Erotic art by Frederic Levar

I was born some fifty years ago in the middle of France in a small countrytown of which I don’t remember to much. At a young age my parents moved to the Netherlands. There I was raised and got my education. Now I live both in Amsterdam and on the French countryside. After a career in advertising and as film-director I gave in to my photographic ambitions. Photography has always been there. I worked a lot with photographers. As film-director later on I worked with many talented directors of photography and camera-operators. I spent in front of the monitor on the set days looking at their work. Absorbing the art of careful, exact framing. The choice of lenses, which makes the distinction between flat images and vibrant visuals with impact. The sculpturing with light, which makes a blunt face speak; a dull room the centre of drama and mystery. Although I shot an occasional photo, photography was never my main activity as it is at present. I study landscapes and rural scenery in the region of my French house; capture life in Amsterdam and never leave home without my camera.

My fine art nude and fetish photography started when I met my muse. Fascinated by how she combines strength and vulnerability. How she provokes and seduces. The way she strikes poses by intuition. She admits of her sexuality and enjoys it intensely, plays with our power over each other. Through my photography she entered a world which was unknown to her before. Imagery of the beauty of the female body in soft, romantic tones; fetish views from behind the veils of fantasy. The thrilling, dark corners of our minds.

If there is something in the divineness, that I believe, it is the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne: the muses of art and science. And foremost - sometimes it is so nice to be inconsistent - there is Sappho: the tenth muse of the art of film. Sappho, in whose stimulating songs I give photography the first rank. How magnificent and convincing she sings on the Olympus about shape and light, about truth and illusion. About this magic which catches light. Her seductive voice conquered a place for photography and film on the divine mountain. There is no film without photography so first of all she is the muse of photography..Milan Kundera said: "Memories are not made of film, but of photographs." Sappho, who doesn't teach me to watch, but to see.

There is another muse as well: My muse, who stimulates and directs my eyes and senses. Who miraculously came into my life.

She stood in front of the window and the morning-sun embraced her. She showed me. Get me my camera and she fetched my camera.

I wake up in a hot hotel room and she sits under the window. Knees up, wrapped in her arms. She smokes and the pale light from the lighting-shaft rains on her tumbled hair. I recognise her: Sappho. La mienne. Constance de Nancy: divineness I believe in.

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