I was looking though Facebook last night and some black & white images caught my eyes that were rather stunning.  Soon I was in a fascinating gallery of images that looked like they had actually been shot on film and then printed.  I shot the photographer Russ Osterweil a message asking if indeed he was still shooting and processing film.  We began to chat for an hour or so and it turns out we are both very much on the same path in our process.  He too began in the darkroom with film, processing and printing his own black and white. There was defiantly a distinctive difference between the old film and the new digital and I was suddenly taken back to a time when I was first becoming a photographer.  What an amazing process it has been, both then and now; though the processes are not remotely related they have become two distinctive approaches that still get us to the same end.  In the old days (film) you had so many choices in your approach to crating an image.  Every film had a distinctive grain structure.  For those of you in the modern area film was imbedded with tiny granules of silver halide that reacted to light when it was exposed.  You couldn’t see it until the film was chemically processed.  The more sensitive the film was to light, the bigger the granules became making it faster to expose it to less light.  Conversely the smaller the granule the brighter the exposure could be, such as mid-day, full sun.  Thus creating a distinctive pattern in the film known as grain.  With the modern area the image is read on a sensor that is completely devoid of grain; there is a flatness to it where the tone is all the same.  The comparable equivalent would be pixels and the pixelizaton has become so fine that it’s really no longer discernible to the eye.  What Russ has been doing it scanning those old negatives and working with them to create discernable images that still maintain the integrity of the original intention with which he shot them years back.  It was a process I have tired to work with but have not been patient enough to fully explore, though I have cases and cases of images I would love to go back and rework, so I was trying to pick his brain on how the process could actually work his response was “Yes. There is a learning curve there for sure. You are dealing with grain AND pixilation. Pixilated grain, as it were. Tends to be very contrasty. Just gotta do it and experiment.” Looking through his portfolio there was such an honest poetry to the images that I began to admire.  We began to talk about how similar our works were and I began recognize that many of the images that become most fascinating he was presenting in this new Facebook portfolio where actually images I had always rejected from my own work and always excluded printing. There was such a raw edge to the stuff I photographed in the beginning that I totally love in all his current images. “I see such poetry in the essence of moments captured in your work, that I normally would have discarded at the time.”   I am totally jacked now about reexamining my own old process.  It seems that we as photographers have lost a great part of our archives what document the progression of our work when we made the leap to digital, because the old negatives are no longer so readily accessible.  Yet it was probably the greatest means of growth.  I still use heavily rely on these techniques I leaned in the beginning and have a greater understanding of the nuance of exposure curves and learning to manipulate the image in to my vision.  In the beginning photography was a process that took hours to create one image, so much of the other stuff shot was ignored due to time limitations.  When I first moved to digital I printed my images, scanned them and manipulated them on the computer, once I figured out where I needed to take the picture I would go back into the darkroom and print what I had quickly created in the digital world.  Now I am content to say I have mastered the digital world as well and want to reverse the process and bring the old world into the new.

