This week I am working on the logistics of cleaning the website and working on its functionality. I have created a section set up for other contributors. I am hoping this section will showcase other artists in other forms of media including history, cinema, music, literature, and other expressions of art. I am currently looking for others who are interested in writing short blurbs or showcase current projects they are working on. I am hoping to make it a sort of news outlook. It does not have to be current; it can be historic, social, or a personal outlook or observation. If anyone is interested in becoming a part of the project, you can reach me via email. We are looking for different perspectives on the theme or subject of exposure, men naked, or nude male art in general. It can be gay, straight with no real gender limitations. I am hoping to make the site more interactive with other artists and contributors. The site overall tends to be very visual so the more visual the better. Through out the year in the blog I have written postings about movies, books, and other artists who have inspired me and fueled me as an artist. It is my dream that this will continue to grow and that the Naked Man Project can become a place where others can come together and share ideas, thoughts, and concepts of the creative experience. When I began this blog project at the beginning of the year, we seem to have limited options and outlets for this sort of expression. I was a member of all of them. But through the course of the year much of that has been shut down and no longer exists. Though the outlets no longer exist the expression remains the same; we are still creative souls creating our art and expressing our ideas of what we have become. I began this year’s blog process as a means of communication to other artists and it seems to grown way beyond its original intention. There are many followers still, some of you I know have been with me from the beginning and I sense most of you have some sort of creative thoughts you must or might want to express. I am inspired by what Alison has done with her own blog and she is becoming a contributor to this project as well. A while back when I wrote about the movie Maurice she wrote an entire blog about the impact the film had on her. Here is her connection so you can see how I would like this to work. Of course we do have to be careful and mindful of copyright infringement, but most of us own the copyright on the things we create.
Category Archives: Other Artist
Our Perceived Remembrance of Things Past
Glenn and Forest didn’t arrive back in Missoula until about 11:00 last night. It was so good to have him home again. It’s amazing the things we for get about each other after such an absence. I think in may ways we always think of the people we love by the way we remember meeting them, thinner, younger, so filled with passion and energy. We remember that look in their eye and the way they first look at us those first couple of weeks when we fall in love. Perhaps this is just life in general. A remembrance of our mothers, fathers, brothers, and other people who become important in our lives. I think sometimes we don’t really see the people who what they actually are and just project the impression we want to believe or remember about them. My mother passed away about 6 years ago from a prolonged illness of self-abuse and smoking. She died fairly young, and when she passed she looked like a very old woman, most people would have guessed twenty years beyond her actual age. I ran across a file of images of her in those later years and I barely recognized her. It’s not what I remember. I feel fortunate because my mother was wonderful in my youth and gave us so much love, and yes often to the point of suffocation as a teen. I always thought my mother looked so much like Ingrid Bergman, with such a lovely warm personality and my father like a very young Charles Heston. So we are the offspring that what those two’s love children would have looked like if they had gotten together. I digress. Needless to say I had a strange night and tossing and turning getting used to new stranger in my bed. He was so tired he fell asleep instantly and snoring commenced, I don’t ever really remember snoring before. But this morning was bliss as I had the warmth of his soft body snuggled against me and all those old feelings came flooding back and I realized this was really what I missed the most. His smile as he looked over at me and said “Good Morning Sunshine” as he has done for the past fourteen years and I knew he was finally home. Today’s image is of Glenn, I searched all day to use for yesterday and finally found it this morning.
I love this quote from the opening of Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie:
“The scene is memory and therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic”
I guess you could say most of my imagery is therefore rather dim and poetic for I know it is seated predominantly in my heart.
Illegal Exposure on the Field
Another game day in Montana, today we play Eastern Washington and it should be one of the best games of the season. Last week there was a young man who jumped down to the field in the 2nd quarter in just his shorts, ran out into the middle of south end of the field, dropped his shorts and began to run around naked. Of course it brought the game to a halt as the 35,000 fans watched this man run around nude. We have had streakier before and typically security is all over them and has them off the field before you even realize what’s happening. But for some reason security just let him go, it was like they couldn’t enter the field and had to wait for him to come off. I think this naked man was as surprised as the crowd and he grabbed a megaphone and began to dance around the field taunting his now captive audience. After some time he did go off the field, was cuffed and then paraded completely around the field, still naked, to be escorted to the team locker rooms.
