Every once in a while I break up with myself. It's painful, but it has to happen. For the dumper side of me it's a relief and I look forward to moving on to bigger and better stuff. For the dumped side of me, I go down the rabbit-hole and am forced to painstakingly analyze everything I've done wrong. I'm like a Mini Wheat. A soggy Mini Wheat.
I was once told by someone who I thought mattered that the most interesting thing about my photographs was seeing my discomfort as a photographer reflected in the expressions of my subjects. I clung to this deduction like it was the only thing that made me unique, and I've just realized that it's something I've been hiding behind.
Ever since I began making images seriously I've bounced back and forth from using just my camera and the sun to making HIGHLY CONTRIVED and constructed work. My struggle for the past few years has been trying to define myself as an artist. How do I reconcile my aesthetic and thematic disparities?
I've often blamed my eclecticism for my difficulties in getting shows with my own work or for failing to get grant money for short films I've written and photo series I've proposed. I thought having done ad work made people think of me less as an artist. I got a big head and thought I was too big for Toronto. But recently I came to the realization that maybe it's not them, it's me (see, it really is like breaking up with myself). And, although I have to keep doing what interests and excites me, maybe I need to grow up a bit, too.
I admit that I like the look of distrust in my photographs, but it's gotten me into trouble. I've always found it more interesting and engaging when my subject doesn't look pretty. I've never been interested in making the people who sit for me look good; I've been interested in making a compelling image. Avedon's images of a despondent Marilyn Monroe are more interesting to me than any other image of her. I've never requested "fierce" from someone I was photographing. It just doesn't thrill me. I find it so disposable. But I've often been unfair to my subjects. I've objectified them because I believed it was more interesting. While I stand by my photographs, while I think they say as much about my insecurities as they do about the subject's, I now understand how cruel I can be.
After spending a couple weeks in San Francisco with photographers at different stages of their careers I was thrown for a loop. Of course I have been around photographers I think are amazing for years, but I mostly went to school with them. I saw them do crap and I saw them do great things and I saw their insecurities and their strengths grow and change as they did. And they saw mine. Being around Parker, Ryan, and Luke changed my mind about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I'm sure they all have their insecurities, but unlike my colleagues in Toronto, I didn't see them grow, I just see them now, and I'm humbled in different ways.
PARKER is a brash young thing heading into his first year at California College of the Arts. He's one of those photographers who loves having a camera in his hand and takes it everywhere. He's going to kick my ass big time and he's going to do so well in school. I'm so excited for him and can't wait to see what he'll do. It makes me remember how people who had taken time between high school and university did so much better in the photo program because they really knew they wanted to be there. Parker's really unselfconscious with his camera, he trusts that people want to be photographed and want to be photographed by him, as well they should. I've never had that confidence. I always felt like my subjects were doing me a favour rather than getting anything out of the experience themselves. Watching Parker shoot with such excitement for the medium was both inspiring and disconcerting. I felt like I didn't get nearly as much out of my education as he will. The lucky thing is that I'll get to go back to school this fall. I can't wait to approach my film education with a fervor and understanding that I lacked in my undergraduate experience.
LUKE, who I didn't get to spend a lot of time with but hope to get to know better in New York, is fresh out of UCLA and blowing up the photo world. His work is really fantastic and beautiful and original and varied but coherent - something I aspire to but take too far in some ways.
RYAN is a well-known young photographer who did his MFA at SVA and watching him photograph was so fascinating for me. We use the same camera, but not in the same way. I am sure that in some ways the style of my university education gave me this complex that I have to have a set or a gimmick going on in my photographs in order for people to be interested in them. I've felt like just having my camera wasn't enough, and I felt that from the people who asked me to take photographs of them. I didn't think anyone would trust that my photograph was going to be interesting unless I had a stylist and an elephant on hand and we were going to a treetop village in the Amazon. Watching Ryan trust himself and trust that a camera was all he needed was fascinating. And when I sat for Ryan I suddenly understood how unfair I could be with my subjects. I totally trusted Ryan because I knew his photographs and I knew he would not be unkind to me. It was when I was sitting for him that I understand why people might have been reticent to let me photograph them knowing that my photographs were all about what I wanted them to be, not about who or what they really are.
