I'm a professional photographer, married with two children and have a very happy relationship with my husband of 15 years. For work, I do all kinds of photography but for my own pleasure, I like to photograph nudes. Over the years, my models have been people of all ages, shapes and sizes and of both sexes ; they have included my husband and our daughters. I photograph the girls nude every year on their birthday as a record of their growing up and they pose enthusiastically. This summer, my mother Mary modelled her nude body for me to mark her 65th birthday. Photographing someone who is naked is always an intimate experience. I like to let models choose their own positions - sitting, lying or moving around – as a means of expressing themselves and letting them expose as much or as little of themselves as they are comfortable with. Some like to be very explicit and show me everything ; others reveal very little. Younger men in particular can be quite shy and fear becoming aroused in front of a woman. One can be nude and chaste at the same time but there is always an erotic complicity with the camera and the photographer. It's a sort of contained sexuality. I have never had sex with any of my models, except my husband of course, but I enjoy masturbating secretly while looking at their photographs. When I asked mom to be nude for me, she didn't express surprise – she's always been familiar with my work – but did hesitate. « I don't know, darling, » was her reaction. I think the unspoken thought we both had was that what I was proposing might be a form of incest. In fact that's not quite true. I wanted to see my mother naked but was only admitting it to myself for the first time. I don't remember ever seeing mom completely nude when I was a child and we never talked much about sex together although we have always been close. When I was a teenager, I sometimes told her about boys wanting me to masturbate them but we didn't talk about my own masturbation (I did it every day) and it never occurred to me that she masturbated herself (I now know she did!). This quite sudden realisation, at the age of 35, that I had incestuous thoughts about my mother was a revelation but it didn't shock me which was a surprise in itself. Rather, it was a warm and comfortable feeling which I could indulge in whether anything came of it or not. (And yes, it did make me want to masturbate.) I could admit to myself that proposing to photograph my mother naked was a pretext to see her naked. We chose the day of her birthday. She came to my studio early in the afternoon and opened a bottle of wine which we sipped while I arranged the lights and primed my cameras. She seemed relaxed and almost like an obedient child anxious to do the right thing in unusual circumstances. My models usually undress behind a screen but mom took her clothes off in front of me and I started to photograph her doing so. When she was naked she stood up straight and turned almost boldly as if to formally present her body to me. I realised she intended to enjoy herself and that she loved being naked while I remained fully dressed. I love the nudity of older women. As I said, mom was 65 that day and what she revealed to me was a big, comfortable white body with which she was obviously at ease, large slackish breasts with deep brown nipples, a round belly and, to my suprise, shaved genitals. I saw the tip of her clitoral hood peeping through her plump labia. I stopped photographing to stare and told her she was beautiful which pleased her. I began to move round her, snapping her from every angle, taking close ups of her breasts and round buttocks which were still enticingly firm. The shoot lasted for half an hour but seemed to flash by in a haze of delicious intimacy and, on my part, growing sexual urgency. There was a big floor cushion against one wall of the studio. Mom lay on it and very slowly spread first her legs and then parted her hairless labia so that I could see the glistening red tissue of her vagina. I snapped madly and breathlessly. Then she slowly rolled over onto her knees, bent forward and pulling her buttocks apart exposed her little anus to my rapt gaze. She stayed like that for a time even after I had stopped photographing, sharing with me a moment of ultimate intimacy. Slowly, she rose to her feet and smiled at me. « Now you have seen everything, darling, » she said. « Isn't that what you wanted ? » I nodded and very deliberately began to remove my own clothes. When I was naked, mom took me gently in her arms, pulled me against her own nude body and pressed her mouth to mine.