Category Archives: Personal

Personal

“The World is a Showplace”

The art and importance of networking and collaboration has been my focus this week. The Internet is incredibly awesome for networking. I have vaguely been familiar with a lot of people out there, but feel I have been too busy, or insecure to actually make the connection. I am beginning to meet so many people that are going though a lot of the same issues and struggles I am. Suddenly this blog seems to generate interest or curiosity in a lot of people. The first one, ten days ago, started with just a couple of friends and yesterday there were a hundred and ten. The model search is going coming along slowly, as it always does. I have been working the heck out of networking some of our local sites to connect with potential subjects. Monday I had three, but it all seems to take time. My goal is to begin working on new images next week, in the meantime I have become obsessed with networking and rallying with my artist friends and organizing and cleaning through the files on my computer, an arduous task I always do this time of the year when everything else slows down and I have some time.

I have always felt my art is collaboration. Working in theater was certainly a collaboration. When I work with a model; it’s us coming together to create the image. I always value others input into whatever I do. I think I am very good at taking criticism, and it becomes one of the greatest tools for growth and finding new inspirations. I don’t necessarily allow it to define my direction, but I do ponder the relevance of what is said and consider the source of its origin. I know the value of others experience and insight and hope and respect that they will treat me as fair as I will treat them. My life has been defined by my ability to adapt and change. I look to many sources for inspiration. I used to love to look at magazines and tear out the pages of images that excited me. I collected all kinds of images. Now that inspiration is the Internet. Sometimes I am drawn to just a line in the image: a texture, a color, a style, an eyebrow, a face, a pose, a connection, and a look. When I begin to work with new models I always suggest they begin to collect images they relate to, bring them in, and this become the basis for a common visual dialogue that becomes the basis from which to leap. It brings us to the same page. I am a very visual person and have a studio full of books and other visual references that fill my “creative well” from which I can draw. I don’t imitate others but rather draw and build upon them. I explore how it relates to my style and then find what will make it unique to me.

One of my new goals since I have begun this project, is to look at one new artist each day, connect with that artist and begin developing a relationship and dialog with someone outside of my world. To create a collective, yes sort of like the Borg, to learn and assimilate what wisdom and inspiration they may have and to impart some of that experience into these daily blogs. Thank you Internet! There is already a great host of artist residing in cyberspace on a site called Red Bubble. I joined it one rainy day last May and it has changed my life. I began to slowly filter some of my images, I had been working on in isolation for a decade, onto the site. Mind you no one had seen any of my images, except the individual models I was working with. I was dumbfounded by the response the images received by like minded artist on Red Bubble. Other artists began to comment on what I was doing and giving me feedback. A breathed a deep sigh of relief because I had always feared what the response might be if I ever revealed them publicly.  I live in a place in the universe where a great painting is a landscape with a snow covered mountain in the background. The new connection and feedback from others began to instill a confidence within me. Suddenly I had found a whole world of people who were just like me. I began to correspond and ask questions and make connections. Everyone was so genuine and heartfelt in his or her response and feedback. Then I got busy with all my summer projects and jobs and had to let it fall by the wayside. I tend to over work in the summers, save up and then feel secure enough just to focus on my creativity through the winter.  Hence this project was born. When I occasionally find time in my schedule to work with a model and actually do something artistic for myself, the results was amazing. The new found confidence was helping me to go beyond any thing I had ever created before. Every shoot was a step up from what I had previously done. It was almost like it had some purpose or meaning to what I was creating. It all began to click and I was bringing a remarkable quality into all my other photographic work: weddings, senior portraits, but the nudes are what really popped. So here I am on the precipice of something extraordinary and making the leap. For those who know me, you know my motto has always been, LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR.

I found the perfect picture on Red Bubble this morning that captured that feeling.  BLIND FAITH  I hope Thomas doesn’t mind I made the link.

The bottom image by George Lynn Platt from 1954 became the inspiration for today’s image. Suddenly Dinah Washington came on singing “The World is a Showplace” and I know the universe cosmically is connecting to what I am doing.

I think of this blog as a collaboration. Obviously there are a lot of others drawn into my project and I would like your insight or perspective on topics or interest. We have so much in common that we can share with each other. I would love to hear from you and know more about who’s here. Feel free to ask questions or suggest things you would like to see or issues you would like to see me explore.

