The thing about art is that it's so subjective. That's even more true when you're looking at abstract art. Ten people could look at the same image, half of them could hate it and see nothing meaningful, while the other five might all see totally different things. When my kids were young, we lived next door to an artist who was an abstract painter. He used to love it when the kids would come over and look at his paintings, because he said they saw things that eluded adults, including himself.

It was a similar story with Sandra Alland, a Toronto-based photographer, who used her camera to uncover sexual imagery in nature. She found one of the most interesting things was the varying conclusions people would draw from what they saw in her B & W photos that depict sexuality in trees and people as landscapes. Sandra would very clearly see one image, but people who came to view her work, often saw something else. That point was really driven home for me when it came time for us to shoot Sandra's photographs. She sent us the 22 photos from the exhibit, but when I opened the package, there were several images that I couldn't tell whether they were horizontal or vertical. I called Sandra and my cell phone picked that exact moment to die. I didn't call her back on another phone because we were under the gun. My camera man's time was limited and if we had taken the time to go through each photo with Sandra over the phone, we wouldn't have been able to finish. We figured we would be fine. Big mistake. Sandra came down to the station a few days later and discovered we had placed five of the photographs upside down, including one where my cameraman "very clearly" saw a female "ass." Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we were able to flip the photos so they were properly displayed.

Karen Murray
Associate Producer, SexTV