I have lived a great deal of my life in angst, fear, and doubt.  In many ways it has crippled my capacity to actually see myself for who I was and what I was becoming.  Somehow I feel so many of the choices I made in my youth have not prepared me for what is to come in the upcoming years.  We are currently dealing with Glenn’s Mother’s health declining and having to move her into assisted living.  It brings fear of my own aging and possible decline into sight.  As gay men we have no heirs to help us through our aging process.  I guess my greatest fear is somehow becoming incapacitated and not being able to take care of myself.  I once heard the actress Jessica Tandy say “the only thing we really have in our lives in our health” and she lived and worked to her 90’s.  It is now 5 years since I was diagnosed with Lymphoma and I have survived.  In a sense it has made me more aware of my on mortality in those 5 years I have accomplished more then the rest of my years combined driven I believe mostly by fear and doubt.  In a sense this year has really been about stability and pushing beyond all conceivable boundaries.  I have felt more of a vitality this year then I have felt in the past 49 years I have lived.  So why does it take us so long to actually find out who we are and now at that point of accomplishment and discovery am I opening new possibilities to feed that anxiety.  I should be on top of the world at this moment but somehow I feel I am not and it’s creating a great melancholy within me.  I know I need to live in the moment learn to celebrate what is currently before me.  I have been given or created my own gift of discovery and this year has been remarkable beyond anything I could ever have imagined.  How do I recognize and glorify the achievements?   Am I a person destined to not be content or happy no matter the circumstances?  Being an artist adds an intensity to this doubt, it always has.  Perhaps because we are so truthful in our approach to life and everything becomes our mirror.  I have a friend who keeps asking me to hold the mirror up to myself and I am still reluctant because I am possibly still too afraid to see what that mirror will reveal.  I keep thinking the mirror is this blog and have tired to find the truth of myself within it.  But has it become a mask instead?  I somehow don’t think so.  I think it is the sum of what I have lived and become and the vitality of this years needs to outweigh, outshine all else.  In my minds eye I am still a youth and my body responds accordingly.  Many that meet me are astonished when they find out my actual age.  My next lesson needs to be to banish the insecurity and live in the vitality of the now?  Can I really come to the point of total acceptance of myself?  How do I get there?  Perhaps this is next years project.

I am a bit lost these last couple of weeks of this project. It’s that time of the year when in my mind I have already begun reflecting on the year. I keep asking myself have I accomplished what I set out to do in the beginning? What else needs to be said within the year of a man? I have put a lot of ideas and concepts out there, but have I really put out there who I really am? I end the year with less fear and doubt, but have I really done a job of painting a portrait of myself as an artist? Emotionally I feel further along then when I began to year. I am wrapped in a sense of peacefulness that I have wrestled with so many insecurities and have reached out to so many different people and have been moved by all the letters and others who have inspired me throughout this year. Has it advanced my career or established me as an artist? I am not sure, yet? I have a tendency to see greatness in everything even when there is none present. It’s my blessing and my curse to think every moment is filled with meaning. It’s the nature of who I have always been.

Somehow I thought this project would be easier, but so far has been more challenging then I bargained for. But I am astonished that I have managed to persevere and brought myself to the process most every day through out the year, perhaps sometimes not so interestingly, but other times astonishing myself by what has been revealed. I am not a writer, and have never written before. I always feared putting my thoughts out there. I am the most horrific speller and my use of syntax and grammar does not always make sense. But I have at least put the thoughts out there. I keep thinking I will end this year looking mighty foolish because of all my inadequacies. Oddly enough I am still not sure who follows my fool-hearted dreams but there has always been an audience present through out the process. I know to become an artist often means putting your self out there with little expectation. It must be done for the self. In many ways it still feels like photography is somewhat of an intangible art form. It still seems to have no value; the market is still over saturated. Putting my life on display has not really advanced me in my creation it’s just given me a better understanding of my process and somehow made me more comfortable with some of the choices I have made with my life. It’s also revealed some regrets, that I have waited this long to actually expose what’s been in my heart.

In many ways my images lack the sexual qualities of my youth and are now filled with a reflection of myself as if I am looking in from the outside. Youth is filled with a spontaneity that my images lack. I often see a sadness that is reflected in my work, and after this year of self-examination, ultimately my life has been lived in a desperate sadness. Is this truly the way I see myself? Does my life turn back to normal again, to be forgotten? Somehow it reminds me of life in theater, you work toward the creation of a show, breathing your life into the production, it is shared with the audience, but then the lights go down, the set is cleared, and the stage is left empty. Perhaps this is just the general quality of life. But I somehow feel this will prove to be one of the greatest years of my existence. My heart swells with delight to those who have been here and shared the journey. Thank you!