“End of the Relaionship” series

So “The Postcard from the Edge” fundraiser in New York seems to have been a huge hit. Another photographer named Steven Rosen selected my postcard and sent me a message. “It’s such a lovely image, but I have to say I was saddened when I found out the title. I was drawn to the shot because the two men seemed so in love. There were loads of images of beautiful men both alone and engaged in all sorts of sex acts, but your shot was the only one that seemed to have any real emotional content. Knowing that the relationship was ending casts a bit of a pall over the image for me, but it’s still very beautiful.” There was a huge response to my posting “Postcards from the Edge” so I thought I would follow it up with my journal entry from the photo shoot and another image from that series.

October 25, 2009
A great Sunday morning lying around the studio sipping coffee, listening to Dexter Gordon blow the sax, and catching up with myself through my journal.  Color begins to fill the sky though windows above my bed and create a beautiful blue glow on the textured walls surrounding me. It’s been forever since I had such a great morning. This morning I am filled with wonder, confidence, and longing. I am finally feeling peace and in touch with the space.   I am loving what I have created here. What an inspiration. Last night I had a gay couple over to work on some nude couples images. We all worked together to fixed a really great dinner of Paella, had a couple of bottles of Pinot Noir and chatted.  We took and break and work on some of the most beautiful images I think I have ever captured. The first set of images was of them in the shower entwined in each others bodies. After dinner we moved into the studio and did some extraordinary images of them lying on a bed. It stirred such a longing in my soul to watch these two extraordinarily beautiful men captivated by the other. Their bodies moving, twisted, entangled, arousing and igniting sheer sensual pleasure, writhing, rubbing, caressing, tender, passion, deeply gazing into the others eyes, responding to the others soul, colliding, giving, receiving, touching, fondling, tasting the others flesh, totally in tune and turned on by the others tenderness, excitement and pleasure. I was overwhelmed and in awe of the beauty of the love and passion exploding before me. It made me realize what an extraordinary life I have had and all the experiences I have been a part of. To photograph this was one of the highlights of my existence. I recalled these moments within myself when I was that age and consumed by such passions; and now to be this age and able to step back, connect to these desires and record these feelings once again. I was caught in a hypnotic trance of reliving my own passions igniting as if I become a part of their flesh and passions exuding before me. This was the way I approached sex!  How have I gotten so far away from it. Modern sex seems to be only about fucking. Modern pornography is only about fucking. Is this all we know or learn. Is an orgasm the ultimate goal and do we miss all the sensuality that leads up to and in between. Sex was never really about the actually climax for me, it was always about the building of pleasure, giving and receiving. I was flooded with old memories, thoughts, and impressions of my own experiences with these passions igniting from my past. I suddenly felt a stronger connection to Glenn and all that he means to me. Once they had left I called him and almost burst into tears still overwhelmed by my experience. I guess that’s what a great artist is, someone who delves, explores and then expresses all those emotions within his medium. It becomes my inward connection to how I present and express my feeling toward my subjects.

Fear Of What I See In The Mirror

Somehow, today, I feel I have completely lost touch with who I am and where I am going with this project. I have spent the past couple of days researching and trying to figure out how a blog actually works. What it needs to have, how to expand it, and how to make it grow. I am finding it’s all way too overwhelming to think about and plan. Have I already been derailed from my concept by the very means needed to capture the concept? It’s perplexing, confusing and downright distracting. I have so many thoughts in the head. It’s swimming with ideas of what I want and need to say. Suddenly there are a lot’s of eyes with their focus on me, responding, recognizing things in myself I have never been aware were ever present. I feel like there is now an expectation. The bar has been raised and as I began to write today become paralyzed, gripped by terror, almost frozen unable to move. Can I live up to the remarkable things others see within me? I have always heard fear is a great motivating factor to get things done, so I guess it’s worth exploring.

