Visions of Excess

Things to do on a Sunday in Toledo

2010-05-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

Closer to the edge

2010-05-28T12:16:00.001-07:00

Hooded

2010-05-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

Self-contained

2010-05-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

The whole “self-contained” thing is a work in progress. I truly believed when I returned home from Los Angeles last October, I was better equipped mentally for my return to Toledo. It’s been a grind though. Taking pics, promoting events, dabbling politically, hanging with friends – anything to be busy and productive. I came home because my dad is sick (on top of my father being sick, my brother-in-law was diagnosed with leukemia on Christmas). It was the only choice I felt I could make, and I left a lot back in Los Angeles to make it. Something Andi wrote back then touched me and helped to reaffirm the decision I made:

http://shesawred.blogspot.com/2009/10/home.html

But Toledo hasn’t been kind. It seems folks built up their own little fiefdoms while I was gone. My return has been met by outright attack from a few folks, and the attacks have continued to this day. In an incredibly insular community like model photography, this has been disruptive. I won’t lie. It hurts. I’m just trying to book shoots, do my thing and create something that will last. My trust in people right now is probably at the lowest point it’s ever been. My friendship with Andi has been the one constant. My restraint over the past five months has surprised even me when it comes to my lack of a response to the garbage being thrown at me. I try to remind myself that I’ve been an active photographer since 2002 and created a scene folks have enjoyed for the most part since 2005. I’ve done my best to help some people along the way. I’ve had ugly moments too, misunderstandings and total breakdowns in communications with others. I drop the ball on occasion. Still, I always strive to never be deliberately hurtful to others. I think this is what infuriates me the most. It seems that with much of the younger set, cultivating a “total asshole” persona is some kind of badge of honor. I’m not going to try to fight such a mindset. It’s a zero sum game. I’ll continue to do what I do, avoid the explosive encounters and circumnavigate folks who derive their entertainment at the expense of others. There’s some growth I can believe in.

Transgress

2010-05-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

You always remember your first time . .

2010-04-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

From the very first and second shoots I ever did, back in NYC in 2002. Black and white crack added 2010.

Newly Born

2010-04-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Archive fever continued. An older poem:

NEWLY BORN

You speak to me as a sister, though I am no relation
Trapped in this prison of flesh
Wanting to cower and hide, a traitor to my own kind
You know me better than I
I am like a wound, taking all the pain within
No aim, no direction, no logocentric lie
I am a repository for something new
And I know not what, just the pain of my own abasement
The body blows I hide so well
Degenerative damage only known to me
And you say, “Here is the enigma
For softness is born of strength”
An enigma for sure, for where is the strength?
I only know the softness, the timidity
The overwhelming fear of not being loved
Who is to be born?
She says, You and I are born
For if you truly look, you see
If you truly touch, you are touched
And so see her as she truly is
My voice is compelled by her beauty
In the face of the sublime I cry
Feelings of tension and release as I am seduced
The receptacle, the repository, bursts
I am emptied out, destroyed, reborn
As I desire to complete her, so I complete myself
I have been recast in her role
My voice resounds, for I am beautiful!
Those idols of the cave are finally lost to me
I am one with my beginning, carnal and thunderous
Yet pure and proud, subtle and instinctive
I need not approximate, penetrate, capture
I stand apart, yet it is us or nothing
There is no genesis or apocalypse without me
Let it fall, let the invisible barriers be annulled
For I am ready . . .
And yet there is still the enigma
For there is always the tempest
I am not indifferent to her suffering
Her lack, her want, her need
You must be common in your appearance
No need for adornment, for the play set to begin
She must be less kept, ripe and heavy for the ritual
A formless beauty for my brutal vision
My automatons do my bidding
Handsome and desirable, unthinking and unwavering in loyalty
A cold, brutal plan without pathos
Let her be gagged and silenced
No hint of sympathy to fall on uncaring ears
There can be no capitulation, no charm to save her
She is a woman in every sense
Free of ignorance, secure in herself and who she is
Overpowered by all too human automatons
Nameless and faceless in commonality
Yet I alone have the key
For I am ready . . .
She is ripe for the slaughter
As I am vacant, emptied out, filled with ice and fire
Gagged, a cloth crushes her tongue
She is perfect in her fury and humiliation
Full and lethargic, divided and pregnant
Taken by one of my own, eager in his service
She is divided and at my mercy, completely vulnerable
Her pathetic state moves me
Can she sense my desire, my need for appropriation?
How I adore her, need her
She must be treated nobly
For her secret, her mystery, will be torn from her alive
And there is the enigma
That softness is born from strength
To know the flattering, you must know the destructive
The desire for the origin, the torture, the annihilation
The need for abasement and possession
To not censor but to understand
To be newly born.

Iterations

2010-04-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

Raw and Wriggling . . . The Virtue of Selfishness . . . Beautiful Lies . . . “365” Day 1

Are you in love with the “pretty pretty,” the cracked out color and the school of “I’m superior because I’m a Photoshop hack”? Well, suburban youth must be served, and it’s all the rage with them. Didn’t you know? I’ve been on the periphery of this debate before, remembering the fawning of folks over oversaturated soft focus imagery. The addiction came and went. Now we have HDR crack, Lightroom and scads of new presets for the “compositionally” challenged. If this works for you and your vapid subjects, well good on you. I suppose everyone has to get their self-esteem boosts somehow. Still, don’t let your love for the newest hip thing lead you to denigrate the work of artists who get composition, the rule of thirds, focal points and whatnot. Such a position makes you like a child . . . wait . . . most of you are children. I err when I become enamored with your vision and forsake my own. The new mantra should be, “Don’t even think about using that brush, Boyd.” I cheapen my vision when I don’t hold true to it. My vision is at the edge of a focal point – show me what’s on the inside, raw and wriggling. I am enamored with the honesty of the work of photographers like Geoff Cordner, Richard Kern, Eric Kroll, James Graham and Melvin Moten Jr. There is something to be said about the honesty of simplicity.
But, let us return to the “pretty pretty.” I can put myself in the shoes of the model who wants “pretty” pictures that are about beauty. Contrast this with the vision I call my own. I’ve done “pretty.” I’m pretty much done with “pretty.” I’ve been doing this long enough to know what I want and unless you are paying my rent, what I want holds sway. I’ll shoot your vision, but mine has to be shot as well. The artist doesn’t shoot just for the sake of shooting. The artist shoots to bring their vision to life. Call it “the virtue of selfishness” if you would. My models don’t have to be models. They have to convey a depth though that communicates to me and my audience. I have been through the phases of shooting pretty portfolio work, portraits, art nudes, and editorial nudes. All of these phases have led me here, a zeitgeist in the here and now. The world is not a pretty place and humanity is not pretty. I will not tell “the beautiful lie.”
I diverge from Oscar Wilde’s path: “ . . . Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.” Enough with artifice and dishonesty. I’m reminded of the girl who while she acknowledges her friend has been slurred by another beyond the pale, she can’t support him because the other has bought her friendship. She’s afraid she’ll lose something by doing the right thing. This is humanity in this day and age. More and more, my art needs to reflect this. There is only human frailty. I had two artists I respect completely tell me today that I need to take my camera to the streets to capture the truth. There is where the honesty is. Art should provoke, not lie.
Here’s a start. I jumped on the bandwagon of the “365 Project,” because the human face and eyes will always reflect the truth you need. Here are a few outtakes from day one. I'll even indulge with a few self-portraits several times a week.

Seeing and Believing

2010-04-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

A world of insomniacs have deadened the muse
The idol of the marketplace fixes us in its unholy worship
The silence of spirit covers the landscape
Devastated, we can only look through carnal eyes
The eyes of spirit lost focus long ago
What happened to the invisible - the inaudible
Another world within our own?
To this wondrous testament of seeing and believing?
To dream is to sleep
To sleep is to dream
And when we dream we embrace the specters of imagination
We hold court and love
Intercourse with the unimaginable
We feel the erotic cascade, the sensation most dear
And then we believe.
Ceremony and representation, yet so much more
We thinking animals think in metaphors
Our greatest gift
To designate something so fundamental, so basic
A rhyme, an opposition - a reality beyond
There is sex with your violence
A horror indifferent to life
It will hover above the abyss, annul all meaning
Come raining down with fire to transform those who dare believe
The fire that begins with the senses and returns to free them
No pleasure without pain
No crime, no art, no pain, no joy
Imagination prefigures all
But you must believe and you must sing
For the most sacred ceremony.
It is center and pivot like a mad, rambling god
Dispensing epiphanies, perversions, and conclusions from its dark pool
A maelstrom of passions quite often unknowable
It is plural, ever expanding with no geometric logics
Borrowing from location and setting
Society and history - the individual temperament
Opportunity begets chance and the capture of a moment
Ignore the classes and hierarchies to stir the imagination
Be the lightning rod for that primordial power
That drives to new addictions, false passions, and slavery
Will yourself to sleep, to dream some more
To free your heart, your intellect and mind
For to dream is to see with live eyes
To believe again.

