Erotic Photographer and Director
In 1982, Bjorn arrived in Brazil, where he was to spend eight years, until 1990. Initially, he worked as a photographer, producing as many as 20 or 25 photo sets a month. His first video, Tropical Heatwave, appeared in 1989. This production set the pattern for the dozens more that were to follow:
- Given his interest in travel and foreign cultures, many of Bjorn’s videos feature men of clearly identifiable ethnic backgrounds and nationalities in typical surroundings. The titles of his videos are indicative of this characteristic: Carnaval in Rio (1989), Manhattan Latin (1990), Caribbean Beat (1990), A Sailor in Sydney (1990), Montreal Men (1992), The Vampire of Budapest (1995), and so forth.
- Bjorn prefers to work with amateur models rather than with porn stars. In his early films, the majority of his performers identified themselves as heterosexual.
- Bjorn places great emphasis on the quality of his photography; it usually takes him about four days to film a single scene. Consequently, his production budget is unusually high given the standards of the gay porn industry.
- Bjorn typically lives in the country in which his videos are produced. Thus, his emigration to Australia in 1990 gave rise to what he calls his "Australian trilogy" of movies; when he returned to Brazil in 1993, a number of South American-themed films followed.
Kristen Bjorn currently resides in Barcelona, Spain.
Read more about this topic: Kristen Bjorn
Famous quotes containing the words erotic, photographer and/or director:
“I would watch the funny people make love the way Maupassant said,
my youth allowed me the opportunity to hear all those strange
verbs conjugated in erotic affirmations.”
—Conrad Kent Rivers (1933–1968)
“The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“He wrote me sad Mother’s Day stories. He’d always kill me in the stories and tell me how bad he felt about it. It was enough to bring a tear to a mother’s eye.”
—Connie Zastoupil, U.S. mother of Quentin Tarantino, director of film Pulp Fiction. Rolling Stone, p. 76 (December 29, 1994)