When I look in the mirror who it is that I really see? I have never been much of one to admire myself. As a child I was awkward, gangly, and very uncoordinated. I didn’t have many friends and totally lacked any semblance of self-esteem. My retreat was to create a world of my own, a world where I could create something remarkable beyond myself. It’s taken years to get past those painful remembrances of self-loathing and isolation. Of being able to trust in myself  and recognize I was really worthy of any kind of talent. Growing up in a rural sate like Montana, creativity was completely misunderstood because it wasn’t in the norm. It was a non-sustainable hobby that was more often discouraged as sentimental or emotional. Athletics were the suitable substitute to suppress sentiment and emotion; you could work out your aggression on an opponent. My family really didn’t get me. I was that creative black sheep. Though I was involved with plays they never once came to see what I was involved in. I just learned to adapt and was persistent to fulfill my driving desire to create. I never was never quite sure what, but knew I needed to create something, anything as long as it revealed my hidden self and let me express myself.

When I become an adult and began to explore my sexuality, I suddenly found a place where I was accepted, where I did belong. It was exciting and intense and filled with wonder, beauty and mystery. The raw sensual self was allowed to emerge and celebrate the release of all kinds of emotions: love, beauty, seduction and passion. My body was not as disjointed and awkward as I had been lead to believe. Yet I could not see these remarkable qualities within myself. I guess, have always been filled with self-doubt. Through photography, this exploration of myself and working to revealing others I am coming to terms with my own self-image. Why has it taken me all of my life to get to this place of feeling safe and comfortable with my own identity? There are still a few residual temporal insecurities that emerge when I look in that mirror and see a man approaching middle age. Self-portraits have always been a difficult thing for me to create. I have such a different image of my self then what appears in the image. I look deeply into them and ask myself: is that really me? Self-portraits become an agonizing search for who we really are. So many people come into my studio fearful or afraid of what they might discover.  Yet I am a master of discovering and seeing all those remarkable qualities in others, why do I have such difficulty seeing it within myself?

To strip away ourselves and really look at who we are is very unnerving. For some reason when we look in the mirror, all we seem to see is a reflection of our flaws, our imperfections, things we don’t like about ourselves, yet I know if we look deep enough there is a discernible beauty buried deep within all of us. Photography becomes a mirror, and in that mirror of art we can see the most remarkable things.

Postcards from the Edge

We are a week into the new year and I have accomplished the first phase goal I had set for this new new project.   I have created a Facebook page showing a large assortment of my imagery and varying styles.  In case you have not seen it Terry J Cyr Photography on Facebook. This process is defiantly forcing me to look at my library and sort though my images.   It’s actually kind of fun to begin working toward creating some semblance of a portfolio of what I have done.   It surprises me to see my images together.  As I am looking at it I am thinking wow did I actually create all this.  I think sometimes, as artist, we stay so focused in the details of what we are currently dealing with that we don’t always see the over all picture of who we are or what we have become.  I have begun this blog to pull my thoughts, ideas, dreams, and experiences together collectively.   I do not really know if anyone out there has the time or inclination to read or become involved with other peoples lives or experience.  I have always journaled and spewed forth what was in my head.   It has somehow always helped me to gain perspective and it give me direction.   The more important part of this process is that I have actually become disciplined enough to post this each day.

Today is a hallmark day for me as I have an image that is opening in a show in New York City.  It’s part of a show called Postcards From the Edge as a benefit for an organization called Visual AIDS.   My friend John Douglas from Sydney, Australia has submitted work to it before and suggested I also do so this year.  He suggested it would be good exposure for me and start to get my images out there.   So here it is!  I keep questioning: with the world filled with so many images and artists how does one get their stuff out there and begin to become recognizable.  I feel my talents have been hidden from the world.  I just didn’t know how to approach expanding my market.  I know it’s something I have got to constantly work at, to network and reach out to others globally.  But who are these people?   Last summer, I joined the Red Bubble community, which was a collective of international artist based out of Australia.   It was the first time I had shown any of my images and I was quite surprised by the response.  It felt as if I immediately become a hit with a community of like-minded artists.  I even put several pieces into a show in Sydney.   But then I got busy with the summer and was distracted with other work.  Without constant working of the site I soon dropped below the radar and disappeared back into oblivion.  The big question: is there a market for any of this kind of stuff and where do I really want to go with it?  I would love to focus on this sort of imagery, but it takes time and how do I juggle everything else to still maintain this?  Where, or even will I find a tipping point when I can make money on such images and be able to sustain myself economically, to be able to make it grow?   My big hindrance has always been; are my images worthy of going into a global market?   I believe they are!   I am surprised by what a body of work I have amassed over the years.   I think this show in New York is a step in the positive direction. I now need to find other ways and places to submit my images.   I need some help figuring it all out. Anyone out there that may have a suggestion?   I am willing to try anything.

