Tony Ward Ward began his professional career in 1980 as a corporate photographer for the pharmaceutical giant, Smithkline Corporation. After several years of working in the department of corporate communications for Smithkline, he opened the Tony Ward Studio in 1984, to service a variety of Fortune 500 companies and smaller business entities.
In 1998, TW achieved global notoriety for his first published book on erotic photography, the controversial and highly praised OBSESSIONS. The monograph was followed by four more challenging, innovative and critically acclaimed volumes on eroticism and photography at the turn of the century. Scholars that specialize in the history and aesthetics of photography such as A.D. Coleman, Rick Wester and Reinhold Misselbeck have written illuminating essays that accompanied the artist published works.
Ward’s photographs have been widely collected, exhibited and syndicated around the world. His unending quest for inspiring subjects, and new projects compels him to divide his creative time between diverse cosmopolitan centers, including: New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Paris, Hamburg/Berlin and his beloved Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Tony Ward has been teaching Photography courses at the University of Pennsylvania since the Fall of 2010, and has published the work of his students in the blog section. The daily blog features articles by Tony Ward and guest contributors who are invited to write on a variety of topics including; Art, Architecture, Photography, Fashion, Erotica, Politics, Science, Travel and Current Events.
Just how did the book Erotic Bondage: Art of Rope come about? Basically, it was Marion’s idea. She’d been looking at my collection of books, including Tony’s Obsession, Petter Hegre’s My Wife, Ralph Gibson’s Deus Ex Machina, Lee Higgs’s Generation Fetish, and others (all confiscated by the cops, none returned, most of them signed copies given to me by the photographers) and decided she wanted The Marion Book. She was heavily into sexual bondage, said she had the most intense orgasms when restrained. She’d shown me a bunch of Polaroid snaps of her bound taken by an old boyfriend. The photography and rigging were amateurish, but she still shined. She also described the bondage sessions she’d done with a recent boyfriend, and complained that he tied the ropes too tight. So I began shooting some bondage sessions with her, something new to me. Oh, I’d played around with handcuffs and such with a few models, but nothing hardcore. I then built a suspension frame, incorporating suggestions from her dad, and built a couple of sets. It was then that I discovered rainbowrope.com, where I found nice soft 1/4 inch Nylon rope in all sorts of colors. I bought a bunch of rope from them as well as some props like an old style dental clamp that Marion fell in love with. We commenced shooting for the book each week after my other obligations were out of the way. After we had some pictures we really liked. I went looking for a publisher. I didn’t think an American publisher would be interested. so I went looking in Germany, where several of my books had been published. My main German publisher was a wing of the Vatican, so I didn’t take this project to them! After several dead ends, I found a publisher, and we began to rough the book out – and then that publisher went bust. I was discouraged, but this had happened before, and so I started over. If I had all the money publishers have gone broke owing me, I might have been as wealthy as the prosecutor thought!
I talked to Lee Higgs and he put me in touch with his publisher in Germany, Goliath. They loved the project and over the course of a year or so we put the book together. In fact they liked it so much that they decided to make it the first of a series under a new imprint, MixOfPix. In the middle of this process Marion died. I was very conflicted about going on with the project, but Marion’s best friend Samantha had seen the photos (and was in some) and said Marion would have wanted me to finish the project, and her other friends I talked to felt the same, I felt they were right, so I hired other models to do the shoots we’d planned and sketched, and finished the book. That I published under my Edward Lee pseudonym had nothing to do with Marion’s death, but had been the plan from the beginning. I had some very straight-laced clients at the time and wanted to keep things separate.
The prosecutor implied that I’d made a lot of money from the book. As photographers who have done picture books will tell you, you do not get rich from this type of book. I did not do a detailed accounting, but by the time I figured in model’s fees, cost of set building, and all the other expenses of doing the shoots for the book, I might just have broken even. I did have some quiet support from photo industry companies, and a cheering section from my dear old friend Monte Zucker, who gleefully showed me the gay bondage he was shooting and critiqued the images for me. But, no matter what the prosecutor implied, I was not rolling in money from this project. The book is out of print now, and my royalties ended long ago, but I’m told it is available from Amazon.
Marion also wanted a website along with the book. She’d been inspired by boundndetermined.com, the website owned by my friend Maria Shadoes, and wanted to call hers bound2bwild.com. I’d registered the name and Maria and I were working on the design. Maria made a good living from the websites she owned and webmastered and was to be our webmaster. All those plans came to naught, though. Marion’s website never went live. So many plans and dreams died with her.