I have not been a subject for anyone for about six years. I didn't really understand what it was like to be in front of the lens, which I now realize is something a photographer must experience seriously. I thought I knew what it was like to be a subject, and I had disdain for subjects who (I assumed) wanted to "look hot". Both Parker and Ryan photographed me, and while I'll never ask them to retouch an image of me or have the delusion that I'm a model, I see how vulnerable it can make someone feel to be photographed.
So, moving forward, my overarching modus operandi is becoming clearer. When editing my photographs from San Francisco I went down the rabbit-hole because I was afraid others would think them boring landscape photos. But, for once, I'm going ahead with what I believe in rather than what I want people to think is exciting and fresh. I resisted the urge to hide behind digital gimmicks or design tricks and just edited the straight images from an intuitive place.
I see these images as a continuation and purification of what I began in London. London was an accidental beginning to a theme that carried through the photographs in Are We Having Fun Yet? When I went to Mexico I expected this theme to continue, but I mostly just found good people genuinely wanting to enjoy themselves with their families and getting along and having a good time, so the focus shifted. My own solitude began to leak through as I felt on the outside of this group of people I didn't want to judge anymore. This came out as well as a methodical and almost meditative way of photographing. A centre-heavy, Bernd & Hilla Becher informed framing of the subject emerged. I was compelled and excited by this somewhat boring regimented style of photographing. This style reappears in the San Francisco photographs and is even more methodical and unapologetic in its wistful prettiness. I think this way I'm photographing is a foil to the gimmicky pictures I do. It is the most consistently recurrent style of photograph I have taken over any period of time. And it's not to say that I won't have fun with photography and image-making ever again, but I'm really trying to pay attention to what these are and why I'm doing them.
Parker told me that when we went to photograph together that he felt he totally was not a part of my process, that I was working alone. It's true. It needs to be a solitary act for me. I need to get lost in it, I need to feel uninhibited and not judged or scrutinized.
In the end I still haven't been able to pin down what I'm going for, but this way of photographing is leading me by the hand to somewhere I want to be. It's taking me back to the photograph and the medium itself. Kind of purifying it. And it's still me. There are themes that I've always imbued in my work - loneliness, smallness, boredom, apathy, bleached or faded vibrancy, existentialism, and a kind of hush and stillness or stasis beyond the obvious stillness of the photographic medium. I think these themes are not hiding behind anything else anymore. I hope they're not so earnest, that maybe they're a little more natural.
Though all this was a tricky mind-trap to navigate I feel better, lighter, and ready to move forward. I'm still proud of the things I've done. Some things more so than others, but it's all brought me here. And though my work may sometimes be schticky and sloppy, I'm glad to say that I've never approached it from the side of irony.
So for now this Mini Wheat is floating alone, but sugar-side-up in a warm bowl of milk.
Labels: ART, BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA, EW, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, PHOTOGRAPHY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
ALEX MCLEOD is unbelievable. His/her 3D creations are breathtaking. I looked at them for a long time until I realized they weren't actual models, but CG renderings. So fantastic - the fun/frivolous scenes imbued with death or disaster or dripping somethings are really great. Dark without having to scream "Hey look I'm dark!" That's not easy to do.
Just click "art" at the top and use your arrows to scroll through the pieces.
Alex is also showing at Switch Contemporary from June 8-July 5 - opening June 11th 7-10 - 2217 Dundas Street West in Toronto (at Roncesvalles).
Labels: ART, JEALOUSY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
This series of stills from Jon Rafman's KOOL-AID MAN IN SECOND LIFE are everything I hope to be. The PROMO VIDEO is amazing.
Via I HEART PHOTOGRAPH.
