Category Archives: Art

Art

Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Lister?

I opened my laptop this morning and linked to my friend Elizabeth’s blog and saw that her post today was about the recent great news she received from a doctor visit.  Her MS is beginning to dissipate as the lesions on her brain are shrinking and beginning to disappear.  My heart leapt for joy to hear such news as she describes it as getting an early wonderful Christmas gift.   Elizabeth is one of the most extraordinary people I have never actually met, because despite having been diagnosed with MS several years back and it completely disrupting her life, she has somehow managed to reclaim her life.  She is the mother of two children yet still manages to become a writer.  She takes us into the steamy heart of male on male romance, maintain a blog and non-stop helping me with the editing of The Naked Man Project.  This is a woman of extreme vision and fortitude to overcome all odds and defy what probably should disable her.

It brings to light how close we become to strangers we have never met except through cyber space and how blogs become the backbone of entering the extraordinary lives of others.  What a remarkable place we live in, to be so honored to enter those worlds and to really explore ourselves though other people’s images and words.  I was really not a fan of blogs until I began this one because many of them I had looked at followed people that didn’t engage me.   I feared in doing my own blog, I would say a lot of meaningless stuff that would also bore everyone else.  But, it has brought me to a place of finding myself as I realized I had a lot of life experience to share with others.  This blog has connected me to so many remarkable people that now influence and have an impact on my everyday existence, helping me to overcome my own fears and anxieties and recognize my own creative expression.  Yet, here is a woman I have met as a stranger, whom I cannot examine the lines of her face, who has so deeply moved me and shared her soul.  Her blog also features some of the most extraordinary images of beautiful naked men that stirs yet another part of me.

When I first approached her romance novel EXPOSURE earlier this summer, after it was first published I was a bit skeptical, first of all to read such a thing; it was such a foreign concept to me that a woman could or would write about gay romance.  The story was of an aging photographer who falls in love with a beautiful young man with a secret.  At first I was a bit threatened that someone might be poking fun at who and what I was.  But within the first couple of pages, I was sucked into the story and have to admit some of the sex was quite graphic, even for me.  But the story was filled with so much love and heart that I immediately fell in love with Elizabeth’s style and flair for capturing the essence of the relationship, and in a sense helped to renew my own relationship.  Then, when I began to understand who this writer really was and her daily struggle with MS, I began to see how much she opened and shared her own heart.  Elizabeth today is for you.  You are a beacon of inspiration that shines so brightly on my life and gives me strength each day.  I could not have done this project without you.  Thank you and congratulations!!!!!

The Lost World Of Tennessee Williams

For some reason I have been thinking lately about the lonely death of the American writer Tennessee Williams. Here is a brilliant man who has crafted some to the greatest plays of all time for the American Theater. Things like A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. He choked to death on the cap of some eye drops he was trying to open with his mouth on February 25, 1983. How is it that a man with such a great mind for creating some of the most fascinating and complex character studies can pass away from something so insignificant as a bottle cap? Tennessee Williams is probably one of the most influential people on my life and work. As a young theater student in my twenties, when I had finally entered his remarkable world, I felt like I had finally found a home. He wrote about all the things we as culture in Montana like to keep hidden and considered taboo: alcoholism, homosexuality, addiction, beauty, the loss of beauty, fear, doubt, and self-loathing. A world where people were trapped by their often-brutal existence. Nothing seemed sacred to Tennessee. He himself grew up in a shattered world, feeling closest to his sister Rose. She was schizophrenic, in and out of hospitals, eventually becoming lobotomized; she became the wellspring for much of his characterizations. He used the dysfunction of his life to add life to those remarkable characters of Blanche, Brick, Laura, or Alma. Everything he wrote seemed to plummet into the heart of darkness whether it was a play, novel, or even a short story. His writing was filled with passion, honesty, and above all humility. When I entered this world I somehow knew most of these characters and could see so much of his despair and depression within myself. I became addicted and spent a year reading everything consumable about the man. Eventually I directed a production of The Glass Menagerie for my senior project at the University. I still get a giddy feeling when I read anything written by this master and am still captivated by the ground away versions of the Hollywood classics. That scene with Elizabeth Taylor blurting out the truths of Sebastian using her for procurement of young boys leading to his cannibalistic death before she is about to be lobotomized by his mother, Katherine Hepburn, who will do anything to keep the truth hidden in Suddenly Last Summer is one of the greatest moments in film history and still sucks me in with it’s intensity. I could write a year of just blogs on Tennessee Williams alone.