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. Mr. Shell is serving the 11th year of his sentence. To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, click here: http://tonywardstudio.com/blog/bob-shell-letters-from-prison-15/
A picture entitled, “Scene of the Crime” will be part of a group exhibit entitled: People, Places & Things at Stanek Gallery, 242 North 3rd Street in Philadelphia. The opening reception is this coming Friday, May 4th from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. This picture is part of a series of tableaux vivants created by Tony Ward between the years 1993 to 2000. This will be the first time the artist exhibits this particular body of work in Philadelphia, where the pictures resulted in his second monograph, Tableaux Vivants, Edition Stemmle. Zurich, Switzerland, fpublished in 2000. There are very limited editions of these vintage silver prints available and are now being offered for the first time to collectors at Stanek Gallery in Philadelphia. In 2005, “The Figure” another picture from the series sold (modern print 42″ x 62″) at an exhibit in Paris to a collector from London for $18,000 dollars, the highest price paid for a single work by Tony Ward to date.
Martha Gibson. George Krause. Lunch at the White Dog Cafe, March 8, 2018. Photo: Tony Ward, Copyright 2018.
Text by Tony Ward, Copyright 2018
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GEORGE KRAUSE: LUNCH WITH A LEGEND
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I first met my friend and mentor, George Krause in 1975 at Photopia Gallery on South Street. The Philly based gallery was located in the same neighborhood where Man Ray was born and where Ray K. Metzker, also a legendary photographer and friend of George, lived by converting an old 19th century fire house into his studio. Metzker’s studio was located just around the corner from where George Krause lived for several years before relocating to Wimberly, Texas, where he currently resides with his girlfriend, the artist, Martha Gibson. Photopia was the place to see fine art photography during those days and George Krause was amongst the finest artists to exhibit at the avant-garde exhibition space. A couple of years earlier, Krause had published GEORGE KRAUSE-1, his first book of groundbreaking photographs, which became a visual bible for anyone interested in photography as a fine art at the time. Toll & Armstrong of Haverford, Pa. published the monograph with forward by Mark Power, in 1972. I have a signed copy proudly displayed of GEORGE KRAUSE – 1 in my personal library.
Before I was informed George would be visiting Philadelphia this year to install his latest exhibition, Introspective 1957 to 2017 at the University of the Arts, I had already introduced his work to my photography students at the University of Pennsylvania. In September, I assigned the class a book review of John Szarkowski’s classic, Looking at Photographs. George was selected by Szarkowski to be represented in this iconic representation of the history of photography published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1973.
Needless to say, my students were thrilled to learn that the legendary, George Krause would be visiting their class during his visit to Penn’s campus. When I showed the students the signed copy of his first book, I completely forgot that it contained personal letters. I shared with the class that I had received letters from George during the 1970’s when we corresponded while he was working in San Miguel, Mexico or at the American Academy in Rome. I was a graduate student studying photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology where many of Georges contemporaries lectured at my graduate seminars including: Ralph Gibson, Emmet Gowin, Duane Michals, Susan Sontag and Peter Bunnell. The list would also include George Krause after he accepted an invitation that I forwarded to him on behalf of the masters program at R.I.T. We’ve stayed in touch ever since.
George was thrilled to see an exhibit of the students work at the Clutter Gallery in Addams Hall. The class had the good fortune of reading about photographic history and then to meet a living embodiment of its history made for an amazing learning experience for the students. George mentioned during his talk that it was the first time he had been asked to speak about his work by accessing his web site: www.GeorgeKrause.com. George also mentioned that he may have been the first photographer in photographic history to cut a beveled mat window to present his photographs. After his talk we enjoyed a wonderful lunch at the White Dog Cafe on Penn’s campus with his girlfriend; the artist, Martha Gibson.
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George Krause: Exhibition Announcement. UArts.
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George Krause with Photography Students at UPenn. Photo: Martha Gibson.
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George Krause and Tony Ward at Introspective opening reception, UArts. March 28, 2018.
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About The Author: Tony Ward is a fine art photographer, author, blogger, publisher and adjunct professor of photography at the University of Pennsylvania. His published works can be accessed here: https://tonyward.com/shopping-cart/books-bonus-gift/
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Editor’s Note: Tony Ward used the new Sony RX100V to make the portrait of George Krause during lunch with an ISO setting of 320, White Balance: AWB, Shutter: 1/30th, F-Stop:1.8.