Archive Fever

2010-04-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

Something I wrote back in 2005. Still struggling with the paralysis.

We are always attempting to find a way out of that 'originary darkness.' The claim is always that we are learning from the mistakes of the past and that the dominant paradigm we embrace is somehow 'forward' thinking. We speak of the past as something we can learn from. It's either a mistake not to be repeated or an achievement to be honored. And yet we forget that every movement in this discipline of thinking is one cycle built upon another, mistake upon mistake or achievement upon achievement. It really does depend upon your interpretation. For instance, I posit that philosophy in America has always been pretty much a bastardization. Not philosophy. Not really. Rather, while continental (European) thought operates as impetus, pretext, or guide, American 'philosophy' functions as accomplice. It's either adversarial thought assimilated by a system or thought created by said system in the form of state propaganda. To be fair to American thought, philosophy has been cheaply utilized by other states in times gone by. It's just that never has philosophical discourse ever been so overwhelmed and ultimately silenced in this modern age. The task of thinking requires a response to September 11, 2001. One could say that this has occurred everywhere except in the United States. In the United States, all discourse has acted as reaction rather than thought. There has been no 'moving beyond.' The impulse has been a Messianic urge to make the world safe for democracy and in all actuality Capitalism. We regard Capitalism as a permeating structure in the same vein as structures of the unconscious, the church, history, and language. The philosophical task from the 1960's through the 1990's was to break into small camps and argue the weight and impact of these various structures. The complaint being of course that these varying camps were all theory and no praxis, that the only thing being glorified was process. Brief language was paid to beginnings, real beginnings that is. When utilized, the language was utilized to say, "We're all acted upon, so while we try to think our way out this box, we may as well play." Unfortunately, such playfulness is no match for a fundamentalist movement's will-to-power or a state's Messianic urge. So, I beg to ask the question of "where do we go from here?" I would say we go to the beginning. When I say 'the beginning', I'm speaking of the real beginning . . . the source. I'm speaking of sex. I'm speaking of woman. Of course the mainstream response would be that this approach cheapens the discourse. I won't even get into this, mainly because mainstream thought is by nature sexphobic and hostile to woman. And my personal rationalization is that I've always been driven by my fascination with society's and my own conception of femininity. I'm a photographer of 'beautiful' women. My art screams that I do more, say more. The hovering beauty with nothing to say isn't enough. If there was to be a catchphrase for this, it would be: " . . . because beauty has something to say." Then, of course, there is the personal motto I list on my web portfolio: "I'm the writer who became a photographer to better tell a story." I peruse a lengthy list of my journals (some I'll be utilizing here) and it saddens me to say there hasn't been much written since the first half of 1992. September 11, 2001 and the following 3 1/2 years paralyzed me more than I'd like to admit. The last 3 1/2 years have been about a clueless, ineffectual praxis. So, here we go, to the beginning. It is, after all, what Martin Heidegger writes: "Perhaps philosophy shows most forcibly and persistently how much Man is a beginner. Philosiphizing means nothing other than being a beginner."

Mysteriously erotic . . .

2010-04-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

Sophie Nova

2010-03-26T12:43:00.001-07:00

I was browsing through portfolios last night and came upon Sophie Nova's, who has newly christened red hair. She was one of my latter shoots in L.A. and definitely a delight to work with.

Jana

2010-03-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

I want to be Czech sometimes.

Black Tape Sessions Collection

2010-03-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Black Tape Sessions Collection by Boyd Hambleton

LifeSize Kym Dollwithout all that chatter

2009-12-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

In her words. :D

I am not from your tribe

2009-12-07T12:48:00.000-08:00

Minutiae

2009-12-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

Gimme' structure

2009-12-02T13:17:00.001-08:00

Preggers

2009-12-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

Show me what's on the inside

2009-11-27T13:16:00.001-08:00

Movement

2009-11-27T13:16:00.000-08:00

Prelude to a gagged kiss 2

2009-11-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

“Messianic.” This is one of the words used to describe the age we live in post-911. It’s a word to describe the United States in how it relates to the rest of the world. We’ll save you from the evils of Islam, communism or whatever else that isn’t amenable to unbridled capitalism. Swap in terms like utilitarianism or humanism if you like. They are all modes of how we engage the world. It’s all about control, the taking or surrendering of. The election of President Obama was said to represent a change from this paradigm. He was going to save us from all of this. There’s irony here. We need a savior to save us from saviors? No matter what your politics may be, someone is convinced they need to save you from some ill. Post-911, we were told we were now living in the post-postmodern era. We were being saved from a worldview that suggested we might try to find some solace or joy in the process rather than in a solution that relies on the same failed methods and runs us in circles. My worldview isn’t cynical. My worldview pretty much says “let’s play.” From a faith-based perspective, it would be the equivalent of “make a joyful noise.” Do what thou will and enjoy it, because life is too damned short to be bound to societal prescriptions. The political is personal, and if a little pony play will set you free, have at it.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I have little taglines I like to use on web sites like Model Mayhem, Facebook, and MySpace. “I can’t be good. They won’t let me.” “Gags for pretty gals.” “I tie your girlfriends up. They like it!” Being cheeky is where it’s at for me. I take myself seriously sometimes. I take the creative process seriously. I want to capture a moment in time with my art that is memorable, no matter what my editorial vision is. If I’m slapping tape on your mouth or am fitting it with a ball gag or tying you up in knots, how serious do you want me to be? I’ll be serious enough to gauge what your limits are and if kink is something you are remotely interested in. I’ll be serious enough to pay strict attention to your safety. But damn it, this should be fun, or why are we doing it? Being an adult is overrated, and I do prescribe to the Freudian convention that all art is play, a return to childhood. It’s just that our games are a lot more elaborate. Where does this put me in respect to everyone else in society? Mainstream folk get on their soapboxes and contextually abuse the DSM to marginalize those who play at BDSM. If we’re not mentally defective, we’re perverts with a capital “P”. One philosophical persuasion will say the one while one will say the other. There’s your “audacity of hope.” There is none. Make your life a surrealistic expression. Create a world of your own and go there.

Empty Spaces

2009-11-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

The audacity of hope . . .

2009-11-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

and other pop culture myths.

Editorial

2009-09-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

The trick is to build the story around the writing.

MY INTERVIEW FOR "BOYD'S APARTMENT"

2009-08-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve been interviewed about my photography. The last time I was interviewed was by a newspaper in Ohio, and the subject matter was oh so serious. This time, the interview was conducted by the deliriously funny and beautiful Krystal Irene. Answering her questions was quite the challenge.

Hi Boyd!

You have a degree in philosophy. What is your theory about attracting men that do not put out or have a severe case of erectile dysfunction?

