Folded...



"Pluto: Planet or Asteroid?"
Photographer: Mic-Ardent
Model: Nikky Case
Source: DeviantArt.com

The name she shows the world is Nikky Case, she's a Czech, a skilled photo model and as beautiful a woman as God ever saw fit to grace planet Earth with.  She's one of the women who can, when she wants to, tell you a story with only one or two frames if you'll pay attention.  She is both artist, and catalyst for art,  I have no doubt she hosts the muse for those she agrees to pose for. 

There is another artist in this story, a French fellow, a photographer who is known on DeviantArt by the name mic-ardant.  As a photographer he is a good match to Nikky, skilled at capturing the nuances left floating by the women who pose for him, obviously skilled at setting them into a frame of mind to float such nuances for his lens to capture.  

There is little reason to doubt that for Mic just as for Nikky the nature of how the erotic represents itself is well known, for them how that deep ache and poignant trembling hope that defies all description will manifest itself is part of their profession, part of the palette from which they draw to create their art, an understanding they use to seed a dream within the minds of their audience.  For those of us who are their audience their skills can be almost narcotic, give them your full attention for five seconds and they are quite able to hold you captive for an hour using nothing but wonder and delight.  That is how it is for us, we who are their audience.  But how is it for them, they who provide that wonder and delight? 

It is no great feat of imagination to understand they cannot perpetually indulge in the saturated eroticism they provide to others, they are human, regardless of what imagery is being produced they themselves must maintain some degree of balance within their own lives.  In short, what we the audience are intended to perceive as an apogee moment in a deep love affair running hot and true, a moment to mark an epoch, a moment to define a lifetime, for them that moment is most likely just a run-of-the-mill day's work kind of thing, one more down the line, sounded good firing up on the test stand so bolt it up and send it out the door to the dealership. 

Of course I have understood this for many, many years… I'm a bit of a connoisseur of such art, the more subtle a glow to reveal the hotter a fire my favorite form, Mic and Nikky are both good at that.   But from the perspective of Mic and Nikky as human beings, from the perspective of looking not at the image produced but rather at the humans who produced it?  Rarely have I seen an image to equal "Pluto: Planet or Asteroid?" They say any picture is worth a thousand words.  I don't know if I have a thousand, but I do have a few. 

Nikky, beautiful woman, where were you?  I have no idea where that stare started out from, but by the time the shutter clicked it had become introspection, some thought, some question… were you really debating with Mic about the evolution of astronomy, or was it more "what they call Pluto isn't going to make much difference to my day, but I'd sure like to know if a fourth of the world's population will ever outgrow their fascination with their grandmother's underwear…"  

Mic, please tell me you weren't defending one side or the other of the Pluto debate with great passion, speaking of angles of incidence and orbital asymmetries and core compositions and hanging the shoot on Nikky's professionalism…  I know at this point you can run a camera by reflex, but c'mon, what could she possibly give you in response to astronomy debated in retrospect? 

And yet when I look at the shadow of the moment to be seen in Nikky's posture, by the distance in her eyes, in that relaxed state of readiness waiting for a hint of a direction when a hint is all that's needed… when I look at that what I see is something unique, something rare as dragon's tears in a bottle… I really think I'm seeing Nikky herself, and to actually see the woman behind the model is a rare thing, a thing to be handled with care and respect because it really isn't supposed to happen.  It is to see Nikky as you might see her if it was your place to slip the robe over her shoulders and say "c'mon hon, it's my turn to cook dinner."  It is the folded eroticism of the play within the play, the dream within a dream.  Nikky, Mic… wow, and take a bow guys.  Well done indeed.