Today’s image is part of a series I called “End of the Relationship.”  Its was about two guys who had shared a remarkable relationship together, and realized they both were now heading in different directions, that it was time to let go of each other.  They wanted to capture the essence of what they had once held, and allowed me into their world for this brief glimmer, before they departed.   This is the image currently in the “Postcard from the Edge” show and auction.

Through the Glass Darkly

I am finally getting a chance to focus on my imagery.   It feels like focus has always been an issue with me.   Those that know me will say I am prone to distraction.   I have so much diversity in my life and have become a master of multitasking.   I have so many passions and directions I am drawn and dabble in a lot of different things.  I am good at whatever it is I take on, but have a hard time making a commitment to just one thing.   I love landscaping and being outside and working in the earth, I actually make money at this, but it’s only seasonal.   I love to cook and create amazing foods, I always wanted to go to cooking school, but could never afford it.  Unfortunately I do not make money at this.  I am passionate about live theater and the process of collaborative creation.  I did make money at this and found it was the prefect balance of my right brain/left brain activity.   This was one thing I was very good at but didn’t like constantly being on the road and scrambling for work. Recently I did a make-over of my studio; well actually a takeover, a complete reinvention of the space.  I designed it, build it, even did the wiring.   I didn’t realize what a creative process building actually was.   I also work for UPS part-time in the evenings and surprisingly love this as well.   I am what’s called the system’s operations manager; bringing the drivers in from the end of their days, linking their data, solving issues that may have come up, and closing out their payroll.    It’s a constant challenge and is ever changing as I am allowed to come up with innovative ways to look at problems and streamlined my process. It’s surprisingly more creative then you would imagine.   I defiantly make money at this. You could say I live and survive on a life of being creative. To do it in Montana is truly a feat in and of itself.  To epitomize the core of myself: to be curious and always explore, to grow and learn, and to constantly challenge myself.

Photography is one of my greatest challenges.  I feel a passion deep within me to express and explore my identity with it.   But it brings a lot of self-doubt.   As I am constantly questioning  if I have what it takes to make a go of it.  It seems the world is changing and everyone has become a photographer or knows a photographer. Sustainable work in this field seems to become more and more scarce because people can do it themselves and don’t need to hire someone anymore.  The new technology makes everyone capable of taking a decent image.  Now there is so much competition.   I have tried every way possible to get myself out there.  Thrown lots of money at advertising but only gained a marginal return.  Some times I make money at it, sometimes I don’t, more often don’t, hence the need for all the other distractions which I actually do need to sustain me.  As I get older, it seems to get more complicated and more difficult.  Landscaping takes a greater toll on my body.  I think for most people life gets easier as they get older, for creative people life does not, it’s a constant struggle.   Living in and being from Montana seems to be equally challenging.  No one here knows my work and what I do.  I have suppressed what I am really passionate about, photographing nude men.   I have been creating many of the images that are about to emerge from this project for years in total solitude. Something here; something there; always deconstructing my own life and examining it for truths about my own existence and meaning.  I have lived the life I have always wanted, done the things I have desired, visited the places that captivated me, been fearless.   Well there it is, I am finally getting to the core of what I want and need.

So here it is, facing my greatest fear and putting aside all the anxiety, exposing myself for the entire world to see and judge.  Several years back I was diagnosed with Lymphoma and spent a summer under going chemotherapy; it scared the bee-jesus out of me and somehow put my life into hyper-drive, to overachieve, to find meaning.   Suddenly, last fall I began realized I needed to stop and and find a focus.  I now know photography needs to be that focus because it has the greatest meaning to me.  I also know this is going to be a painful process for me.  I am going to have to sacrifice to see this though.  The concept of this project is going to be my greatest challenge yet.  This is what I have always wanted, time will only tell if I am actually any good at it or not, but it’s time to go for the brass ring.   It’s time to reach for what has always seemed unobtainable and hopefully get recognized and actually make a living doing this type of work.   I am facing my fears of rejection and self-denial to put it all on the line. I give myself one year to make it all happen.