VietNamNet Bridge - Duong Quoc Dinh’s nude photos look gentle, sweet and sophisticated. His photos are artworks about women’s beauty, in which their nudity is not the key.

Besides nudity, landscapes and still-lifes are also Dinh’s passion. According to him, besides good light, good objects, still-life photos must express the photographer’s thinking.

“I take nude photos, not to move viewers with women’s beauty and their bodies: these things are just the grounds to transfer a purer idea, with the models’ faces in some works. Sometimes we think that models in nude photos must hide their faces. That idea affects the nature and pureness of artworks at the beginning,” he added.

Dinh studied painting when he was five but now the camera has completely replaced the brush. Ideas and feelings often come first, then Dinh turns them into photos.

Wind’s words by Duong Quoc Dinh

Dinh mainly takes nude photos from five models. His models are not only young, beautiful, good at expressing their feelings, but also have good morals. It took Dinh at least three months to convince these models’ families to allow them to work as nude models.

“They (models) understand me, help me make good works and they are proud when my works are highly applauded for their value. The two sides help each other for art. If you work with a hired model, at the beginning her thinking is about money because she works for money. Thus I can catch their body, not their soul,” Dinh said.

Contributing to Dinh’s career is his wife. She and Dinh’s nephews often work as “draft” models to help Dinh save time when he works with real models.

Dinh now holds a record among Vietnamese photographers with 30 medals, mainly from foreign competitions, for nude photos. “Medals are not my aspiration. I expect to have good works. That’s the first happiness. Medals are material, which can’t please me like good artworks,” he said.

Dinh is quite reserved in advertising his nude photos. Besides sending photos to contests and to some newspapers, Dinh had his only solo photo exhibition four years ago, when he began turning from painting to photography. However, that exhibition was not completely a nude exhibition since photos focus on girls’ hands.

"Evening dream" and "Having a bath" by Duong Quoc Dinh

Dinh doesn’t plan to organise another personal exhibition or publish a photo book though he can afford it. Annually, he collects the best photos into his own book. He wishes to have a large room to hang his best photos for his and his friends’ pleasure.

“I think I myself can’t do a great job. It is necessary to have a media agency or a management agency to organise (nude photo exhibitions) so the event’s influence will be better and more effective,” Dinh said.

There is a movement of taking nude photos among young girls and Dinh also takes nude photos on demand. “The demand for nude photos to keep the body beauty in pictures is a real one, but this job requires the morals of photographers. If photographers don’t have sufficient knowledge to make reasonable nude photos, the photos will be something that only the photographers understand. These works may create problems for the authors and models if they are diffused,” said Dinh.

When taking nude photos of his clients, Dinh’s principle is clients must depend completely on his view. “So I can make artistic photos for them. That’s the rule when I take both my own artworks and photos for my clients. The first photos I sent to contests were photos I took for clients,” he said.

Dinh was born and grew up in the southern province of Dong Nai, which is 30km from HCM City, but he doesn’t want to move to HCM City though the working environment there may be better than in Dong Nai.

“I don’t like a noisy environment. Though I was born in a poor family, I don’t have the ambition of getting rich. I only wish to earn enough to support my family and my passion (photography) for my whole life,” he said.

(Source: DDDN)