Who are you ? and who are they?

Who are you – and who are they?

It’s all about identity. I’ve written about screen names on EPZ before, and the fact that most of the models I work with use an alias for work. Some go further: a few have different aliases for different styles of work, and there was one whose name as I’ve posted here was different from the one she signed the model release with, and different again from the name she needed written on the cheque for payment.

Had she been reading spy novels? John le Carré’s characters required two levels of cover, so that one could collapse under interrogation, leaving a second lie underneath, with the truth still hidden… I suspect, though, that I first came across the idea in Oresete Pinto’s Spycatcher books – where I also found the concept of the soft interrogation, which Pinto considered more effective than the more coercive approach that fills so much fiction, and causes so much moral debate.



And there are some models who want to preserve anonymity, like the one in my gallery post today. For one reason or another, they want to be anonynudes. This may be a less successful strategy when they have distinctive tattoos or body features, as is the case with a couple of people I know.

And I see no problem with this: it allows some people to have work names that are highly descriptive of what they do, and in all cases permits the individual to be more authentically themselves when posing. Make no mistake about this – the choice of a model largely defines how the pictures will look, and not only in terms of physiology. One model will be sweet, girl-next-door, another will be mysterious and magical, while a third will be strictly alpha male and a fourth will exude raunchy sexuality through a computer screen.



There are some much more versatile models, it’s true: but all have areas in which their main strength lies. It pays to work with the grain, like a good woodworker: so if (after Lockdown 2) you are booking a model, choose someone who fits your idea of how the pictures should look – or, at least, be ready to use their strengths to make your pictures. (Though, just occasionally, you and a model may decide to play against type, and do something completely alien, possibly to both of you.)

Which may lead to the line of the Who song that was removed when it became the theme for CSI: ‘Who the **** are you?’