“There is an absolute timelessness about Abdier. One minute his energy and looks evokes a past reality and sometime in the very same frame he evokes the future and all things to come. Abdier has also transformed his already exquisite body since our last shoot so the way he moves has evolved.
We are normally quite conversive, but this shoot was very silent comparatively.
We speak of history and philosophy and so much of these conversations inform the shoot.
We decided upon the Odalisque, and to be clear, we are using the evolved definition to couch this series of photos in.
The original definition is Turkish for chamber. The French meaning is chambermaid/ attendant and usually referred to a person of color, and the eighteenth-century term odalisque refers to the eroticized artistic genre in which a nominally eastern woman lies on her side on display for the spectator. Our modern version of this word speaks to the changing times we are in on all fronts and how gender and perception has expanded and is continually evolving.”
– James Reynolds