Visual Ballads

I know we are not supposed to answer our critics but a person came to my art show and  Said I was perpetrating negative stereotypes about gay men. That gay men are sad and lonely. If I had photographed “abs, dicks and butt cheeks” I would be celebrated but I photographed my neighbors and some can’t handle reality. The person went on to say these images shouldn’t be up for public viewing.

1)       I think the viewer was pushing his own personal fears onto the images.

2)      These are pictures of real people to say they shouldn’t be seen is saying that these characters that live in the local area shouldn’t be seen. That we should sweep under the rug what we don’t find attractive about our community.

3)      I can only photograph what I understand about myself, if the images are lonely it’s a shared loneliness. I photographed a wide range of locals from an 18 year old to a man who is 75, they share the same solitude. This body of work is about unity.  

4)      These pictures are a 125^th of a second snap shot of the sitter. The sitters don’t live in these spaces; I’m only using the sitters as music notes to write my own song.

5)      And like music we listen to ballads to celebrate our loneness, isolation and solitude but I’m not a singer I’m a photographer and these images are my visual ballads.  

Jeff (Out Takes)

I photographed Jeff during the summer and these were the two pictures I liked the most, they have some minor flaws like a cut off hand in one. I had planned to re-photograph Jeff to fine tune our photo magic together, but the second shoot hasn’t happened. I keep coming back to look at these. I decided to post them anyway. Musicians have B-sides and outtakes of their catalogues and I figured why can’t photographers.

Danr

Oscar

John

Christopher

Matthew

Charles

The top image is my favorite from this set. We sort of just went from room to room taking pictures. The bottom two don’t really go with the top three but they were all shot within the same time frame.

Steve-O

This is Steve-O, he is deaf. He wrote me on Facebook saying I snubbed him at the local Albertsons. That he recognize me from Facebook. After I apologized he agreed to sit for me. It was interesting not having verbal influence over my subject. I would make gestures and he understood most of them. It was fun.

Vincent

Mike

David John

It takes balls to invite a photographer into your home. The camera can be an intimidating instrument. I’m fortunate to know people who are confident and open to being transparent.

Jared

I’m working on two finals. One is a documentary set where a person invites me into their home and we do a shoot. It was raining and there wasn’t enough window light to expose an image. These images are a combo of flash and window light.

John

Trying to fix the falling back wall, either distorted Jor-El’s head or crop too much of the bathroom door. We were in a tight space.

Anthony with Eyeliner

It has always been important to me to have older gay friends. I was the first gay in my family I often felt like I was the only gay. As a teen I took some musical theater classes and met some older gays who really gave me perspective. Any young person who has grandparents or older friends knows how they love to talk about what it was like in their day. But those conversations helped me remove my own “gay” out of the isolation box and into the universal and I’m thankful for that.