Haha!!! Let’s see. You’re super-smart and sexy, which causes all kinds of performance anxiety in the guys that are interested in you. You should be a dominant. Then they’ll have no choice.
Wait. This is about you! Sorry, sweetie. Who or what inspired you to become a photographer? Was it an established photographer or perhaps a muse?
The funny thing is that I had never used a camera in any serious capacity before 2002 except for taking vacation photos. I’ve always been drawn to the work of Steve Diet Goedde, Richard Kern, Christophe Mourthe, and Steven Klein. Early muses were Ashley Renee, Emily Marilyn, and Dita. The identification with bondage and fetish was there early on.
It is the human condition to seek satisfaction. What satisfies Boyd?
I am a bit of a poster-child for self-gratification. What satisfies me? Nothing. I will never think that I’m desirable enough or that I have achieved enough.
What’s the most hysterical model/photographer moment you’ve experienced?
I can think of the most embarrassing, but I don’t know about funny. My entire time as a photographer has been marked by me being a bit spacey during shoots and amusing the models I work with. One of the funnier sets I’ve shot was you with the ring gag and nipple clamps. Now that was hysterical.
You also have a degree in literature. Who’s your favorite author?
Faulkner. He pretty much sums up how I view time and how we are all the accumulation of so much debris.
If I attached tassels to my Bengal’s nipples, would you photograph it or consider it animal cruelty?
Haha! Just for you, Krystal! As long as your Bengal is happy, I’m game.
Animals love bondage! They just can’t communicate their love. What about me flogging a cow that happens to be wearing a ball gag? Would you love to photograph that hot girl on cow action?
The visuals are too frightening. I have bad memories of tipping cows from the time I lived in Florida. The mushroom tea flashbacks are pretty frightening too.
What draws you to bondage?
This is the 64,000-dollar question. I first started my relationship with the Internet back in 1998, and some of the first sites I stumbled upon were Ashley Renee’s site and another site called BedroomBondage.com. Ashley would write in her journal for every site update, and I found myself identifying with ideas like surrendering control and coming to terms with various trust issues. So, while my photography might identify me as a dominant or a switch, I am very much a submissive in person.
If you were invincible for one day, where would you go?
I’ve always wanted to be a star running back for The Ohio State University football team.
Do you duct tape your penis to your leg to keep nude photo shoots professional (you totally don’t have to use this! HAHA!)?
I’m thinking that this is the one question that could get me into trouble. Seriously, guys get erections when the wind blows. I’m a guy. It doesn’t happen that often, because I’m zoned into shooting the “Boyd angles” and getting the shot. When it does, though, you’re hoping that the model doesn’t notice or is savvy enough to not care.
Do you think chemistry between model and photographer is important?
The model being comfortable is key. Usually, the first twenty or so stills establish the chemistry and set the comfort level. The model has to buy into my vision for the vision to materialize.
How does being a photographer affect your love life?
They told me when I was a writer that being a writer would get me laid. I have no love life, nor did I have a love life before I was a photographer.
If you were abducted by a dominatrix alien, would you be open to supernatural coitus?
Only if she looked like Isabella Sinclaire or you! HAHA!
Do you dabble in any other mediums of art?
I’ve published poetry before and used to be a bit prolific when it came to writing. I’ve also done a bit of stage acting.
You’ve moved to Los Angeles fairly recently – what are the pros and cons? You mentioned that LA girls could eat you alive. Is that a pro or a con?
The pros are that this is the center of the universe when it comes to a diverse group of artistic mediums. The potential to create, and the resources for this creation, are nearly endless. The two biggest cons are how expensive it is to live out here and how “non-welcoming” so many folks out here can be. I’m an open book and about as friendly as someone can be. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been greeted with “what do you want?” from folks out here. When I said that LA girls could eat me alive, I meant it. Save for the male masters of the universe out here, it’s the ladies who are in charge. Being that I’m submissive and all, this can be a good thing. It’s not good right now, because I’m on the outside looking in at this dynamic. We’ll see how I feel when my very own chain puller finds me.
If we were sailing in my imaginary yacht and I threw your ass overboard, would you sink, swim or walk on water?
Another interesting question. A very old friend of mine once said that no matter what happened, I had a way of landing on my feet. And, frankly, ending up in LA is further proof of this. Still, several broken bones and lots of arthritis later, I don’t think I want to test this theory. I’d say I’ll “swim.”
Do your photos reveal you or the model?
I’d like to think they reveal both. A peer once wrote that photography is my mistress. I can’t help but to project myself onto my models. Still, the very editorial focus of my work insists that the model give me a glimpse of her psyche.
Any future projects we should keep an eye out for?
The Black Tape Sessions 2 is being released simultaneously with Boyd’s Apartment. There’s a big book of nudes I’d like to release this summer as well as a book of shower photos I started when I first moved here. I’m a big fan of the work of photographer Steven Klein and would love to start work on a theme involving fashion and slavery.

You’re the best!
Thank you ma’am.

PRELUDE TO A GAGGED KISS

2009-08-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

Messianic

English

Adjective

messianic (not comparable)

Positive messianic

Comparative not comparable
Superlative none (absolute)

Of, relating to, or resembling a messiah

The new world we live in demands we believe in something, anything. It’s not that I believe in nothing, it’s that I don’t believe in your prescription. One hegemony begets another.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

- W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Here I sit on a warm August Tuesday in Los Angeles, wondering what above all else comes next. I want the space to create, and I have it. As for so many folks everywhere, though, making enough money to stay afloat is the primal urge.
Juxtaposition.
Take a 300 and some odd feet square efficiency apartment, a mini-kitchen and a walk-in closet that leads to a smallish bathroom and what do you have? You have a limited play space to make an editorial statement. Noted, it might seem difficult to convey anything when you’re wearing a hood with an enclosed blindfold and attachable penis gag making it impossible to speak.

Still, if you ask the model, she would prefer not to be released from her “disgrace.” “Disgrace” is in quotes, because words have meaning, often multiple meanings for me. “Disgrace” in this case doesn’t carry its usual negative connotation. In our world, to be in control is the epitome of success. A lack of control is unsavory. Flip it. Understanding that one has little to no control is the key to understanding one’s self. I am reminded of this from a play session I participated in at Bondage Ball in Hollywood July 4. Being restrained with a hood on my head while being flogged by a beautiful woman is Boyd at his happiest. Well, insomuch as when I want to suspend the pretense of control. I’m quite sure I could tick off a list of motivations for this and still come up lacking. For instance, each and every one of us wants to feel desirable. We all need to be loved in a way that validates us. We all need to be heard, and sometimes we wish we all could be silenced because of personal shortcomings. We all need to feel. Pain is so relative, and when we can experience it without becoming unhinged, we rejoice.
When I first started as a photographer, a world-renowned fetish photographer explained how I should treat each modeling session as a scene. In the process of explaining this to a model I shot with recently, she was actually concerned. My point to her was not that I desired to create an actual scene, but that power exchange play that isn’t editorial in nature or that doesn’t seek to capture the real finds itself lacking. These Indoor Games played out wherever I may be will always endeavor to achieve this.

A few more works

2008-12-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

Submission and Noise

2008-12-01T13:10:00.000-08:00

Life changes never come with an easy transition. The events of the past few days sure make this evident. A few folks are mad at me because of the move I'm making. A few different folks are mad at me because a certain person's agenda has me atop her hit list. Whatever. Getting angry is a sure fire way to make things worse. My last two posts that were deleted attest to this. Anyway, I have things to do. Packing of books and those belongings I'll be taking to LA with me begins this week. I have an exhibit running at the Collingwood that runs through December and the final group shoot I host before I leave at the end of December. The book project I started working on in July is finally reaching fruition. I set a minimum page count of 108 pages and finishing it while attempting to negotiate grad school was way difficult. When the project was in its initial stages, Katie had offered to write the introduction for me. The idea of framing a book of 108 pages of models with black tape on their mouths poses some interesting challenges.

My writing of late has been more raw and a bludgeon than anything else. It transfers over into how I function socially. I know other photographers who pretty much shoot the same subject matter as me who look for the spiritual energy of their subjection in motion. I'm looking point blank at the raw and visceral. I'm one of those guys who is always wondering what's on the woman's mind. Insecurity? Yeah. It's also fair to state that those times that information is divulged, you might not like the answer.

The past is a pebble in my shoe. I've been given sage advice too many times to count and my ignoring it has led to nothing but pain. "TMI." "Don't shit where you work.." "Your wealth is your friends." "The measure of a person is how they deal with their loneliness." When I plunge forward disregarding these things, I pay for it. I'm of the mind to disregard the drama of this weekend except for how some folks who I did regard highly responded to it. I'm an odd duck. I can feel lonely in a crowd but am sincere in my love and loyalty to my friends - the real ones. They cringe when I get emotastic in public forums. Can't say that I blame them. I'm clinically depressed and should have attempted to find a way to continue being treated for it when I was separated from my job. I didn't. That's on me. Drinking aggravates the problem, and that's on me too. It doesn't matter that I don't do it that often. It matters that almost every time I do it, it ends badly. So, happiness comes in creation and interpretation. This, ultimately, is what is fueling the move to LA - this and the fact it will be the first time I can afford to make the move. It's time to find some new solutions to some old problems. The plan for LA is to hit the ground running creating.