So much of my own imagery and the worlds I enter with my own photography have to do with the feeling, tone, and mood of Tennessee Williams characters and stories. There is a beauty in the darkness where we remain hidden. My work becomes about exposing the inner life of my characters in a raw and sometimes vulnerable way. There is so much depth hidden within all of us that is rarely allowed to surface. Yet there is remarkable beauty in that depth. This is the place I like to explore with my subjects. This has been a year of finding a wholeness within myself and I feel that dysfunction beginning to fade. I fear this may affect my work. I somehow doubt it because I have always got Mr. Williams to remind me of where I have been. To me he is the essential homosexual on my shelf. It’s unfortunate the upcoming generation doesn’t even know his name, as the quotes of his characters imbued my generation and gave life to an culture, fade into a lost oblivion. We no longer rely on the kindness of strangers, but instead become the strangers.

The Reflection Of Ourselves

I am strongly becoming empowered by other artists’ images.  I have been working with several other artists from around the world who have submitted images and writings that I have been creating galleries of for this project.  It means spending a great deal of time with each image to build page by page and the more I study others work and talk to them the more I somehow become connected to their worlds.  There is such strength in the impression they impart on their works no matter the style of medium they work.  Each piece needs to be studied individually to really understand its power.  In many ways it’s unfortunate to show such a large body of work because it forces us to skim through it as a collection without really paying attention to the detail.  Where as each piece is a single moment suspended in time, which has often taken hours, days, some times even months to create.  I am beginning to realize the images should be looked at individually.  Unfortunately, we live in a world where we are inundated with so much imagery that we often just spend a few moments working our way through the vastness of it all.  In olden days, images were hung on a wall of a gallery, museum, or salon and you were forced to interact and respond to the pieces that hung before you and when something really caught your eye you could linger and try to unravel it’s mysterious influence.  I don’t think this happens so much anymore.  We may bookmark or download an image and it becomes part of a vast collection, we may never even get back to again, because there is something new to see.  And often times when we do go back and look at an image it will not have the same impact it had in the first place because we have changed and now see it from another perspective.  But if we linger long enough, the power of the artists’ vision begins to take hold and influences the way we see ourselves and our own sense of our own creation and we see the artist as a mirror to ourselves.  In the 1972 version of the film “Cabaret” the director Bob Fosse borrowed an idea from the original script in which the play ends by dropping a large mirror down so the audience can literally see the reflection of themselves revealing and asking us to examine the judgmental racism of Nazi Germany within ourselves.  It is a powerful moment of the show.  Though it doesn’t quite work on film the mirror is still there and becomes a reflection turning our focus inward.  Art dealing with the still taboo subject of male nudity still has that impact and I am delighted to be and adoringly enamored to the be the in company of such amazing talents.

The Promotion of Creative Idealism

I have a young extremely talented filmmaker friend who has developed a brilliant script that he is trying to raise funding to produce.  It’s going to be an extremely low budget film with a wallop.  I have read the script and it very good and having seen this kid’s work from the past I totally can see his vision and know he can pull it off to create something extraordinary.  The story centers around a guilt-ridden custodian of a decaying hotel that is dragged back from despair by a mercurial young woman with her own bleak past.

He has assembled some very talented team people that are exactly right.  The kids name is Kelley Mattingly and his entire life is about living, eating, and breathing film.  He has the idealist dreams of art and creating for the sake of artist vision, of revealing ones soul through the process of creation.  The difficulty is that he cannot figure out how to promote or get the project out there to find support.  His approach and campaign has not drawn much attention and it’s breaking my heart to see it flounder.  At first the project was not very well defined as to what it was or what it was about, but he has done a good job of clarifying it.  Second his graphics do not draw us into the project, because there is no appeal.  In fact when you see it as a thumbnail image it has no presence at all.  The design does match the essence and feel of the project but if it doesn’t pull us in we are not going to be pulled into supporting it.  Thirdly Kelley is a recluse who doesn’t network to beat the bushes and drum up support.  He has put the project on Kickstarter, but nobody seems to be supporting him.  At first glance I don’t think people would really be drawn to the project at all.  He has not established his reputation yet and without a network of supporters it becomes very difficult to make yourself known.  Though the project has a lot of heart, he has given it an obscure name, “Hotel Finlen”, who’s only significance or allure will be recognizable to only the people who live in the small town of Butte, where it will be filmed, and unfortunately are very unlikely to support such an endeavor.  When I did my own Kickstarter program this past summer, I constantly had to promote it through my vast network of established supporters via Facebook and constant email updates.

