Jo Ann Callis
[Photographer, b. 1940, Cincinnati, Ohio, lives in Los Angeles.]
I photographed models, but all of them, female or male, are me. It’s coming from me. My insecurities, my revenge, my disappointment.
...sexuality, or sensuality is used throughout my work. Even with objects, I’m looking at them in a way that I’m caressing them with my eyes—that’s how it felt, anyway.
I do like to control the image and create it and not just take what’s there.... But of course taking a picture is not like life. It’s “let’s pretend” for an hour...
I always think of photography as being out there and catching decisive moments and wonderful things that are happening and putting them together by juxtaposition. I never did that.
I began by making pictures in interiors and about interiors—pictures about feelings, and emotions, and relations.
I consistently want to make things that satisfy my sense of beauty.