"Friendship is dirty. Bathe often." My friend Andi said this. So true. As I said, my friends know me. They know I respect women and my models in particular. I've been doing this for a while, and it's why I can shoot with pretty much who I want when I want. Emo rants in public forums do not equate to me wanting to fuck my models. In over five years of shooting, I've never attempted to date or made one sexual advance to a model I've worked with. I'm kind of shy socially as well as having a healthy respect for the process of creation. It's easy for someone who has an agenda and an axe to grind against you to play connect the dots with unrelated items and make a case against you. The axe to grind was simply based on the fact that I was making no secret of my distaste of her use and abuse of a friend of mine. I was attempting to call her on it on the night in question. The lesson learned is not to engage in pointless battles for friends unless they ask you to. Another lesson learned is not to get into a battle with someone who will do anything and say anything to defame your character. I've said enough about this. The intrawebs and the community we work in are interesting institutions. I don't get out and about enough on line or socially to spread the word as she does. People are going to believe what they believe. Her fanboys can call me a GWC all they wish, although I am a bit sad that a model or two who have met me and should know better have been left with negative impressions of me.

So, onward and upward to LA and expanding my horizons.
P.S. When I finally have the courage to ask a woman out on a date or proposition one, y'all will be the first to know. It won't be a model.

Oh, and the images above are all from my "Submission and Noise" exhibit hanging at the CAC. It's a good reminder as to why I created this blog - to showcase my work and my thoughts on it. No more, no less.

Time to put on my big boy pants

2008-11-30T13:09:00.000-08:00

This isn't an idle threat. I deleted my post from this morning, because I've decided to treat this issue like an adult. As an adult, actions have consequences. Thanks to my returning to my employer in September, I have the benefit of free legal services. Sooo, since a person's blog has effectively defamed my character (not mentioning me by name doesn't diminish the very real expectation she was talking about me). Any judge will agree with me about this. If the blog post defaming me isn't deleted by tomorrow night at midnight, I will be speaking to an attorney Monday morning.

Toxic

2008-11-29T13:09:00.000-08:00

So, it's been six months since I posted. Life happened, job, school, changes. I'm pretty much completely out of the loop, and yet still I find myself on the lips or in the blogs of others (and not in a positive fashion). Face it, I can be a little emo bastard. Too much time on my hands and/or too much alcohol equals an unhappy Boyd. Then, again, I've been working too hard of late to have to worry about such things. There are people in this world who are super-talented at formulating Class A Drama. They'll take a little nugget of truth and spin it into an outrageous campaign of lies and character assassination. Congrats, young lady, you've found your true calling in life. Where to start? You trashed a good friend of mine, spread the rumors about him yourself and now you lie about your duplicity. Wow, you've even managed to worm your way back into his heart. You trash a scene that pretty much put you and others on the proverbial map. You trashed me, saying how I want to "fuck" the models I work with. Dear, I was emo long before I became a photographer. In five years of shooting, I have never once asked a model to date me, have sex with me or anything of the sort. Why do you think I can shoot with pretty much whomever I want? I've been doing this a bit longer than you and will be creating long after people tire of your miserable, toxic ass. You talk about rumors when you're the one who damn well makes sure they have a long shelf life. When a group of folks cleaning out a room stumble upon something very damaging to someone, there's a strong possibility that someone or a few might say something, particularly out of concern for that someone they love (she's got more talent in her pinkie than you have in your whole body). We all love her and care about her so STFU. What we really don't like is someone like you poisoning friendships and relationships that were built well before you became the stain that you are. You, frankly, are an emotional terrorist. You wreak your damage without a care in the world. End yourself. Seriously.

I wish

2008-06-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

that everything I do didn't seem to be an annoyance these days. I feel like I get on so many folks' nerves, and that the only reason they don't come out and say it is they don't want to be mean. When you're 42 years old, you're not supposed to be needy. Job. Love life. A sense of accomplishment. All these things are supposed to happen in your twenties. I am where I'm at in this point of my life because I fucked things up. I can't wish myself out of this predicament. I have to show some patience and do the things that will make my life a little more fulfilling increment by increment. The road through is bumpy. My rough journey scares some folks away and disgusts others. I feel quite often that some younger folks I know almost feel as if I don't deserve to live. TMI on Boyd. How dare he make me feel uncomfortable by existing. The best revenge is success fuckers.

I'm trying to forgive . .

2008-05-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

. . but she has not once made the effort to make peace with me. She tells all about her scars, fears and failings, but for me to do the same is somehow abhorrent to her. She's beneath my contempt because of this.

More Dani!

2008-03-05T13:08:00.000-08:00

Ahhh, a new model!

2008-03-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

She's a keeper! Dani made me blush sooo much.

PXE

2008-03-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

Katie is the newest resident here at the CAC, super talented and just a joy to be around!

Ayla

2008-03-01T13:06:00.001-08:00

Yayyy for Orixx!

2008-03-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

Amaya

2008-03-01T13:05:00.001-08:00

Iris is art (part 3)

2008-03-01T13:05:00.000-08:00

Iris is art (part 2)

2008-03-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Iris is art (part 1)

2008-02-19T13:04:00.000-08:00

I have wanted her in front of my camera for the past year and I'm overjoyed to say I finally got to shoot with Iris! Thank you!

Alkemie

2008-02-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

She makes me smile.

No resentment here

2008-02-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

Some folks on MM seem to think I have a resentment against a specific female moderator on MM. No, not all. I think she's an awesome art model and a super talented photographer to boot. Hell, for all I know, she loves puppies too. It's beside the point. Whether or not I think the photographer she has issues with on MM is a disaster personally is immaterial. She's supposed to set an example, and the example she is setting is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with MM. Clear?

Ughhhh, Mayhem

2008-02-15T13:03:00.000-08:00

I have lots to talk about, but I’m debating the point if there’s even a need to say it. Why bother? People’s attitudes, pre-conceived conceptions of people generally don’t change. I’ve tried not to ever publicly attack folks here. It seems, though, that my name is on the keyboards of a few folks out there. Should I stoop to their level? I think maybe just this time. I have a few things to get off my chest, and I’ll feel better for doing it.

I am member 152 on Model Mayhem meaning I’ve pretty much been there since day 1. I’ve seen my share of drama, site changes, people coming and going, etc etc,. My first year and a half there, I posted a little more than a thousand times. I got into a few heated debates, told Theda she wasn’t nice a few times, but that was pretty much it. Around the end of 2006/beginning of 2007, I noticed MM was changing a bit and not for the better. Folks were beginning to divide into tribes. An influx of new members began posting in the OT forum with no other credentials other than that they could verbally terrorize folks better than others. I was disgusted and thought of leaving, but decided I’d instead stay and engage them. I even sought allies. I’m not ashamed to say I joined the XA site which houses a few banned MM members. Although these folks could be as mean spirited as some of the worst players on MM, I believe they wanted an MM that was fairly credible. They didn’t hesitate to put the smackdown on some of MM’s no talent hacks who have no credibility and shouldn’t have the influence on a forum that they do. Still, when a few of them created fake profiles to screw with some of the bigger asshats on MM, I wasn’t happy. It’s a simple wish, but I like to think the people I’m dealing with on line are actually real. It didn’t help either that some of the bigger debates I was in were colored by drunken posting after coming home from Goth Night every week. This is another sure way to lose credibility. Another bad choice I made in 2007 was to believe the infamous member Tripod was actually who he said he was. I had an agenda, and the whole “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing was working for me. He/she/whatever could be a lot more vulgar and wittier in dealing with some of MM’s legends in their own minds than I ever could. Still, reality has a way of becoming apparent sooner or later. When Tripod attacked former MM member Lorelai Oksana publicly, I called him/her on it. I don’t know why I did this in retrospect. Recent history has shown that Tripod isn’t the only former MM member who creates fake profiles solely for the sake of the entertainment of public character assassination. All of this drama and intrigue has led me to being brigged on MM 4 times since a year ago January. I’m tired of playing this tired game.

As much as I bitch about the moderators at MM, I really don’t have issues with them like I do with some of the OT asshats there. My particular observations are that if Ched is going to get his “purge” on, he should be consistent about it. If Iona Lynn is going to be a moderator, her personal grievances with certain photographers need to be settled in fucking private. Brian just needs to explain to me why he seems to be the one to brig me, or in other words: “What did I ever do to you?” I chatted with Mhana last November, and we both agree that MM OT jumped the shark last year. The entertainment value of the forums should never supersede the networking value. The whole Dirty Vegas episode pissed me off mainly because here is Tyler trying to bring some order and credibility back to the site, and then you have someone from off the site trying to escalate the drama on the site to the power of 10. Fuck that. I always thought that Kim von Seidl and I were digging at the issues on MM from different sides of the mountain, and that we could agree to disagree. Her tacit approval of Dirty Vegas, though, left me wondering if she’s just one more person who values the entertainment of a car wreck. I like the new rules on the site, and I like the fact that OT got a makeover. If folks are butthurt that they can’t act like pondscum anymore there anymore, let be the first to admit that I’m overjoyed that your cornflakes are getting peed on.

