Crashing “The Stagg Party”

When we discovered Ellen Stagg a year ago, she was an up and coming photographer who'd recently started posting erotic photos of her friends on a Blogspot blog. Of course, she also happened to be an extremely talented photographer, with friends like Justine Joli, Adrianna Sage, and Masuimi Max--so it's not that surprising that, less than a year later, she's skyrocketed to success with a sleek new web site and an IFC web series. "The Stagg Party" takes a behind the scenes look at Ellen's shoots with models (and Fleshbot Crush Objects) Joanna Angel, Justine Joli, Mandy Morbid, Madison Young, and many, many more. We recently sat down with Ellen to ask her a little about photography, adult models, and what Justine Joli is really like. Our interview, and a preview clip of "The Stagg Party," after the jump.

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You're a successful commercial photographer. What made you decide to start working as an erotic photographer as well?
I've always been interested in it. I've been doing photography since I was sixteen years old. I originally saw myself as being an art photographer, but then when I got [to New York], I started taking classes and started realizing what the real world was all about. I had one agent, and she seemed to want me to do more commercial stuff--celebrity-based, advertising-based, lifestyle-based--so it was always about taking off in that direction and then coming back to the erotic stuff.

It wasn't until I met Justine (Joli) about two years ago that I really got in to shooting more and more erotic stuff, because I always had a problem finding the right kind of models.

That was my next question – you started off with some really amazing models(Justine Joli, Adrianna Sage, Masuimi Max). How did you find them? Did you meet Justine and just go from there?
I have a good friend of mine, Clayton Cubitt aka Siege, and he called me a few years ago saying, "I have this porn girl in town, she's a friend of a friend and she needs pictures but I'm busy, can you shoot her?" And he sent me some pictures of her, and I said, "Sure! I don't know what I'm going to do with her, cool, but we'll figure it out." I had one day to prepare. At the time, I usually liked to have more concepts with my fashion photography, so I was trying to figure out what I could do really quickly and still make great images out of it.

Justine came over and I got a make up artist and the next thing I knew I was just like, "This is great, I can't believe I've found a model who is totally interested in pushing my work and taking it to the places I've always wanted to go but couldn't find the right person to do it with."

I've always had friends of mine who were like, "Yeah, I'm okay with you taking naked pictures of me, but could you cut off my face?" or "Yeah, sure, I'm okay with you taking naked pictures of me," and then two weeks later being like, "My boyfriend found out about this and he doesn't want them to be out there." Which didn't really help me – I spent all this time taking these pictures for no reason. So all of the sudden there's this girl who's like, "I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to try this" and I'm like, "Awesome, I want to do all these things too," and she's like, "Yeah, I'll totally sign a model release, that's no problem I just need some copies for my site." Which was amazing! It ended up being a really great union of the two of us. And then I asked Justine's manager and she was like, "Yeah, we have tons of friends in LA that always need pictures and your style would be great for them."

Was it difficult to transition into doing erotic work?
No, because I've always been interested in it. Even when I was in high school I would shoot quasi-erotic stuff for being under 18--it was sexy self portraits or pictures of my friends, and then I showed them to my photography teacher, and she was like, "These are really good. You can't show them to the rest of the school." I've always been interested in it, but it was just finding the right types of models that would help me express what I really wanted to express out of it and no inhibitions that really helped me take off with it.

So when did you decide to start Stagg Street?
I had so many guy friends that I would show [the photos] to, and they would say, "Oh my god, I wish I could see some of this stuff online." At first I thought maybe I could do a paid site like the girls do, because I was very nervous about my commercial clients finding the work and being deterred from working with me because I shoot porn stars. I was thinking that with a paid site, at least you wouldn't be able to see the content so freely, so I could separate [my commercial and erotic work]. But a friend asked how I was going to have a paid site with no fan base. He said I should start a blog and put up a picture a day and start building a fan base.

Since you started Stagg Street, you've gotten a lot of attention for your erotic work. Has that caused any problems with your mainstream clients?
I have had a couple. One client that I shoot a lot of look books for, I found out through the grapevine that she didn't want to work with me anymore because I was getting too well known for doing porn. I was really, really disappointed by this person because I've photographed her naked before and she's been photographed by other photographers naked before, so I thought she was being very double standard about it. But besides that I've had more clients from this work than less. I think it's opened the doors for a lot of stuff. I made friends with Mishka, this streetwear company in Brooklyn, and I just shot a couple of their look books and we're actually coming out with a calendar for 2009 that I'm really, really excited about.

It's also put me in touch with people like Joe [Swanberg], who I think found me through your article on Fleshbot and then he contacted me and asked me to be in one of his films, and then we talked about doing other projects together and then that connected me to IFC.

Tell me about IFC.
About November of last year I met Joe, and then had a small part in his feature film, and we went out to lunch and I told him that because of the kind of photos that I do, so many people were asking me if I made out with my models--everyone had this fantasy of me taking pictures of these naked women and then rolling around with them. And I kept telling them, "No, it's really professional, I talk to them about every day stuff, and when I'm done I leave and go work on the pictures." So I told Joe about that and I was like, "It's really funny, because the pictures are so sexy and sensual, but the girls and I will be talking about funny stuff like our pets and our boyfriends and things of that sort. It really can be kind of funny and comical." I wanted someone to document it so that people could see that we're just normal girls hanging out and working and being cool together. He suggested that I get together with one of my models and we do a little documentary of one shoot. So we did it with Justine, which I posted on my blog around April, and he sent that to IFC because IFC was asking him about other webisode series after he did "Young American Bodies." And IFC was really interested, and I was beyond ecstatic.

So you're giving your fans a behind the scenes look at what happens at an Ellen Stagg shoot?
I'm sure there are a lot of fantasies about what happens, but I want to show people how funny and down to earth and just normal it is. Normal in a good way--and that's what ended up happening with the documentary series.

I think it's really great that you're doing this. People have all these weird ideas about what goes on at adult shoots. Either they think it's completely abusive, or they assume it's this hypersexual environment where everyone's having an orgy after the photos are shot.
It's work. And it's my artwork, but it's still work. I'll hang out with the girls later and go to dinner, but we're not having an orgy. I consider Justine to be a really good girlfriend of mine, and I tell her about everything – like, nonphoto-related things – but the fact that I can have such an amazing girlfriend that can also be my muse and understand my art and I can do different things with her [is awesome].

Do you have any favorite models? It certainly sounds like Justine is at the top of your list.
Justine is most definitely at the top, otherwise I loved working with Ariel cause she's also New York-based. I call her my pocket model, because she's like five feet tall – she's so petite! She reminds me of a high fashion model, so cute and girlish about it at the same time. I also have been working a lot with Mandy Morbid. I'm shooting her and Justine together next week. I'm totally loving Mandy because of that whole Tank Girl thing which I was so into in high school. Who else? I love working with Shay Laren. I've only shot her once, but she was just an amazing model and really had a good understanding of her own body and knew how to move around.

So what makes somebody a good model?
Somebody who's open minded but also – well, modeling isn't just about being pretty, it's about understanding that if your light source is coming from your left side you should make sure that it's pointing at your face too. I like directing models to a point, but I also like to see what they can bring to me. Everybody's bodies are so different, and I like to see how their bodies move in front of wherever I'm shooting them. I love every girl that has shot for my blog and I'm so privileged to have them shooting for me, but the ones that are a little more stiff it just makes it more difficult to get something out of them, and it just takes a little more time than when they're really comfortable and understanding of their own bodies.

· The Stagg Party (ifc.com)
· Stagg Street (staggstreet.com)