latest exhibit of photographs, titled “Underpinnings,” is a series featuring 35 different women.
They’re not models, nor do the ladies have serious experience on the set of a photo shoot. They’re everyday gals with enough of an interest and gusto to put themselves in front of the camera for a series of intimate shots.
The art can be seen tonight for Noel Night at Sorrell Sky Gallery. The duo version of the band Hello Dollface will perform, and singer Ashley Edwards also is the subject of one of Jones’ sessions.
“These are ordinary women,” Jones said at her downtown studio, the home of her business, Red Scarf Shots. “They are all gorgeous and beautiful in their own delicious way.”
Many of the women in the photographs will attend tonight’s event, and all of the work is for sale.
Although the photo sessions were of the bourdoir variety, this is not smut, and Jones has no designs on being the next Larry Flynt. It’s a classy series of photos of everyday women baring a little skin. America’s religious-based conservatism and quick-to-label-inappropriate attitude make shows like this uncommon in the states. That’s a shame. Skin is good and certainly nothing to be ashamed of, especially in art.
“I don’t deal in pornography, but I do deal in skin,” Jones said. “You can go anywhere in Europe, and people appreciate the skin. They appreciate bodies, they appreciate nudes, sculptures, all that. You get home, and people flip out about showing a pair of bosoms.”
The photographs, which aren’t copied prints of Jones’ photos but unique specialty glazes mounted on wooden frames, are pictures of women taken here in Durango, as well as Nevada, Mexico and Paris. The boudoir photography style grew from Jones’s wedding photography work.
“I started calling all of my sessions “Underpinnings” because it seems more suggestive, more feminine and more romantic,”she said. “In the beginning, a majority of my brides would request the day of the wedding being shot in their lingerie. It kept going from there. This year, I renovated my studio to accommodate this, and people come now.”
Hers is a talent that goes beyond the skills of being a professional photographer, at which Jones excels. The other half of the art behind these sessions and the resulting product is the craft of being an inviting host. Jones has that ability to ease women who aren’t models and likely have never been the subject of a photo shoot into a mindset of comfort. That helps drop their guard enough for Jones to get the best photograph.
Her talent is such that after a little coaxing, she could have a jaded entertainment columnist and critic ready to be the subject of a photo shoot himself. The end result is not only the photo that the model is paying for, but also a measure of empowerment and confidence-building that the “model” may not have had before the shoot.
“When they walk through the door, hell yeah, they’re nervous,” Jones said. “But by the time they get here, they’re doing it for themselves. Everyone is so beautiful in their own way, and it’s a matter of accentuating that.”
Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.
If you go
“Underpinnings” by McCarson Jones, music by Ace Revel, 5 p.m. today, Sorrell Sky Gallery, 828 Main Ave., 247-3555.