MM is just an industry community forum, and I really shouldn’t have to write this much to express how I feel. It displays a serious need for a change in my priorities. Unfortunately, some of us try to hard at times to control our environments. I think I’ll let the moderators and Tyler worry about that from now on. If the restructuring is any sign, they’ll do just fine. The sad fuckers who don’t get it can always leave.

Titania

2008-02-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

This is what the photo blog should be for

2008-02-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

a few highlights from the December CAC group shoot.

'cuz I always can't show my work just at the CAC

2008-01-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

Soooo . .

2008-01-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

. . you're too special to come to my events any more. You're too busy being the biggest prick on MM's glorified gopher. Get some self-esteem girl. I'm only emo part-time. What's your damage?

Random thought to end 2007

2007-12-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

If I hear a certain horrible photographer from Florida mention one more time how he wins all kinds of competitions and juried exhibitions with his work, I'm going to laugh myself senseless. Just saying.

Fetish fun with Gothic Mommy

2007-12-29T12:58:00.000-08:00

Miss Kittie

2007-12-27T12:57:00.000-08:00

Mayhem (part 2)

2007-12-23T12:56:00.000-08:00

Bullshit eventually walks. Sometime in the life of a model or photographer, you have to check your motivation. I’ll confine myself specifically to the models here. Maybe you’re a Muse, a hetaira as it were, and live to create. Maybe you’re a shrewd professional and have developed the acumen to market your looks. Maybe you just want to play dress up and want to be viewed as pretty. There is nothing wrong about any of these forms of motivation. You do have to be honest about them though. If it is just an escape for you from a life less ordinary, you’re going to find things difficult if you expect the same kind of reinforcement someone might get if they’re in it for the art or the paycheck. Keep it real. Yes it’s hard. But if you have unrealistic expectations, your disappointment will resonate. Then, eventually, no one will want to work with you.

Mayhem (part 1)

2007-12-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

Here’s the thing. When that lil’ old site MM was less than six months old, I had industry professionals telling me that the forums on the site were going to be the unmaking of many a photographer’s and model’s reputations. I believed these people then. I believe them now. I opened my own personal Pandora’s Box with posts I’d make after returning from the bar on my only night out of the week. This kind of posting started for me about a year ago. It started when I began to notice a new trend on MM: relatively new members whose only claim to fame was thousands of posts in a relatively short amount of time were operating in packs, ganging up on new members who might post something stupid or even dismissing site founders who didn’t kiss their asses. It inflamed me to the point where I decided to fight them. Fighting a mob is a zero sum game. You end up as a casualty. There’s no winning. Some things in this world are inwardly given: treating others with respect, fair play, paying your dues, knowing when to shut up and listen. There are photographers out there who command my respect. When they talk, I listen. They might be cold and brutal, but my silence is worth it. There are folks on MM who have been on the site for less than a year and have part of the industry not much longer. They show a lot of talent, creativity and potential. As human beings in general, though, they are more than lacking. Maybe it’s the artists’ curse, but they’re already legends in their own minds. I feel like telling them to see me in 4 or 5 years when they’ve paid their dues and know what they’re talking about. Funny thing is, model or photographer, most won’t be part of the industry anymore. Sooo, the next time they kindly feel like explaining the world according to them to me, I need to remember this.

Women are funny

2007-12-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

Women are funny. The whole being enigmatic thing is probably why I like them so much. It drives my photography. WG is right, photography is my mistress. Then I watch a woman (a model to be precise) go from being an ingénue who I can shoot wonderful ideas with into a legend in her own mind – a self-righteous and spiteful one at that. Who knew? I am the sum total of confusion when it comes to women. Bahhh. I take pictures. Being single might not be so bad after all.

Blind Tiresias

2007-12-03T12:55:00.000-08:00

“At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,”

T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

My judgment of taste

2007-11-20T12:54:00.001-08:00

A photographer friend speaks of the ultimate end of photography as the hunt for the perfect shot. Another way to put it is as the quest for the perfect signature piece. Such a photograph would not be a happy accident. Would it? It begins with the motivation and progresses through the steps which constitute my craft. It may be dangerous to say that what makes a photograph powerful is “inwardly given,” but the selection process normally doesn’t avail itself to a specific reason. Inasmuch as this is the case, that signature shot is a happy accident. To qualify this, though, I think the happy accident becomes more likely via an understanding of one’s craft and the eye to recognize something powerful and timely. I think of something Georges Bataille wrote in “The Solar Anus.” Bataille writes:

A man who finds himself among others is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others.

In bed next to a girl he loves, he forgets that he does not know why he is himself instead of the body he touches.

Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.

Love or infantile rage, or a provincial dowager’s vanity, or clerical pornography, or the diamond of a soprano bewilder individuals forgotten in dusty apartments.

They can very well try to find each other; they will never find anything but parodic images, and they will fall asleep as empty as mirrors.

It is out of this confusion where my photography attempts to create some sense of order, meaning. The greater the confusion, the greater the obsession to find that perfect shot. I wander through ruins, a bleak landscape that permeates my consciousness, and I attempt to create something that resonates within and for an audience. I cannot give voice to all of the confusion I experience, but my photography can offer a fair representation of at least some of it. It acts like a mirror in that it is one location where, left exposed, I am forced to be brutally honest. The tools at my disposal may be depth of field or an extreme focal point. It may be use of negative space. Any tool at my disposal that helps to tell a story is of benefit. How the story I tell rises to “art” ultimately is a judgment of taste. This is a subjective experience for my audience. As for my self, one can look to Sigmund Freud to consider the question of the conflicted individual. In “The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming,” Freud uses the example of the story writer and poet to articulate his views on the creative process. All artistic expression is served by Freud’s focus, though, as well as the audience and critic. According to Freud, all artistic expression is play, the creation of a world of fantasy or worlds of fantasy by the artist. As such, the aesthetic object is wish-fulfillment and conflict resolution on the part of the creator. It represents the diversity of human experience, the random and chaotic nature of the individual. Though its representations may be often quite similar, it bears the imprint of the individual, ever-changing and never quite the same. The same rationale applies to the effect artistic expression has on its audience. The pleasure the recipient receives comes from an infinite variety of experiences and interpretations, once again often similar but never quite the same.

My audience is quite varied in its reception to my photography. The formal art nudes that rely on depth of field are quick to receive artistic praise, while reception of my photography with extreme focal points is mixed. Consider Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to help me illustrate my point. No representation of the painting is necessary. The Mona Lisa is arguably history’s most famous piece of art. The individual with limited knowledge of the painting may ask why this so. One thing I know is that the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre in Paris. I know as well that the Mona Lisa is “art” and a classic. I know these things because they are part of my formal education. On the other hand, Walter Pater’s appreciation of the Mona Lisa far exceeds that of mine. Pater’s appreciation of the Mona Lisa was so keen, that poet William Butler Yeats considered the prose written by Pater as an independent work of art and included it in free verse form at the beginning of his Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936). What is it about the Mona Lisa that Pater finds so moving? Pater writes: “Hers is the head upon which “all the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how they would be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed!” What Pater writes is so moving – so much so that I wonder why I did not have a similar reaction. A poster of painting that did move used to hang in my room. Salvador Dali’s The Hallucinogenic Toreador does evoke strong feelings on my part. I see Dali’s vision, the marble busts and images of icons with auras surrounding them. I think of beauty, desire, God, and man-made religion. It represents my take on experience. I am conflicted, feeling the tug of different interests. What others may see in such a painting is beyond me. Yet, because of the emotions the painting evokes, I consider it a work of art of the highest order. I realize this is a judgment of taste on my part. I also realize that there is no standard that can validate my claim.

A mission statement just wouldn’t seem right without discussing aesthetics. Walter Pater writes: “Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness.” The key word is “human.” As long as humans are finite and conflicted creatures, my photography remains open to possibility.

The cruel practice of art

2007-11-20T12:54:00.000-08:00

To die alone is such a terrifying prospect. To die without desire being fulfilled is even more terrifying. Am I the sum total of my frustrated desire? I am painfully aware of my mortality. There is the sense that my day will come, sooner than I’d like. There is the awareness that my desire for youthful beauty is more than likely out of reach. At the core of this angst is the desire to leave some sort of record that I was here. My photography is a mad race against time in achieving this. If I explore all the painful facets of my desire, perhaps I can kill it. Georges Bataille writes:

We know that possession of the object we are afire for is out of the question. It is one thing to or another: either desire will consume us entirely, or its object will cease to fire us with longing. We can possess it on one condition only, that gradually the desire it arouses will fade. Better for desire to die than for us to die, though! We can make do with an illusion. If we possess its object we shall seem to achieve our desire without dying. Not only do we renounce death, but we also let our desire, really the desire to die, lay hold of its object and we keep it while we live on. We enrich our life instead of losing it.