So what I really wanted to get at today is where do we draw the line of promotion of our selves as artists and sacrificing our creative idealism?  He has the vision and approaches it completely for the sake of art, but has regrettable given it no mass appeal or hook.  Is that line of artistry then lost if the project cannot even get started?  It seems in our youth we really don’t want to compromise our creative idealism and many of us never learn the process of self-promotion.  I know at that age I certainly didn’t either.  It then becomes a painful growth process of stumbling through the dark without the added support, luckily I did have patrons who did believe in me and helped me along the way.  I also worked on more of an individual creative process bringing in collaborators as I needed them and not really needing to promote myself.  I was also able to use part of my talents to sustain myself on a commercial level while allowing my skills to develop and acquire the needed tools and kept my art always in the background.  Here he has a larger creative team that needs to be supported and has cost associated for completion.  As young artists in remote places like Montana, which is a state notoriously known for not supporting the arts; it becomes even more difficult to find a footing.  Though I have been developing and shooting this male nude project for years, it remained completely obscure and hidden, not really knowing how to promote or expose myself to the world outside my confined little studio.  It has now taken me thirteen years to put what I do out for others to share.  This is the year I have made that leap and the journey has been phenomenal for me, but you who have followed this project from the beginning have been witness to the struggle and the obstacles I have overcome.  I now somehow wished I had made that leap in the beginning because I somehow always knew this is where I wanted to end up.  But looking back I wonder if I would have found this vision and what it would have become today if I had.  It has been the expression of my life and soul and is the vision of what I have become.

Capturing an Essence of Who We Really Are?

A question has recently arisen about getting to the essence of who we are as artists.  I have recently been reading a book about a man, in love with photography from age 10, who went to a photography workshop with the photographer Minor White in the 60’s.  He was posed with the question of photographing his essence, not to photograph his personality, but to go deeper into the core of his being, to “Photograph who you really are.”  He couldn’t grasp the concept of finding himself or even recognizing himself but then has an epiphany that clearly defines his vision and changes the course of his life.  The book is called “The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life” written by John Daido Loori and it is a completely different approach to discovering who we are as creative souls.

In a sense this year of exploration has become my own epiphany and I feel more in touch with myself then ever.  I began to think about myself and examine my own creative process.  Do I really photograph who I am?  I think so.  Though I use others as my subjects the true essence of what I feel is expressed through the overall feel of my images.  Mr. Loori, a skeptic at the time, talks about going into the forest, questioning the nonsensical meaning of White’s idealism, and discovers a place where he releases that doubt and comes into touch, through a trance like state, with the subject.  The subject then  does not become the object of the image, but his feeling to the connection to the subject, becoming the vision of the image.  I began to realize this is the state I often enter when I begin to work with my naked male subjects.  All inhibitions evaporate, I have set the stage and defined the parameters, communicated to get to core of my subjects perceptions of themselves so that the moment is ripe to just touch the essence of what I feel in that moment.  The shoot then becomes a history of every experience I have ever had and how it relates to this person in this moment, to really explore who we are in this moment.  So many people comment on my images as having a quality they cannot describe or put their finger on to define.  It’s not really something that can be copied or emulated, but organically comes out of what unfolds before me.  I do not have a formula for lighting and it is not consistently the same from shoot to shoot.  It is tailored to the specific subject and the vision of how I see them when we first meet.  Yet everyone says my style is highly recognizable so there must be some consistency to it.  Even when some models posted images we had shot, to their social networking profiles without my name associated with the images, others began to recognize the images as ones I had taken.  I do remember when I first began photography questioning what makes an image recognizable to a certain artist and how I could for would define my own unique style.  I realize now after years of photographing and looking back that it just naturally evolved without me really having to work at or affect the outcome.  It is the essence of who I have become.

Most of my life has been defined by my sensual/sexual nature, seduction, being seduced and of course my love and fascination of the male figure, both clothed and exposed.  Much of my life was very sexual, but as I have grown older, the sexual allure that once motivated me seems to have vanished.  I am no longer concerned with the physical side of my sexuality but am most intrigued with the spiritual essence of what remains.  I don’t see my images as sexual at all.  I had a young photographer just out of journalism school approach me the other day wanting to intern with a studio photographer.  I sent him a link the new site and told him what I was doing.  His response was a scoff at the idea of working with nude people as means to learning studio technique as he rejected what I take for granted as natural.