Viktor Vauthier

I was maybe thirteen when I decided the ideal career was photographing naked women. Found a Playboy with Nina Bott in it—I remember her, remember being eighteen inside my own body—and that was it. The plan seemed obvious: get a camera, get someone beautiful to remove their clothes, hit the button. Never happened. No money for equipment, hands too shaky around an attractive naked person, and nobody wanted to cooperate anyway.

Viktor Vauthier clearly has a steadier grip on the whole enterprise. He’s based in East London and he’s already made it into that tier where photographers like Richard Kern and Terry Richardson live—he’s shooting magazine covers, running a Vimeo account with his girlfriend, getting people like Lisa Olsson to stand in front of his camera. Not hobbyists. Not trying. Actual work.

The thing that separates him from the version of me I planned to be isn’t the amount of wanting. I wanted it enough. It’s that his hands don’t betray him. His eye doesn’t waver. There’s something in him that makes a woman comfortable enough to be photographed vulnerable, and I was never going to have that. Every shot would’ve been a confession.

Sometimes I look at his work—really look at it—and what I see isn’t just technical skill. It’s distance. He wants something from the image but he doesn’t need anything from the person. That might be the whole difference between a career and a fantasy.