One of my favorite models used to correspond with me using the signature “expression equals life.” There is that duality chasing me again. Creation of erotic imagery supplements desire. It fuels it as well. It is within this conflict that I create. I don’t create for your masters. I create for myself. Bataille writes in The Cruel Practice Of Art:

Yet it is from this double bind that the very meaning of art emerges – for art, which puts us on the path of complete destruction and suspends us there for a time, offers us ravishment without death. Of course, this ravishment could be the most inescapable trap – if we manage to attain it, although strictly speaking it escapes us the very instant we attain it. Here or there, we enter into death or return to our little worlds. But the endless carnival of artworks is there to show a triumph – in spite of a firm resolve to value nothing but that which endures – is promised to anyone who leaps out of the irresolution of the instant. This is why it is impossible to pay too much interest in excessive drunkenness, which penetrates the opacity of the world with those gratuitously cruel flashes in which seduction is tied to massacre, torture, and horror.

Don’t let it be said that I worship death, though my personal demons have made this possible on occasion. The creative urge, properly fulfilled, gives my life meaning. The visions I capture are not for everyone. I am not trying to be in a magazine, have my work captured in an ad campaign or sell a clothing line. Not that these are not legitimate goals for a photographer. I am creating a world that makes sense to me, and the process getting there may be as important as the end result.

That bitch called "reality"

2007-11-13T12:53:00.001-08:00

Reality is the void. Reality is that we live and ultimately die alone. There is nothing harsher than this. Slavoj Zizek says as much in Welcome To The Desert Of The Real: “The authentic twentieth-century passion for penetrating the Real Thing (ultimately the destructive void) through the cobweb of semblances which constitutes our reality thus culminates in the thrill of the Real as the ultimate ‘effect’, sought after from digitalized special effects, through reality TV and amateur pornography, up to snuff movies.” We want to get to the other side of meaning, knowing we can’t simply transcend certain realities. Immerse ourselves enough in the terror, and maybe we’ll become immune to it. I cannot transcend harsh reality by immortalizing your beauty. Maybe I can come to terms with it, though, if I expose its flaws as I expose mine. I am so socialized though. Get too close to those flaws, and I recoil in horror. Zizek writes: “Is not the ultimate figure of the passion for the Real the option we get on hardcore websites to observe the inside of a vagina from the vantage point of a tiny camera at the top of the penetrating dildo? At this extreme point, a shift occurs: when we get too close to the desired object, erotic fascination turns into disgust at the Real of the bare flesh.” Dualities present themselves to me. The desire to confront reality and become immune to its horror is met by socialization and the wish to transcend, to be immersed in some beautiful universal ideal. Call me cynical, but the longer I photograph women, the more I reject this ideal. This is not to say I am not aware of it. It is with me every time I photograph a subject. Recent criticism of my work gives me cause to address it. For instance, a fashion photographer wrote of me: “Whereas the older pictures were more of a presentation of a scene, the newer ones appear to be a peek into your bizarre twisted mind. I would like to see more story telling, better production value, and wider shots so we don't feel like we're looking through a telescope like voyeurs. I know you claim to be a purist and stay away from Photoshop but damn, no model is perfect. Everyone needs a little help here and there to create a clean image.” It is a fair assessment of my work albeit the criticism is off the mark. What I am criticized for is exactly where I want my photography to be. The older photography was a presentation of a scene, a surface chronology of life around me. The newer work does mark me as a voyeur, because I do want you exposed to me. Flaws, imperfections, are a bonus. I want you to be desirable and imperfect. Extreme focal points achieve this for me. That point where I might recoil in horror extends further out than it does for my critic. I’m fine with this. Others are not. For example, another photographer writes: “Your images are incoherent and sloppy and are getting worse over time. You are halfway between crappy T&A glamour and half-assed art. You shoot to shoot and maybe to see titties. You have no focus and no passion. In other words... you are becoming a GWC.” My work of late is about extremities and strange juxtapositions: macro looks at facial features, odd juxtapositions of breasts and curves. No apologies forthcoming. It is a progression, and I know where this progression is taking me. In the language of our profession, a GWC (guy with a camera), is a pervert who gets a woman nude in front of a camera just for the sake of it. The subject’s nudity holds a purpose for me, though. As I am exposing myself here, the model exposing her self to me opens up her reality to me. I need to know. My art and its utility are about me. How you see yourself in the mirror is of vital importance to me. I need to get below the surface. Another photographer critic perhaps explained it best: “This isn't commercial photography. This isn't fashion. This isn't art. This is Boyd Hambleton's personal expression of the fact that the world is a cruel tease and that it is fucking with him on a deep and personal level. You are a sub. The camera is your mistress. And you make a good couple . . .one that's getting better with time, and experience.” I might disagree with the “art” part. What is art if not to provoke? If gallery exhibited works of mine are provocative enough to hang on collector’s walls, should I complain? I do know that I am individual who has been alone for the better part of his adult life. It’s a situation that creates competing thought processes. My relationship with women isn’t exactly adversarial. The majority of my friends are women. They just don’t desire in the manner that would lead to the procreative urge. I put women on a pedestal, while at the same time painting them as the cruel monsters that have rejected me. It is said that how we deal with our loneliness is what defines us after all.

Move for me

2007-11-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

Move for me. This is my first commandment. How beauty acts upon the stage is as important to me as the beauty itself. I recall a photographer whose work I admire and what he wrote in regards to his uneasiness regarding nude photography. John Dietrich writes: “I have always been intoxicated by female beauty in all its guises, I have never felt mature enough to tackle the nude. Metaphorically, I always preferred to stay in the wardrobe watching aunt squeeze into her girdle. To me, the nude is as uninteresting and inaccessible as the woman sealed from head to toe in rubber. My pleasure in photographing the female form is to enhance rather than expose; more unreal than real, implicit rather than explicit, a preference for the Rubenesque over the emaciated or silicon-desecrated.” Were it so easy for me. My aesthetic view was similar to this when I first began photographing models full-time in 2004. A woman in beautiful attire would have sufficed. The rituals of fashion and cosmetics made for interesting subject matter. The flow of an outfit created a snapshot worthy of posterity. The classic contours of a made-up face created an equally memorable image. Ultimately, though, such imagery represents the still-life I spoke of. It doesn’t speak to me. It sells a product. John Dietrich’s usage of the word “inaccessible” is the key. The gorgeous woman dressed to the nines is inaccessible. The spiritual figure nude is inaccessible. I need my subject to be accessible. This is accomplished first through movement and then by the subject bringing her personality to the session. Am I asking for too much from the model? Am I an exploiter? To argue that I’m a bit of a voyeur wouldn’t be much of a stretch. I would argue that for me to achieve my vision, I need to expose either the subject’s insecurities in front of my lens. I have been playing a bit of a game in an on line professional forum for photographers and models of late. I’ve been exposing my insecurities and offering up my work for criticism in hopes to create a mission statement for my photography. Photography, as much as many other art mediums, can be quite varied in its interpretations. A mission statement done properly exposes my motivation and insecurities for all to see. This is terrifying. It provides a glimpse of what’s real, and reality is a tough taskmaster.

et la femme sera mon sujet

2007-11-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

A still-life is as dynamic as its subject. A photographer may seize upon something that enhances this representation, but the representation remains passive. This in part is why I decided to give my photographic efforts a name. I titled it Visions Of Excess Studio. I gave the studio its title remembering one of my favorite texts by French author/philosopher Georges Bataille. The idea of “excess” appealed to me in the context of going beyond that which is prescribed. And, of course, “vision” is intimately related to the artist and the representation they wish to achieve. My personal vision is a dance with structures one might consider all too real: love, death, violence and the urge for procreation. I put my subjects on pedestals and hope that they might transgress. As for my subject, I’m particular. “. . . et la femme sera mon sujet (and woman will be my subject).” I don’t approach photography from an egalitarian stance. I am entranced with the rituals that are utilized in creating the modern conception of beauty as we know it. I find it difficult to apologize for how I conceive or misconceive feminine beauty. It is an obsession of mine. My photography is my lover. It hierarchizes certain representations of women. The girl next door, the average representation of woman, holds no interest to me. I am not enamored with the glamour model, the beauty that hovers and mugs for the camera. The fashion model holds even less allure for me. She is selling a product, an unattainable social ideal. My representations are beautiful monsters in a sense. They excite and terrify me at the same time. These are the sort of thoughts that drive my craft on. Psychology, aesthetics, eroticism – these are the motivations that prefigure a photographic session.

