The shoot in this story was a personal project. I thought it would be nice to go back a bit to my roots in art. I wanted to mix the beauty of youth and place it into a bit more of an art history context. There were a number of influences to this piece. I was quite interested in Manet's Olympia at the time when I shot these. I loved how the painting was received to such critical abuse at the time and all because the woman in the painting was a mistress and quite a strong character looking right out at you unashamed. I wanted to portray this idea of unashamed beauty in the work. Another important feature which influenced the shoot was Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Grey'. There is a line which reads:   "You have only few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful"  This paragraph I thought particularly summed up the emergency of youth and how it must be captured before it disappears. In the shoot, the two models are past being teenagers but are still caught in that youthful stage before adulthood. They are still fresh and alive and these photos are almost the statement (and almost doubled in the fashion world) that once you have lost youth, it will never come back.  Lastly, I wanted to create something which captured the strong sculptural perfection of youth and the male physique by taking inspiration from ancient Greek statues, godlike creatures which propel the youthful into unobtainable objects.

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