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Last night while in a panic looking for my cell phone I had a brilliant idea. Nobody was at hand to call my phone so that I could find it and I don't have a land line. So, I thought, "I should make a website where you can put your phone number in and it calls your cell phone while you search for it!"
Unluckily, this service already exists and it's called WHERESMYCELLPHONE.COM. Luckily, this service works for free and apparently you don't get spammed...but that's yet to be confirmed. So far no unsolicited calls! But when you pick up there's an automated message for a dating service. Guess they gotta make money somehow.
Labels: THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Department of Eagles - No One Does It Like You - Dir. Patrick Daughters & Marcel Dzama.
Labels: ART, JEALOUSY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE, YOUTUBE
It's so earnest I love it. I sometimes get frustrated when people make things like this so jokily or "fashionably". I didn't laugh at this once - I really think it's amazing. Enya's maybe the most unfashionable/uncool singer but she is so completely in this aesthetic that you have to admire her for it. I want tomorrow, too, Enya.
Labels: THINGS I WISH I'D DONE, YOUTUBE
RADIOHEAD'S INTERACTIVE VIDEO FOR HOUSE OF CARDS
It will be interesting to see if/how the whole interactive video push works out. I wonder if people really care about being able to interact with the video? And is the technology good enough to sustain interesting interactives?
Labels: THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Labels: THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Tonight's your last chance in Toronto to see DANIEL BARROW perform "Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry":
Daniel Barrow's newest "manual animation" combines overhead projection, with video, music, and live narration to tell the story of a garbage man with a vision to chronicle the lives of all the citizens in the city. Traversing the streets, drawing pictures of people as they sleep and gleaning what he can of people's lives through their trash, what he doesn't know is that a deranged lunatic is trailing him, killing off each citizen he records in his book, thus rendering his cataloguing efforts obsolete.
Maybe I misinterpreted it but I didn't think the central character was a garbage-man, but Barrow himself...or maybe I'm not so smart.
Either way, you shold BUY TICKETS NOW!
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DESPERATE AND SAD, REALLY FUCKING GAY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
I know La Pequeña is totally overplayed by now, but I love it when shit like this happens - YouTube videos of television shows of YouTube videos. It's meta-Pequeña.
Maybe we should TEAM UP.
Labels: I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., NARCISSISM, REALLY FUCKING GAY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Hey girlfriends, I'm back from my stint at OMG BLOG. It was fun but it's hard to think of 5 things to post every day that are of somewhat general interest to an audience you can't see or hear. At least here on my blog I know it's just my gramma, Claire, Brendan, and my mom's friend Chrissy. Hi guys!
Above is The Goddess Bunny, a drag queen from LA with polio who apparently likes to freak people out using her body to her advantage. I likey.
Labels: THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Has the MOMA called yet?
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, NOBODY LIKES A NERD, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
I was upset at having found THESE PHOTOS by CARSTEN HOLLER cause I thought they were anaglyphs and I cursed myself for not having taken 3Ds at the fair last summer...but it looks like they're just separated and shifted CMYK channels...phew!
I discovered these photos via a great blog called I HEART PHOTOGRAPH (thanks to Claire) which is now on my blogroll on the right-hand sidebar.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Or you'll end up like Freddy Mercury (that's apparently who is depicted in the last image) in Moscow's Anti-Drug Wax Museum.
From the now defunct YDA.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Artist PINAR YOLACAN went to Central St Martin's, Chelsea School, and Cooper Union. Then she
Above is from Pinar's latest series and below from an older work.
Via INSTINTO GUAPO.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, BUY ME THIS, DEATH AND DRAMA, EW, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Did he see my HILDUFF video or something?
Naw....HE RIPPED HIMSELF OFF.
Thanks to Kevin for posting this.