I am reminded this morning of the character, Alec Scudder, from the EM Forester novel Maurice as I was writing the bio for one of my models, Lucas, for the new website. The novel was written in 1913 but not published until after Forester’s death in 1971. It’s the tale of homosexual love in early 20th Century England and follows a man, of some means, in Victorian times who falls in love with a young games keeper named Alec Scudder, who happens to climb into his window one night to fill a desire he only dare dreamed about. The book was then turned into a very remarkable film in 1987 by the team of Merchant-Ivory, with a very remarkable cast of actors including James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves as sexually alluring young Scudder. I remember this movie leaving quite an impression on me at the time I had seen it. I had been through my first relationship, which had left me utterly devastated and was trying to figure out my life. I had moved back to Montana after a year in Dallas, working road construction with my father. Though I had the desire to still be with men, I was not really sure it was quite where I belonged. I dated some women, and found sex with them mind-boggling fantastic, but I still had this erotic attraction toward the naked male and for about a year or so I lived in a strange world of duality of confusion and perplexity. Then I saw the movie Maurice and it suddenly brought into sharp focus for me that struggle I had been dealing with. Maurice is the central character of the story, who deals with his own struggle, trying to ignore his hidden and forbidden desire for male love. At one point he goes to a doctor who tries to banish the desires from his mind through hypnosis. But it is something he can’t completely ignore. Then one night the young ruffian Scudder climbs through his bedroom window to ignite that passion. They make love and the rest of the story is about them trying to reconcile their social difference what to do about the Pandora’s Box they have just opened.
The image of Alec Scudder was what played most heavy on my mind. In a sense I instantly recognized myself within this character. I, being a bit of a bohemian ruffian myself, came from small family cattle ranch in Montana, not surviving well in the city. I was not very well educated and had to drop out of college because I found it too challenging and had nearly failed my first year. But I was sexually possessed by my seemingly uncontrollable raw desire. I really had no means and though I worked construction still seem to drift without really being able to settle any particular place. The image of crawling through a wealthy man’s window and finding desire was quite romantic and appealing as I began to question if someone would actually love me for just being myself. I felt out of context, as if I had no place where I really seemed to belong.

When I first met Ian, he reminded me of all this, it was like stepping back to revisit a reflection in the mirror of what I had once been. I was immediately drawn to him as my dark past flickered in my memory and I instantly knew I had to capture the essence of those feelings of my youth. I had access to an opulently furnished Victorian house for which I had been the grounds keeper, so I took him into that environment. Though it wasn’t his sort of place, he just naturally fit. We spent an entire day shooting nudes of him with just the natural light from the window, every image becoming a precious moment locked in time that defied both of us, exploring the erotic world of Alec Scudder.

I have managed to stick to my vow of no computer all weekend. I did let it slip for a moment last night, when I was looking for the price on some Gladiator Alliums for the garden. These are those giant flowers that grow in the spring from a bulb that have a large single globe shaped purple flower that last for months. I have about ten already in this bed, but want to extend more into the bed as it has expanded. Locally they are about $6.00 per bulb. I have always been a frivolous gardener and take clumps from others and tend to create my gardens as cheap as possible and I need about ten more to have an impact. I typically buy plants only at a bargain out of season, like now when I can plant for cheap. I know plants so well that I can see the vision of what they will become for the years to come and don’t really care what they look like in the clump formations. In the past I have always gardened for others so it’s a pure delight that I have such an extraordinary place like my studio where I finally can create my own.

Yesterday turned out to be very beautiful, the sun came out after a week of rain and I got the little 3-foot test section of the fence together. Though it took me most of the day to create it turned out exactly the way I planned and took lots of cutting little pieces for the insets and running back and forth two blocks up to my friend Greg’s to use a table saw we mutually share to rip everything down to size. I love working with wood and the smell of freshly sawed cedar. I spent the evening planning for plants to fill in the bed, to compliment what I already have there. Most of it I will transplant from the garden next door, but will have to wait until spring to add some boxwood to give it some color and shape all year long.

It is the most extraordinary fall morning, but unfortunately I have to go out the Superior for a family funeral that will take most of the day.