Sum total of frustrated desire . . .

2007-11-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

. . . that's me. I have obligations through December, so I'll honor them. I'll be taking a break from photographing models in 2008. My fascination with beauty is destroying me. I am perpetually alone, even in a crowd. My abject failure in affairs of the heart is making me resent my friends and their happiness. I'm tired of not wanting to wake up. I need to do something different. My photography only reminds me of my failure.

I'll continue to do the group shoots as a host only.

_subset_

2007-02-23T12:51:00.000-08:00

“This is not a preface.” That’s what I would write. It is a jumping off point for my fervid dreams. Sometimes I think that all I have is my fantasies. They keep me warm at night while offering me my muse as well as my angst. So, in other words, there is no moment for me that can stand off on its own. Everything accumulates. Everything repeats as well. Uncanny, huh?

I find myself in this crazy space where everything old is new again. You’ll understand as I proceed. Before I became a photographer, I journaled and wrote poetry rather prolifically. I had the annoying habit of merging personal journals with literary criticism. Consider it part trying to show how brilliant I was, part trying to have folks really understand me and part really wanting to shock and horrify folks . . . especially the beautiful young women who were always just ‘good’ friends. I’d put the journals I wrote in ‘zine form and then give copies out to friends and some of the strippers I visited on a weekly basis. For instance, I published a few things of note in Confessions Of The Male Lesbian (issue 2) in August of 1999. My favorite author has always been William Faulkner. In that issue, I wrote a critical essay on Faulkner’s The Sound And The Fury through the screen of philosopher Julia Kristeva’s theories on abjection. Kristeva writes:

The abject is related to perversion. The sense of abjection that I experience is anchored in the superego. The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law: but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them. It kills in the name of life – a progressive despot; it lives at the behest of death – an operator in genetic experimentations; it curbs the other’s suffering for its own profit – a cynic (and a psychoanalyst); it establishes narcissistic power pretending to reveal the abyss – an artist who practices his art as a “business.” Corruption is its most common, most obvious appearance. That is the socialized appearance of the abject. [Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. 16]

This was Kristeva’s working definition of abjection. Back then, when I quoted Kristeva, it was a definition that made me think of the serial killer or the corrupt politician and so forth. Into our lives a little corruption must come though, I suppose. I would much rather immerse myself in this working definition than to allow myself to be the true believer with that singular, righteous purpose. Those are the the people in the world who truly scare me. One must acknowledge the pointlessness, the limitation. It is as Quentin Compson’s father instructed him in The Sound And The Fury: “Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reductio ad absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” This is abjection. It is not a static thing but rather a road, an accumulation, a repetition, a dispersal. Abjection is “the other.” It, abjection, is something external that is out of the individual’s control. It repulses us as the sour milk in the carton does. Quentin Compson’s journey to the abyss is abjection at its finest. At the beginning of Quentin’s monologue, Quentin is remembering the words of his father that I cited above. Time is an issue central to criticism of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. In Quentin’s situation, it represents one huge external factor that Quentin has little control of. When Quentin breaks the timepiece, it represents a ritualistic gesture on his part to conquer what he has little to no control of. To return to the idea of sour milk, Kristeva writes: “Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. “I” want none of that element, sign of their desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I” do not assimilate it, “I” expel it.” [Kristeva 3] The gesture of Quentin breaking the watch is Quentin demarcating the universe and creating one of his own. The question should be: “To what end is Quentin doing this?” One answer may be that Quentin is creating the one space that makes his suicide not only possible but inevitable. Kristeva writes: “The one by whom the abject exists is thus a deject who places (himself), separates (himself), situates (himself), and therefore strays instead of getting his bearings, desiring, belonging, or refusing. Situationist in a sense, and not without laughter – since laughing is a way of placing or displacing abjection.” [Kristeva 8] As this represents Quentin’s demarcation, this represents mine, a mission statement meant to accompany my photography a few months back:

I have a growing distaste for anything mainstream. Much of this stems from a reality that the majority of people will always allow the dollar to be their guide rather than passion or any real conviction. We live in a world where it is too commonplace to hate what you don’t understand, to label that which is different as inferior, wrong or perverted. We live in a world where to be different, unless that difference is co-opted by the mainstream, is to be rendered bound and gagged. So, as an artist I revel in shadow and light and that which rebels. Intricate ink over the human body, piercings, and plays of dominance and submission are but a small portion of my subject matter. My love of black and white imagery, I think, is an aesthetic choice. In a way, it mocks all of the binary oppositions that society holds so dear. In my world, there is only the beauty in the difference and expression.

Perhaps my thoughts and the artist statement that stems from them pales in comparison to Quentin’s gesture. Knowing my mind though, I will say that it reeks of death. I am a deject and I willfully choose to separate myself . . . to create a strange world that makes sense to me. I don’t feel as if I’ve adequately expressed my reasons for wanting to do this though. Here is where I elaborate further, going into that second piece of literary criticism that I engaged in issue 2 of Confessions of the Male Lesbian. As I wrote, fear is an ideal place to begin. For example, fear is at the core of all of Emily Dickinson’s poetry (another huge favorite). Fear is the entity slithering underfoot, the serpent preeminent in several of her poems. The serpent represents several things. All cause angst. It represents knowledge, male potency, and death. That the average student of poetry knows Dickinson was a recluse and that she never married should come as no surprise. Dickinson’s controlling fear ordains this. This fear exists for Dickinson in the shadow of the male. For instance, in Dickinson’s poem number 754:

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun-
In Corners – till a Day
The Owner passed – identified-
And carried Me away-

The stanza reveals a woman’s life as it relates to a man. I too know that the measure of my success with women defines me as a man. Though I am told this is untrue and unhealthy, this has not been exorcised from my consciousness. Dickinson’s story is that she lived in the shadow of her father. Perhaps, in some way, all of her suitors had to measure up to his presence. The fact that she never married seems to argue that no one did ever measure up.
Several of Dickinson’s works tend to have a relationship of companionship with one another. The instances of fear and the serpent are one example. Another example appears to be companion poems on truth and trust. Truth is another central theme in Dickinson’s poetry. Truth has an elusive quality. For example, in “I like a look of Agony”:

I like a look of Agony
Because I know it’s true-
Men do not sham Convulsion
Nor simulate, a Throe-

The Eyes glaze once – and that is Death-
Impossible to feign
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.

Dickinson, trusting no one, begins to see truth only in madness. How can everyone else be happy when she is not? This is how the litany usually goes. Dickinson in number 435:

Much Madness is divinest Sense-
To a discerning Eye-
Much Sense – the starkest Madness-
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail-
Assent – and you are sane-
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous-
And handled with a Chain-

This is the point where Dickinson begins to demarcate the universe and create her own. She is approaching abjection, separating herself from all that she fears and doesn’t trust. Reality and truth are blinding. Reality has to be modified to become palatable. Dickinson in number 1129:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind-

Self-deception and creating a universe of your own demand that you create your own truth. Is it any wonder that my personal mantra is “let the mundane become the epic?” First, though, before I completely let go, I find myself bartering with God. “I’ll be good, I promise,” I say. “Just give me what I want, whatever that might be.” When there is no ready answer, isolation becomes a way of life. The ultimate fantasy is death. Death is romantic at first. There are the dreams of the elaborate ritual, the letting go. Then, as in everything else, reality interposes itself enough to let the dreamer know that the fantasy is a sham. There is nothing epic in death. Dickinson in poem number 449:

I died for Beauty – but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room-

He questioned softly “Why I failed?”
For Beauty”, I replied-
“And I – for Truth – Themselves are One-
We Brethren, are” He said-

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night-
We talked between the Rooms-
Until the Moss had reached our lips-
And covered up – our names-

Truth and beauty, the catalysts for fantasy, are revealed as finite concepts. They do not transcend the death of the individual dreamer. Once this is realized, something significant happens. The dreamer retains hope or retreats into a joyless, isolated existence. With hope, there is the chance for apotheosis, the death of fear. Without hope, there is only sadness and decay.
I would add an addendum to this some seven and a half years after I wrote it. Photography at one point saved my life. But as with anything, you reach a point where it is not not enough. I worship Beauty but find myself confronting the all-consuming spectre of Time.
Fear.