Later in the week, when the whole incident began to die down I contacted this kid on Facebook and began a conversation with him to see if he would be interested in coming to the studio for a session and become a feature on the one of my posts: “Daniel. My name is Terry and I do a daily blog here in Missoula called The Naked Man Project. It’s not really known in Montana but has more of an international following, I would love to photograph and feature you in my blog. You can find links on my Facebook if you are interested. You will get free images from the shoot. I have to say you were hysterical at the football game on Saturday. Very nicely done.” His first response was: “ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwwww” but then he come back with “what is the basis of this website?”
This kind of set me back a bit as I really had to think about, what actually am I doing here and what is this process about and how do I convey this to a stranger I am asking to possibly photograph naked who knows nothing about what I am doing. So I explained “I am a lighting designer who spent years working in professional theater. I am most interested in creating images of the male and masculine figure as an art form. I don’t just photograph men, but also women, men are just more secure about allowing me to show them, where as women are quite reluctant. The concept behind it is to deconstruct classic art; painters like Caravaggio, and recreate them for the modern man, in a modern era. The Naked Man Project has been a year of searching for my place amongst other artist that work in this style. I just returned from a trip to Paris and Berlin where I met with gallery owners and publishers who are interested in showing or creating some sort of publication. The journal is my life as a creative artist and gay man growing up in a remote beautiful place like Montana.” Somehow I was suddenly embarrassed to have to explain the vision of my concept to this stranger outside my realm of existence and knew I was crossing into an unknown new territory. After all we are still in Montana here, where such things are either dismissed or ignored. But here was a man who had the courage of his convictions to stand before a crowd of strangers and expose himself for all to see. Something I have spent a year building up to do for myself. I had a great adoration and some sort of kinship and somehow just wanted to meet him.
His response back was quite interesting as the reality of both our worlds came to light: “I’m not comfortable being photographed by a man who may find me sexual attractive if you see what you do as art and beautiful more power to you cause I will agree the human form is a thing of beauty as it was crafted by the most prominent artist to ever create. to each his own but I’m gonna have to pass unless I am photographed with a woman or women as that is how I will be comfortable to be photographed and also I cannot take time for a venture for the sake of art right now as I am facing serious consequences for my actions including expulsion which would mean I now have $50,000 to pay off in student loans on top of thousands of dollars in fines so unless you can pay me and get female models to be photographed with me I cannot model for you sorry.” He had not thought about the consequences of his actions and what the price might be. This really made me begin to ponder the price I have paid as I began to question the consequences of my own actions in creating beautiful images of naked men.
I felt a bit stung by his response, because in my minds eye, the project has grown to become something extraordinary that defies some of the stereotypes of male nudity, and here I was being defied because I was gay, by someone else’s insecurity. Many of my subjects actually are straight and I have never really had issues in dealing with it in the past. Many are honored and grateful when they enter my studio. An unmistakable feeling I had just crossed a line I shouldn’t gripped me and I was reminded once more of where I am and where this project began and why it remained hidden for so many years. Suddenly I saw the ironic humor of it all and began to laugh.
