I met all my wives in traffic jams, there's just something women like about a Pickup Man. - Pickup Man - Joe Diffe
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Tiana - 092713 - SideB |
My dad bought it new the year after I was born. It has never left the family since. It is a part of the family, it is a friend, and it is a unique muse.
Growing up in Idaho, South Dakota, and Montana usually requires time spent around pickup trucks. This was our truck. It has been through bad times and good. This truck took us on camping trips with a big-ass camper. It carried an injured friend of my dad's to the ER before he almost died from blood loss. My dad used it as a gear hauler when he was a local volunteer fire fighter (I still remember the red spinner light we carried in it for fire duty).
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Tiana - 092713 - SideB |
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Tiana - 092713 - SideB |
During those years I drove it exclusively, I learned to drive it like a truck should be driven. I also learned the first parts of being a man. I made out for the first time in it. While I didn't lose my virginity in it, I did have my first sex in a vehicle in it. I often had fantasies of being out in it with my girlfriend and having one of those youthful sexual moments that coming-of-age movies are based on. Even though the real moments were great, none of the them lived up to the fantasy.
If you took all the girls I knewWhen I was singleAnd brought them all together for one nightI know they'd never matchMy sweet imagination - Kodachrome - Paul Simon
In the 1990's, it went to live with my parents in their retirement, then moved to my brother's ranch. It did the ranch work, but was falling apart. The engine was almost dead. It rusted out and was going to the junkyard. In 2007 I rescued it. After rebuilding the engine (FE 390), way too much body work and body part replacements, a paint job, and more money, hard work and hours than I should have spent, I restored it. I owed it to her.
It is funny to drive something that was part of my formative years and then have again in my mid-life. I feel both young and old in it. I also feel inspired. Those old memories and fantasies return and with the roar of the engine and the sound of the tailgate closing, I get inspired to create photos with it. It has become a muse.
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Tiana - 092713 - SideB |
I tried taking photos of it by itself, but soon found I needed models with it. While it was tempting to do just the regular pin-up bikini model photo shoots with it, I knew that wasn't right for either the truck or me. I wanted to create a mix of those memories and fantasies I held decades before. The truck soon became a prop, a character, and a muse for me. When I brought models in with me to work with it, the mystical powers of both the truck and the model worked muse magic and I started to get what I wanted.
These photos of Tiana are from my second shoot with a model and the truck. I will share more of the other sessions' photos in the future.