Labels: BAD DOG, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Labels: THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Some great images I found while watching BLOGGER PLAY:
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Labels: BAD DOG, DESPERATE AND SAD, HOW TO PROCRASTINATE, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
I've had a VIVIENNE WESTWOOD day. I happened to come across her and her work about 4 or 5 times by chance. I'm so fucking inspired that I'm going to grow my hair, dye it orange, and wear it in a messy circle braid or glorious curls to family functions, and I'm gonna be god damned proud of it. I can't wait!
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, BUY ME THIS, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, REALLY FUCKING GAY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Yesterday I went to see the experimental shorts at the RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS film festival at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
One that stood out for me was DANIEL BARROW'S film Artist Statement. He used an old computer painting/animation program to great visual effect while candidly narrating about how he was feeling about his art and why he creates.
I wrote to him when I got home, partly to gush and partly to ask if I could use his images.
Here's an excerpt:
I was really moved by ARTIST STATEMENT. I was also envious that you so eloquently expressed so many of the feelings I'm having about where I'm at in my career right now. Shame, honesty, and fear are themes that I really want to bring out in my work and I really loved how succinctly you addressed those points in the voiceover while illustrating them so damn brilliantly on the screen. That paint program is amazing and how you used it was inspiring.
The pressure to create is also such a counter-intuitive part of the package so it was nice to see that an artist I respected was willing to divulge his self-perceived (because I would not have known that you were struggling) shortcomings.
So if you can, see the film. At least check out HIS SITE (especially the Snow Globe section and the Trading Cards which you can buy for me if you want to....)
Oh and there was a great score for the short by THE BALLET.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, BUY ME THIS, NARCISSISM, REALLY FUCKING GAY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Last week my friend BECKY emerged from her unabomber cabin in the remote wilds of Jasper, drove across the country, and then rang my doorbell. I thought I'd post a few of her photos and tell you to go visit HER SITE.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
I had seen quite a few of OLIVER HUSAIN'S videos before, and had met Oliver a couple times, but didn't put the person and the art together until a couple days ago when I came across his website.
Here's one starring the very funny Alex called "I HATE PAPA":
And a clip from "RON & LEO" (I have yet to see the full version of this, but would really like to):
Check out the rest of his sometimes hilarious, sometimes absurd, and always amazingly visual work HERE.
Here's one starring the very funny Alex called "I HATE PAPA":
And a clip from "RON & LEO" (I have yet to see the full version of this, but would really like to):
Check out the rest of his sometimes hilarious, sometimes absurd, and always amazingly visual work HERE.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, REALLY FUCKING GAY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
One of my faves, ERWIN OLAF, has given his site the update it deserves.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
I've now had the pleasure of working with artist JEREMY BAILEY on a couple of small projects and can't believe I haven't blogged about him before.
I first saw his work on the 640 480 VIDEO COLLECTIVE WEBSITE and sent his Video Valentine to many an acquaintance, but none a lover. Aw. 640 480 also had a controversial/esoteric exhibition at Nuit Blanche this year at Gallery TPW.
Please watch his amazing video work on HIS WEBSITE or on HIS YOUTUBE PAGE.
Jeremy gets hate mail for his videos (I find that so crazy). He also explained to me that tendrils are for flora and tentacles are for fauna.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, NOBODY LIKES A NERD, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Thank god someone finally made fun of Bono. I've stopped talking to people who think Bono is a good person. CLICK HERE to see the South Park episode that explains Bono's origins.
Labels: BAD DOG, BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, HOW TO PROCRASTINATE, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Check out THIS INTERVIEW with Andy Warhol as channelled through john 228.
Who knew OLIVER LARIC was so cute?
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Here are some beautifully done animated GIFs that aren't just flyers sent to you on MySpace that give you seizures:
ULILLILLIA'S MIND GAME VIDEOS
Also check out her TIPSNTRICKS. Okay just spend hours on
Via ART FAG CITY
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, HOW TO PROCRASTINATE, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Wasn't even part of the show. This made me think of you Claire.
Labels: BUY ME THIS, REALLY FUCKING GAY, SEX, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE