Last night a group of us got into a heated discussion about what constituted pornography and what separates it from art. Can pornography be art and vise versa? Since I began this blog the number one post every week that everyone looks at is “Does Showing a Man’s Penis Make An Image Pornographic?” It seems to be the question everyone who works in this field seems to ponder. I know I certainly as an artist explore and often cross that edge. The dictionary definition of pornography is: “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings”. I think the operative word here is intended. Though I don’t really see many of my images as sexual and am not sexually motivated to create them, I became aware last night the impact they have on others. Who views the images and how they interpret them becomes subjective. We all have different interpretations of what we find stimulating or what excites us sexually. When I was younger just seeing a man’s skin exposed got me aroused and stimulated. And yes there was a time in my 30’s I was obsessed and possibly addicted to porn. But as I get older and I become desensitized by so much experience and exposure, I now rarely find things stimulating in that manner. Now it becomes more of an exploration of what it is I remember about that sort of stimulation. Some of my subjects are not prone to exposure and that line never gets crossed, some people are just so damn sexy with their clothes on, how they wear them, and the shapes and textures they create with their presence. Hence the power of fashion. Yet some people look exceptional fully exposed. Everyone is different and the exploration becomes unique for each of them. My role as a photographer is to expose not just their nakedness, but also aesthetic and emotionally. I perceive we live in a culture where we are getting away from our sense of sensual desire. The desire encompasses the entire being and not just parts of that being. My work for me becomes a compass that reminds me of that romantic idealism that has begun to erode from my life. It becomes about how I see myself in relationship to my subjects and sometimes that intention has been to erotically stimulate. So by the dictionary term my work is pornographic. But because I show a man’s penis does not mean the image was intended to stimulate. I have seen so much great male nude art in my life that I no longer zero my focus in on what dangles below, but absorb it for it’s aesthetic feeling. This is why I love art and am fascinated by my necessity for exposure. I got my first glimpse of a man’s penis in National Geographic magazine showing naked aborigines when I was a kid. I remember how sensational it was. I was possibly too young to be stimulated by it then but there was something forbidden about seeing something that needed to remain hidden. Here some 40 years later, I am still pondering its mystery.
Category Archives: Emotions
Gems of Images Buried Deep
Despite all my yammering yesterday about the death of art in general, I am having a blast being creative. The creative process is rarely about money, and my life seems to have been always living on the fine edge of poverty and sustainability. There were so many great thoughts and comments yesterday about what constitutes art. My friend Katie La Salle-Lowery posted on my Facebook: “After all, everyone has access to pencils, paints, etc., too — but we aren’t all able to make art with them.” This kind of brought it into perspective for me as I began to ponder what makes an artist, an artist? Someone else had commented on the use of lenses and tools to tell stories from the artist’s perspective. To me, the process of creation is what makes my life sustainable and bearable to live and, all in all, I am having a blast doing what I do best and personally growing with each new adventure. It’s not like I am out to duplicate what I have already done, but a discovery into something new I have not yet touched upon. I am beginning to see that the new website will become my gift to others of my life well lived. About a man with hope in his soul to discover his identity that happens to make beautiful images in the process. As I begin to look over the vast body of work I have created, I am often startled and surprised and what I have been able to express. Right now it is so massive that it’s become over whelming to contain. Where do you begin and where does it stop. Yesterday we completed one complete section for Chad, hence the images of Chad the last two days, with only 30 images. But we have uploaded nearly 2000 images to the site that actually need to be worked through. Every time Thor goes through the archives, he finds gems of images buried deep. Things that were discarded in a first cut long ago that I haven’t looked at since. I find it delightful to have such a problem to deal with. I know the site does not have to be completely ready to launch and I can just activate the sections that are necessary that are done. There are just a few broken areas that need to be solved, but I am aiming at getting it up and out there within two weeks. After all it will always be a work in progress. I loved the comment Marg from Australia left on the blog yesterday “I think copyright is on its way out. I find it impossible to protect my work anymore – I think I will just stop worrying about it. There is just too much else to worry about LOL! And if someone thinks its THAT good that they want to copy or nick it for their w/site – so be it. Kinda flattering, in a way – LOL!” Flattering indeed!!!!!
I Can Always Sell Matches
Wow it is mid afternoon and I feel like I have been sucked into the world of cyber reality as I am trying to figure out how to put together yet another piece of this mysterious website. My topic of search today has been: “How can I actually protect the images I put on the Internet?” I have completely come up blank. There are no real solutions actually available out there that can or will work. It seem that it mostly comes down to choice of completely marking the images up with some sort of watermark that will completely cover or obstruct the nature of the work or just putting the images out there for free access. I am not over comfortable with either. The nature of artist is free expression of the art or images without obstruction. I would like to be able to market myself somehow, but if most everything is just for free on the Internet then we end up working for nothing and it completely loses it value. What a strange time we live in where modern media is so limitless and expendable. I feel like I am living in a world of constant frustration that I can’t seem to make work and that the only options are a loss on either end. I wish somehow I just had a limitless wealth so that I could just be creative and not have to worry about the possibilities. Am I just two or three steps behind the technological world where I live? It feels most of life has been lived in a world of dying art forms. I was passionate about theater, but in a sense as I entered that world it too was coming to a close. Overall, the next generation is not really interested in such art forms and it seem that fewer and fewer young people are going to such events. Broadway still seems alive and thriving, but the ticket prices have become so hefty that many can no longer attend a show or will save up for one or two during the course of a venture into NYC. There was a time when I would fill every possible slot with a show when I was in the city, often two a day seeing 16 shows within a two-week visit.
Then I moved into the world of my second passion; photography. I believe the downfall of this medium is has been the advent of instant capture, instant see era. Everyone with a cell phone becomes a photographer and it’s instantly on line. I have seen the images from the new I-phones and I have to say they are utterly awesome. You no longer need any kind of training or experience to get really great results and people around the world are able to share your expression within moments. Perhaps this project becomes for naught, and is just a cry in the darkness of its fading history? I guess I am still having a blast in the creative process though most of the time I have no idea where I am heading. I still love theater and the experience of live interaction. I still love photography for the experience of live interaction and the beautiful essence of what lingers in its wake. Perhaps I should just remain in the garden because of my live interaction with nature, but then again it’s also heading to its season of dormancy. What is a girl to do????? One of my favorite scenes in a movie is from Victor/Victoria, where Julie Andrews dress has shrunk from the rain, and it’s the middle of the night, she is at wits end and begins to sob, “What am I going to do?” Robert Preston replies, “Sell matches!” But then again I live in a world of eternal flame and smoking seems to be on the decline.
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.
The Long Road Home
Glenn returns home tonight after working in North Dakota for the past six weeks. I am very excited to see him. It has been a terrible month of barely being able to communicate because there seems to be a lack of cell towers and he has had very poor internet service if any. This has been an annual job for him for the past couple of years to go and test the soil where the seed potatoes are grown to certify them for export to Canada. But it is good to have him home. I think sometimes it’s healthy for relationships to have long breaks from each other and always seems to realign where we are and how strong our relationship has grown on the past 14 years we have been together. It seems when you have been in a relationship with someone this long, some of the spark begins to fray around the edges and you begin to take each other for granted. He always does so much to keep me on target and focused. Taking care of a lot of the detail stuff like shopping and making sure we are fed. I am a person that is very project driven and have always got to have something I am working on at every moment of the day. I got a lot done while he was gone, though the website is not up yet it is nearing completion and I feel like I have created something extraordinary in his absence that he hasn’t even seen it yet. So I am totally jacked to see his reaction to the project. I was my goal to have the site up and running upon his return, but after about 3 weeks of technical difficulties we are in good shape.
Glenn is an adorable man, who is kind, quirky funny, like myself, and seems to be solid at the core. I have not written about him much because I had promised that I would not bring him into the process except on rare occasion, and out of respect wanted to protect his privacy, though he has been a huge component in my success and allowing me freedom and flexibility to get this dream up and out there this year. In all the years we have been together I cannot remember a single fight, barely an argument. We are the exact opposite of each other, and I think all the opposition somehow brings up together as a more stable whole. We are both of the same era and the same at our cores. We recognized this early and it’s what brought us together so closely in the beginning. I would say I used to think Glenn was the perfect Taoist. All knowing, all accepting, all giving, and all caring, a balance of all the great things in the world, yet completely unaware of it, not naming or even knowing the essence and harmony of his existence. He is somehow the embodiment of the Tao Te Ching without even knowing and possibly never even hearing of it. There is always harmony and balance that surrounds him all the time.
I have been through many relationships in my life, most of them quite tumultuous and often ending in a bitter sadness. It somehow feels to me with Glenn, he allows me to become my best and brings out the best I have to offer. I believe relationships are basically about ourselves and how we find balance with others whom we choose to share our lives. If we are not content with ourselves first, all becomes chaos and confusion and doubt. How we can become the best without fear, anxiety, or pressure? As a creative soul I learned this early. Thank you Glenn for allowing me to become the best I can possibly be and welcome home, the kitties and I have missed you.
