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.

Featuring A Sexy American Painter

I have the first featured painter and visual artist on The Naked Man Project website today.  The artist is my friend Tom Acevedo in Boston, whose paintings I have admired for such a long time, who also happens to be a very sexy hot man.  Just wish I could afford one of his images for my studio.  We have created a profile for him in the featured guests section and you will be able to link to a gallery of his work and see his comments on the images.  Now, along with Alison, on the literary end and excerpts from her writings, the project seems to be growing and is heading in the direction I had envisioned from the beginning.   Now that you can see how it’s going to function, I am still looking for other creative souls to contribute.  Contact me if you are interested.  The site is currently registering about 50 to 100 people an hour, so there seems to be a lot of traffic glancing at it.  We are now a little over two weeks since the initial launch so it all feels great right now.  We are still suffering from an occasional broken link and not sure sometimes how they happen, but I am beginning to realize it is part of the process of growing and learning it’s functionality so please bare with us as we work it out.

Now I can get back to work!!!!

Moving Ahead

It feels remarkable to finally have some time to focus on things that most interest me now.  I just need to process this wedding and then the remainder of the year will be working full force on The Naked Man Project website.  It feels like we are finally beginning to tame the beast of understanding how the project functions internally.  New artists have been submitting works and I have been building galleries for them.  The first one should be up in the next couple of days and I have to say for the first time in months, I am quite excited by the prospects of potentially where this project can go.  There are so dang many talented people out there that have been hidden or that very few people know.  I feel like I have finally found my place and am creating a place of expression for artist wanting to deal with identity and the nude male.  This vision that I have been dreaming of all year now becomes a reality.  There are still people commenting on the old Blogger blog and I would encourage everyone to now move or begin posting in the new blog.  I cannot transfer your comments and I would love all that you are saying to become a part of the permanent record of what this project is becoming.  I have always seen myself as a collective artist and strongly believe in art as collaboration.  This includes feedback from both artist and non-artist.   If it stirs a feeling or emotion and it is worth documenting or expressing your opinion.   I know this sometimes takes a lot of time to log in and do, but it becomes worthwhile and meaningful to others.  It is our goal to have everything cleaned up and the site fully functional, with most of the bugs worked out and formally release the site, on December 1st.  My goal then for the month of December is the begin opening up all the galleries, and get the featured artist section completely functional.   I then want to close out this year by getting back into the studio and shooting new works.  I began shooting some new stuff last week and it has a fascinating new edge to it.  Then in January, I want to begin working on reviving the old Man Art with its original creators to build a social network, that was the original source that inspired me to ultimately begin this project in the first place, and build a home for fearless creative expression.  This is only the first phase in something remarkable about to emerge.

The Exhaustion of Joyous Occasions

As much as I tried yesterday I could not find a half hour of time to even get on my computer.  It was Montana State vs Montana Grizzlies, Brawl Of The Wild Game at Montana State in Bozeman.  The biggest game of the season, the Grizzles being the underdog ranked #7 in the nation against the #1 FCS team.  Needless to say it was an upset and the Griz beat the Bobcats 36-10.  Since the game was in Bozeman, Glenn planned a party in the studio to watch it on television.  So my day began with a breakdown of all my lighting equipment and hauling to the basement.

I also had a later afternoon wedding I was booked to shoot.  It was an all day process of prepping and shooting that from early afternoon through the reception late last night.  I love weddings, but they a tremendous amount of work for a photographer.  The process of preparations takes several days leading up to the wedding as well as becomes all-consuming on the day of the event.  My process and approach for weddings is much the same as my process for nudes.  I like to get to know the couple so we all become comfortable with each other and I just become a part of the wedding party.  I love candidly shooting all day as events unfold.  I approach it as an insider documentary style and get great results because most of it becomes very candid and allows everyone to just naturally become who they are as if I am not even present.  I completely engage and interact as a participant instead of as a casual observer hired in from the outside.  I then put the entire wedding together as a series of slideshows put to music that becomes the couple’s remembrance of the day.  Most often when they come back to the studio to see the final presentation both the bride and groom are so deeply moved by the presentation, they become weepy.  I have so intimately entered their world and captured the essence of who they actually are and often capture things they were completely unaware of happing around them.

My approach to the wedding as well as all photography is to first assess the natural light and merely enhance what it already there.  And yes this becomes quite a challenge with weddings because you are constantly bouncing around from space to space throughout the day.  The bride’s chamber, the groom’s chamber, hair salons, the church, the altar, and the reception hall.  I typically will go to all the locations days ahead and test shoot so I know specifically what I am dealing with.  This is one process that doesn’t get easier with each wedding because each one is in a different location or space and each wedding is uniquely its own.  There is absolutely no formula to follow.  Yes the sequence of events are the same, and I know better what to look for, but they are never consistent.  I love weddings for this reason.  It’s like highly emotional theatrical events that unfold before your eyes that you become caught up in.  Some one said to me last night, you have one of the best jobs in the world getting to shoot people at their greatest moments of joy.  I paused and thought about it for a moment and replied, absolutely it is one of the pleasures of my life.

But by the end of the day, I am utterly exhausted.  I feel like I have poured my entire soul into the day.  I often don’t realize the soreness until I collapse on the sofa at home, then it settles in and I can barely move.  They have always exhausted me, even when I was younger.  I realize I had been working for 8 hours solid with very little breaks, yet I feel elated because the images I saw though out the day were so beautiful.  This was my last big event I must shoot of the year and know I can now begin to focus on my naked men.  But today is a day of recovery, very little of anything else.  I am scheduling a massage for the afternoon and nothing else.  I will sit with the kitties in the widow and watch it snow outside.