Flashback to 2005 when I first published my book The Asian Male – 1.AM and the guys at Gmagazine decided to conduct my first official interview by the now yoga expert Victor Chau.
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G Magazine, April 2005
Interview by Victor Chau
Architect turned photographer Norm Yip has just published his first book, a set of sensual pictures of nude men called The Asian Male.” He tells us about his art.
You’re out as a gay man, and I heard your brothers are gay too. Well, I have five brothers and sisters. Two of my brothers are gay. Does my mom know? Well, I’ve told her many times, “Mom, I don’t like women. I like men.” She just doesn’t comprehend what being gay means. She keeps saying, “How can two men marry? Did you mean you two are good friends, son?”
Why did you switch from architecture to photography? Architecture offered me the money but not the artistic satisfaction. I was doing quite well and my company wanted to send me to Washington D.C., but I decided to stay in Hong Kong and quit my firm to look for a job. It was 1999 and it was a bad year. Then I set up a studio called Meli-Melo Artist Alliance, and start-ed doing creative stuff seriously: photography, drawing and painting.
Besides male nudes, what do you photograph? I do a lot of weddings for straight couples. They are my main source of income. I also do a lot of couples, gay and straight, clothed and nude. Sometimes they want me to do semi-nude. It’s entirely up to the clients.
Did your boyfriend get jealous of the male models when you were shooting them? No. He had quite a lot of confi-dence in me. But he did like being photographed.
Is he in the book? He is in the book, but we have since broken up. You’ll have to guess which one he is. In fact, his photo is my favorite in the book. I think it’s quite easy to figure out if you read the bios of my models closely.
Who were your first male nudes, and how did you find your models? My first male nudes were Nelson and Hon, a gay couple featured in my book. I shot them in 2000. They are friends. Then I started to get models from referrals. I also logged on to a muscle-guy website where Muscle Marys posted their profiles and I chose on the on screen.
People often talk about “sleeping one’s may to the top,” did that happen to any of the models? None of them offered to sleep with me, although I wish some of them had…
Really, not anyone? I’m not sure I should tell you this, but the truth is I did sleep with one of them, although he didn’t make it into the book. There was another incident. After shooting with two models they wouldn’t put their clothes back on… I picked up the message.
Were there any embarrassing moments? Did the models get a hard-on? Surprisingly no. Hard to believe, isn’t it? But it’s also understandable because they got so nervous and didn’t know what to do, and they were concentrating on their posing. Some are professional models, and they stayed very professional.
Do you think your book will be good exposure for the local gay community? I believe so. By doing this book, I was trying to achieve three goals. First, my book is about the appreciation of the fineness and beauty of the human body, especially the male body. Second, as an openly gay photographer, I hope to prove that anyone can achieve his goal, especially when it comes to art. A lot of Chinese people are deterred from the creative arts by their parents or peer pressure. They say things like, “You can’t make money by being an artist.” Third, I want to show everyone that not all nudity is sexual, erotic. The human body is a thing of beauty.
What difficulties did you face when you first started taking nude photographs? Hong Kong people have a funny way of seeing things. They equate nude with dirty. It’s not like that. I think there’s an underlying message in my book that my photos are not just sexual. In fact, I was taking a big risk when I photographed Nelson and Hon, my first male nude models; a lot of people were spreading rumors about my relationship with the models. At that time, my nude works weren’t well known and people had doubts about them. But now, they’ve seen my work and my status as an artistic photographer of male nudes has been recognized. I’m really pleased with it.
“The Asian Male” is $350 from branches of Page One, selected Dymocks and W.H. Smith (HK International Airport).