Last year, just about this time, I wrote a piece inspired by the imagery of Dan Skinner. In that story, Public Pools, Private Thoughts, I recounted some of my experiences swimming, and observing at a local swimming pool. It is always great when images inspire story, and Dan's images make it easy. My fingers get a work out every time I spend time with his work with Dave and the many other incredible models in Dan's huge portfolio of work.
From the first two images above, it is clear it is almost impossible to take a bad image of Dave. In fact, when I asked Dan about getting some behind the scenes shots from some of his shoots, they ended up being as stimulating and great as the posed shots. There were plenty more where these came from, but for today, I decided to stick to the pool. I will share some more in September, but if you can't wait, there are hundreds more of Dan's story driven images on his tumblr, The Knob Goblin.
One of the reasons I love Dan's imagery so much, and one of the reasons I have featured it so often is his creativity with story. Almost each one of Dan's images tells a complete story. This flows through all of Dan's work, but is especially evident in his images of couple's. In one or two images Dan is able to convey subtle nuances within relationship and his ability to capture the intense, yet completely natural intimacy between two men is one of the reasons his work resonates so deeply.
Dan uses this ability in his writing as well. All of Dan's books, including his most recent novels, The Price Of Dick and The Art of the Heart are available in Kindle editions on Amazon HERE:
