h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...for your flower comment.

I've only been photographing things for a little over a year and this is the first time I've gone public. My ego has been boosted by the positive feedback I'm getting.

And congratulations for pinpointing the exact artistic reference point. Yes, of course Mapplethorpe. I share his interest in using flowers as a means of portraying structure and composition. I'd like to do nudes too - only my wife would need some convincing. (Maybe not as 'extreme' as Mapplethorpe's: bull whip insertion optional ). Check out the work of Czech photographer, Tono Stano.

Another inspiration is, of course, Georgia O'Keefe, who once said:
"I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move."

Skin is endlessly fascinating. Animators still can't do it convincingly.

Oh, yes, skin...I wouldn't be without it myself.

But it's the shapes you can get out of people that really interest more than the textures. That's why I like one particular Tono Stano, which you may have come across if you've googled him yet. Do! You'll guess the one I mean. It's also one of the reasons why I'm interested in dance - modern more than classical ballet (well - someone has to be). Good male nude photography is, in its way, almost as interesting to me as female - although I have to admit that the hormonal aspects are not entirely absent from my final judgements.

Another researcher told me a while back that she had 'known' two mathematicians. The first had confessed to finding Number Theory arousing. She asked the second if he also felt the same. His reply: 'No...I'm far more aroused by topology.'

Mind you...Leni Riefenstahl's famous African photos have some glorious skin textures. I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt because she was clearly capable of recognising supreme human beauty by then.

But anyway...for me flowers are somewhat body substitutes.

Interestingly, there is a Flickr group called Flora Porn.

Mmmm. It's bad to admit to, but I would let Leni Riefenstahl off too. So she found the Nazis sexy? Power *is* sexy. Sexy isn't good, it's vicious; but it's sexy.

Tono Stano: man and cross, yes?

Ah, no. But, yes, that also. A lot of them are good.

The particular one I'm thinking of is of the rather elegant looking woman (most Czech women seem to look like that ), standing, and the lighting is such that her figure is only partly revealed in an S-life form, almost as though she's being revealed from a cloak.

(Fur coat and no knickers?)

I've got a marvellous book of Czech nude photography. They seem to go in for it quite a lot. The book is catalogue of one of the most successful recent exhibitions at their National Gallery.

Yes the Czechs are getting the name the Swedes and Danes had in the 60s-70s, for uninhibited enthusiasm.

I was misled by your male-appreciations; the fur-coat pic is very taking indeed.

A curious thing...Have you read any Milan Kundera? He's a bit of a dirty old man in that he's forever talking about menages-a-trois or group sex as though he's some kind of louche connoisseur. But talking to a young Czech friend who I met during my last visit, it seems taht he's not as unusual as he makes out. It does indeed seem that they are very relaxed about matters erotic.

Of course - the picture is somewhat muddied. Prostitution is legal and commonplace. Almost the first thing you notice on the drive from the airport is the billboards advertising sex clubs. But prostitution is driven by economic need. Yet if you look in their video rental stores, you see all sorts of pornography almost side-by-side with mainstream films (and infinitely categorised according to taste! One-legged black lesbian bondage dwarves with enemas? Certainly, sir! Second shelf up to your right.). So clearly they're an unrepressed people.

I also met a British pornographer in a bar. In fact, it was he who introduced me to my new friend - an English teacher - who was his landlady. And amongst others she introduced me to an amiable Russian guy with no command of English ('Skhotland! Kharasho!') who '...has permission to kill from the mafia.'

Lovely city, Prague! Ask Gnomon. Everywhere you look there's a gorgeous building. And half a dozen gorgeous women. If you haven't already visited you should pay Michael O'Leary his 15 Euros and give it a shot.

I have holidayed in Prague and I pass through it every year on my way to teach in a music summer school in Jindrichuv Hradec. I love the place and have met several terrific Czechs. Really wonderful people.

But I've got to haul you up on two things:

Prostitution "is driven by economic need" -- I don't get your point. You mean it's not done for fun? (And there's me thinking she really fancied me . . .)

And what use pray is "permission to kill from the mafia"? Unless the mafia really run the police, that is.

Hmmm. The prostitution issue is an 'interesting' one. I doubt that it's a first-choice job for many. Although some have argued that, at its best, it's no more soul-destroying and exploitative than, say, working in a call centre or for Michael O'Leary.

As for the mafia - I was given to understand that there are various industries in Prague within which a police presence is unwelcome and order is maintained by (ahem) 'community pressure'.

Curiously enough, in my local Oxfam shop on Saturday, I came across Philip Rot's novella. The Prague Orgy. I'd only read Roth's early novels until I was recently blown away by his The Plot Against America.

Next time you visit Prague, I can point you towards a fantastic restaurant in Malostranska where you can get the full works for 20 Euros.