Soul Seeker
This morning when I looked on Manhunt, as I do every morning to peruse the personals in quest of new subjects for my photo experiments, I saw a name that actually intrigued me: Soul seeker. Of course I had to respond: “Soul Seeker – Interesting thought, that might make you either a god or a devil, searching for lost souls in a sometimes seemingly soulless environment; like a decent into a modern Dante’s Inferno. It’s really a brilliant concept.” He is a 32 year old, Top/Versatile Male that is 6”0 with a swimmers body, light brown wavy hair and a devilish glean in his blue eyes that has been taken in a multi impression mirror, so we can see the duality of his expression. My mind began spinning amazing thoughts about the possibility of the concept of a devil/angle searching for our lost souls in a man hunting site that has become a dream like world mostly plastered with impressionistic images of cocks, ass and mostly naked bodies seeking sex and quick hookups and an occasional long term relationship. WOW! What a perfect place for such a person to dwell where they can easily claim those souls, many seemingly lost; drifting, waiting, anticipating, on the edge of a dark desire that will either fulfill or consume them. For the most part they are looking to be consumed. This is beginning to sound a lot like a Tennessee Williams play or a short movie, or a study for a new photographic series. “All hope abandon, ye who enter in!” Why does this world of cruising men seem to always have such a dark edge? It is a delicious reverie of the flesh, a mysterious glimpse of a shadow in the darkness, most of them blurred, just a little beyond focus where we get a vague impression, but not sharp enough to contain any hints of reality. Abs are hyper extended, bodies contorted into complex unnatural poses, taken sometime from even more unusual positions. I am captivated and often envious that what I work so hard to create, can become genius at the hands of a skillful cell phone. Light setting in the wrong position creating equally as interesting color casts, that add a garish tone to the overall feel of the image. A skillfully placed strobe to obscure the face, adds to the soulless nature of the headless bodies. It’s like we are all trying to hide something, perhaps our insecurities and yet reveal something someone else might see in us and desire. I sometimes gaze in awe of the brilliance of these images, reading the brief snippets they project out to us and often ponder, who is this person, really. It fascinated me to no end. And I wonder if perhaps if I am not the soul seeker, that devil also trying to steal some of these lost souls. But often the subjects I have culled from these depths and brought into my studio to illuminate redeemed that self respect and dignity they often can’t see within themselves. This is where my imagery becomes it’s most powerful and provocative, restoring all these sorted bits into a distinguishable whole that is pure, healthy and vital. I have often thought it would be interesting to show a collection of these internet images. Printed, matted, framed and hung in a gallery where we could admiringly peer into the depths of these wondrous visions. The art of self selling one’s own sex is often for more interesting then what we give it credit for on the surface.
Eternal Bliss of a Creative Mind
Last night was utter bliss. I am back to shooting again. It is the first time I have shot since I returned from Europe and it is some of the best stuff I have done to date. An old friend, John, who was one of the original people I began photographing 2 years ago, after I had finished the studio was the subject. It was kind of the turning point for me when I was getting serious about shooting nudes of men. In fact he is the first person I coaxed off Manhunt to come and work with me. We have done several shoots over the years. He disappeared for a long time going on a very long walkabout across the lower western USA for about half a year, so I had not seen him in a while. We just instantly began working and I felt a connection to the process that I have only seen in the works of others. While I was in Berlin I had met a photographer Dragan Simicevic who left quite an impression on me. His approach and style was so simplistic yet contained such magnetism: he only chooses a couple of images from each shoot. I began to feel that deeper connection to John last night and everything we shot was golden. I did not feel my regular compulsion to over shoot, but had felt satisfied with a minimal amount of shots. This is the way I used to shoot when I was working in film, mostly because of the expense and time it took to develop so much film. Last night the focus was stronger and John was right on with feeding me exactly what I needed. He has such a natural presence that he is just fun to watch even when we are not shooting. It turns out he is homeless, so I have offered him the loft above the studio where is can crash for a short while until he can get back up on his feet and he is willing to work around the inconvenience of my shooting schedules.
The new intern, Steven, and I spent the afternoon earlier in the day completely cleaning the studio out and set up the staging and lighting for last night’s shoot. I have worked with assistants in the past on my regular photography but not on this private type of stuff. It is awesome the intensity that he bring to the process, it was awesome to have someone who understood and was as excited as I was to make it happen. Once everything was set up, I used Steven as my subject to begin a series of test to really hone our lighting concept. As we looked at those photos I see what a remarkable subject he will also make and will now work on a shoot of him as part of his learning process. This really allowed me to focus the shooting process for John and allowed for us to jump in so easily because everything had already been set and tested.
The third piece of what made yesterday so remarkable was that the website template finally got loaded and I was able to work on the website last night, loading stuff into it. It is more remarkable then I envisioned. It is fast it is easy and we are going to have a blast putting it together in the upcoming weeks. I am going to target the end of the month to open it on the web. That gives us 16 days to pull it all together.
I also sent a message to John Douglas in Australia to see if we can somehow revive the old Man Art site. I think it’s the same system I am using for my current site and Julian my web guy could totally make it happen.
