Last week I had an interesting conversation with the photographer Martin Toye about his recent work, the masturbation series. And even though these masturbating males are quite explicit and sexually charged, we mainly talked about his work in non sexual terms. The functional usage of the nude, how people feel in front of his camera and his searching for the inner world of people.
Your work has been featured on the Art of Love several times now, but for the people who missed the previous introductions, who’s Martin Toye?
Martin Toye is someone constantly searching for ways to express ideas and feelings. I’m saying this because I also write ( that doesn’t mean I’m a writer ) and while I was “searching” I discovered that photography is just an other way of telling stories.
What’s the binding concept in your work, is it mainly a sexual exploration? a form of erotic expression?
I’m not sure if sexual is the right term to use in relation with all my work. Some images certainly are, but others are not sexually charged. A nude can be artistic alone, more or less the same as photographing a landscape.
Ok, nudes or “the nude” can be mostly an artistic expression. But there is just to much heat in your photography to label it purely artistic nudes.
I sometimes need to get that sexual thing in my pictures…For me a photographic session can be like making love, without making love… But in others pictures the nakedness of people works different. I’ll try to explain; “In my experience when people undress themselves they also leave their masks, their armor behind. They gain a certain strength en become more pure, more themselves in a way. They show me a glimpse of their inner world, that’s what I want to capture in my images.”
Your working with people from your own town, how do you get them in front of your camera? In your last work, they are even going beyond the posing and are well..masturbating.
I started working with people from my hometown, that’s true. In the beginning, it was hard to find people who would pose nude for me. But after the first couple of shoots it became more easily and people even asked me if they could participate in the next session. It seems that every time I present some new work, I meet more people interested in posing for the camera.
In the gallery, the images are illustrating our conversation quite nicely, the sexually charged ‘Masturbation’ series and the search for the inner world in the ‘Love Couple’ images.
