Picture Perfect
Despite the name of the series–photos of which were shown recently at the Mars Gallery and are currently on view at the Mashed Potato Club–Meltzer doesn’t really shoot guys in the buff. “I think the show was called that to capture attention and excite an audience,” she says. “People were excited when they saw that they weren’t nude.” Meltzer has done a couple of butt shots, but she’s much more interested in “elegant poses, beautiful muscled bodies, and no frontal views. I don’t think frontal views are pertinent to making my pictures look pretty.”
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Nick and his younger brother, four-year-old Gregory (height: 3 feet 7 inches; size: 4 or 5; hair: brown; waist: 20; shoe: 11½ child; eyes: brown), have seen this before and are quickly bored. They glance over at the House of Teak and, in the distance, Treasure Island, and then to Meltzer’s next subject, who’s standing nearby checking out his reflection in the window. Michael Gautsch (height: 6 feet 1 inch; suit: 44 regular to long; shirt: 16 to 16½ by 34; waist: 31 to 32; hair: blond; inseam: 34; shoe: 11; eyes: gray) has been modeling for about a year. He wears black boots, blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black leather vest. A brush with red-tipped spikes is stuck in his back pocket. His hair is shoulder length, and he flips it now and then. In the midst of a karate chop, Gregory looks up at him and asks, “How old are you?” “Twenty-five,” Gautsch answers, showing a lot of white teeth. In the background, Meltzer says to her subject: “Yeah, yeah, real sexy.” “You want the other camera, mom?” Nick asks.
It’s now 6 PM, and Meltzer has finished with Merrill. Gautsch takes off his vest, shirt, and watch. Meltzer directs him to a corner, out of the wind. “Do you want my abs flexed?” he asks as she poses him against a wall. He unzips his pants and rolls them down to his underwear. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Meltzer says, seeing Gautsch through the camera lens. “This is so beautiful. Great. Nice. Beautiful. Yes! Yes! Yes! Let’s see your beautiful flat stomach.” Earlier Gautsch had commented, “I’ve worked out for eight years–four to five days a week. My girlfriend looks forward to the day that I can indulge and have a pizza from Uno’s. I’m reexamining my goals. My body is very important right now. I’d like to be the next Calvin Klein model.”
The daughter of Albert and Frances Pogats, Meltzer grew up in Jonesville, Michigan. She remembers her parents as “always doing things together that were very athletic. I don’t care if it was a Sunday race walk or badminton every night till we dropped or riding bicycles until we couldn’t pedal any farther.” Her father was the head of maintenance at the state prison in Jackson, and her mother was a school bus driver, a librarian, “you name it.” There are two sisters, Joan and Judy. Jennifer is the youngest. She had always wanted to model and in the mid-70s, after graduating from high school, she headed for New York.
Everything changed on a hot summer night in 1983 in Sturgis, Michigan. Meltzer describes what happened cryptically as the memories flood back: “A husband driving past where he shouldn’t have on a hill and ran right into another car. A head-on collision. Five people in that car. You could hear the yelling and screaming. My neck was broken, back broken, trunk taken out underneath the arm. Tailbone displaced. Had out-of-body experience. Lucky to be alive. Very lucky to be alive. Should’ve ended up like Christopher Reeve.
The Recovery
