Gary Schoichet
MY AD READ:
Wanted
Men, women, fat, thin old,
young, etc. to pose for rooftop
nudes for photo project.
payment in prints only.
It was the early ‘80s, the paper was the Soho Weekly News, my phone rang for the two weeks of the ad’s life.
The camera, the stuff of this piece, was a $1 piece of light leaking plastic used to teach kids photography. A piece of crap a lot would say. Yes, but what a piece of crap! A roll of 120 film cost more. Three distance settings (4-6 feet, 6-12 feet, 12 feet to infinity), three light settings (cloudy, cloudy sunny, sunny), one speed (1/30 second).
Many photographers taped the seams to prevent light getting in. I didn’t. Let Diana be Diana. Not something Prince Charles believed in.
Maggie Sherwood lived on a purple barge in the Hudson River and used the camera to teach women inmates at the Federal women’s prison in Chelsea. I had one and she gave me a couple more.
It didn’t take long for Dianas to be discovered by artists, or more probably, “artistes.” The $1 camera, when you could find one, started selling at $50 and more. A book, Iowa, by photographer Nancy Rexroth, was Diana images. She is not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for Diana cameras; a lot of the entry is hokum.
People came to pose for different reasons. Some because they’d never done it before, others looking for some kind of adventure, others to show off their bodies, others who hid their bodies and were looking for some kind of freedom. Some came looking for sex, whether with themselves or possibly with me.
Every session was a crapshoot. Even though much of the work was done on the phone, I never really knew the person who was coming and photographically what I’d get given the limitations of the camera.
A man in sunglasses wanted to show off his erection. Susan, originally from the Midwest, said she’d have sex with anyone. She posed on an outer wall looking south towards the Port Authority building, an American flag flying on its roof.
Nikki was tall, slim, a dancer. When she bent down, hands touching the roof surface, the light played with her shape and the bottom of her spine at the top of the frame made her back look like an erect penis.
Bruce from Texas, in his 20s, got so excited laying on the wall between the two five story buildings that he raised an erection that centered in the Empire State Building.
Barbara, on a middle-of-the week-school-day, attracted happy hooting kids from the high school across the street, relieved of their boredom for a few minutes.
The show opened, yes there was a show, in a gallery in Soho during a February blizzard. It was listed as a Voice Choice (Village Voice) so people came through the knee-high snow drifts.
I rarely used the Diana afterwards, but while I did I loved it.