“Subset.” Now we get to the point. As, I wrote in the beginning, “this is not a preface.” There is no point of origin. The words I wrote were playful reference to the theory of deconstruction advanced by French theorist Jacques Derrida. In a nutshell, Derrida’s philosophy was a an elaborate critique of Western metaphysics. Everyday thought and language is structured in binary oppositions: good vs. evil, being vs. nothingness, presence vs. absence, truth vs. error, identity vs. difference, mind vs. matter, man vs. woman, soul vs. body, life vs. death, nature vs. culture, speech vs. writing. We create hierarchies, with the second term in each pair being inferior to the first. Deconstruction as a method, then, is a form of textual vandalism that seeks to undo these meanings and re-construct them. For the longest time, I have been enamored with Derrida’s philosophy simply to be afforded the opportunity to play at the edges or in the margins with language (as I do in my own way with my photography). Ah, but belief systems are constantly modified.
“Subset.”
As Camille Paglia writes: “In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of God were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is subset to nature [my emphasis . . BH]. Sex is the natural in man.” [Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. 1] There is no getting beyond it. Ultimately, everything is about sex and ultimately fear. Society is constructed out of this fear. Culture, religion, language, institutions – all are products of the flight from this fear. And, the irony of ironies, all prohibitions [imund] stem from the natural in man as well.

Riding the black wave

2006-12-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

Time to get to know me a little better. I held my first group shoot a year ago this past July, and there was a reason for it. July 30, 2005 was supposed to be my red-letter day, the day I had planned for two years to end what I considered pretty much a pointless existence. And then I got this idea to have a bunch of photographers and models for a day of shooting at the arts center, and the deadline I set for my happiness came and went without incident. The original concept of the group shoot pretty much saved my life in my eyes. It has grown and developed, introduced me to most of my friends, and it has given me something to look forward for the past year and a half. It has also led me to where I am now, living in Bowling Green with my friends. There’s always a rub, though. The idea of the group shoot had me working on my art 24/7, networking and finally doing something with my life that I love. At the same time, my living in BG has been taking me away from this. It’s hard to explain to friends when you’re miserable how fragile your sense of self-worth is. When you’re riding that black wave, it’s easy to suck your friends down with you. How do you explain that you’re feeling similar thoughts to when you were at your lowest? I’m 41 years old and have never been in love, engaged or married. I won’t even start with how long it’s been since I’ve dated or been intimate with a woman. Anything that I thought I might become when I was younger has since passed me by. I have found one thing I actually love to do and have found myself the past few months being pulled away from it. If working 30-40 hours a week at a restaurant just to survive is the sum of my existence, then it’s not worth much. As much as my friends support me, they can’t help me. A previous version of myself would have shared my unhappiness with them. Such honesty has cost me too many friends in the past. So, the past few weeks have led me to this point where I find myself needing to pursue my art 24/7. Starting off 2007 miserable doesn’t strike me as the best way to start a new year.

Vamp Red

2006-12-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

“What drives you on . . . can drive you mad.”- Garbage, “Stupid Girl”

I feel the need to explain myself. Perhaps it’s something as simple as I’m far too influenced by the imagery culture has shown me for most of my adult life. For the past three years as a photographer, this imagery has influenced how I approach my subject matter. My usual palette is somewhat varied. When I’m not seeing my subjects in black and white, quite often in and out of shadow, the view is high gloss. Or, to be honest, I want the view to be high gloss. Give me true deep reds on lips and nails. Slick it up with some gloss. I want wet red lips . . . and uniforms of shiny black. I’m in love with a variety of accessories. Depending on my whim or the whim of the model, those accessories run the gamut from the mundane to fetish. The list could include but wouldn’t be limited to: black boots, off-black and fishnet stockings, handcuffs, collars, chain, rope, bondage tape, ball gags, blindfolds, cigarettes, whiskey and mirrors. Like I’ve said, quite often I question this vision. Maybe I create exotic creatures out of my subjects. There’s the thought that I put women up on pedestals so they’ll go down on them. Make me blush please! You’re not the girl next door with your Revlon mask and shiny uniform. Good is so very boring and anyway, can’t you see I’m trying to resolve some deep-seated issues here? Certain imagery aids in this resolution, so indulge me my creative license. For instance, the beauty ritual itself fascinates me. The image of a beautiful woman applying lipstick or mascara is always a fond memory. Take it a step further and I’ll eroticize it with the image of one beautiful woman applying lipstick to another beautiful woman’s lips. Throw in some restraint, and you have forced feminization. Ritual goes hand in hand with vanity. A beautiful woman assessing said beauty in the mirror is a prime example. And, of course, there are plenty of ways to eroticize a vision such as this. I am a slave to imagery that showcases our vanity and other sins as it were. I am a voyeur in the sense that I want to see your basest looks when you come home after a hard night of partying. I want to see the cigarette dangling from the drenched red lips. I want to see those lips take a swig from the whiskey bottle. I want to see what you consider as being dressed for sex. I want to see that intense or wanton look in your eyes that says it’s about your pleasure. I want to see what you regard as submission or dominance. No matter. I just don’t want to see the actual act. My eroticizing your behavior doesn’t equal my wanting the pornographic. Leave something to the imagination, the stuff of fervid dreams. Just be bad for me.

We are socialized. We’re animals too. When I went down this path before, thinking about what drives me on and on, an incredible fetish model by the name of Rachel Paine had to remind me of this. After all, what drives me on does on occasion drive me just the little bit mad. Octavio Paz writes in An Erotic Beyond: Sade:

Eroticism is a reflection of the human gaze in the mirror of nature. Thus, what distinguishes eroticism from sexuality is not its complexity but rather its distance. A person is reflected in sexuality, bathes in it, becomes one, and separates. But sexuality never watches the erotic game; it illuminates without seeing; it is a blind light. The couple is alone, in the midst of the nature it imitates. The erotic act is a ceremony that is performed behind the back of society and in front of a nature that never contemplates representation. Eroticism is both a fusion with the animal world and a rupture, a separation from that world, an irremediable solitude. Catacomb, hotel room, chateau, fort, cabin in the mountains or an embrace under the clouds, it is all the same: eroticism is a world closed to society as well as nature. The erotic act erases the world: nothing more real surrounds us except our ghosts.

We finally get down to it. We are all so civilized, socialized. Yet, I still remember one of my English professors in college telling me how even the greatest work of fiction by an author is ultimately an act of sexual conflict resolution. Would one expect photography as a means of expression to be any different? Eroticism is the play at the edges of that conflict. When I announce my art to society in terms of the erotic, I have violated its prohibition. Honesty is prohibited. The fashion advertisement with the beautiful still-life model is utilitarian, serving the marketplace as it were. Therefore, it is accepted by society. It is a lie, though. You cannot separate the work from its creator, so ultimately it is one more form of erotic representation. Everything out there is someone’s masturbation fantasy. As I come to terms with myself as an artist do I dare suggest that my fascination with certain themes is the result of being incredibly horny? Repression equals death to me. Yet, the outflow of much of my work can be said to be the result of repression. The gorgeous woman made up in front of the mirror is quite often not saying to herself “look how beautiful I am.” More likely she could be underweight and still saying “I’m fat” or “I hate my nose” and so on. The submissive bound and gagged is playing a certain game. It can be as simple as “my captor/dominant went to all this trouble, so therefore I am desired.” Desire is the intersection of all of this. Vampy red lips and nails symbolize a departure from the ‘good girl,’ the girl so immersed in her mainstream cowboy fantasy that I have no hope of attaining her. The whiskey and cigarettes are just fetishes that reinforce this departure from being good.

Whether it was when I was writing prolifically or now taking photos, the action taken was always a means of intimate expression, an opportunity to resolve the conflict within me. Freud has been attributed as saying that all art is play, a return to childhood. I now see the connection. Even as children, play is a way to resolve issues. The art nude or fetish photo may not fit the norm as the idea of play though, hence the temptation for the mainstream critic to point an accusing finger and say, “That’s not art!” I’m left to say, “Maybe I’m anti-social or don’t play well with others.” Poet/critic Matthew Arnold wrote that “the personal is the burning ground of poetry.” This point of view will always be one side of the coin of the great debate about what constitutes art. The mainstream and society regard good art in the form of utility. If it sings praises to famous men or women, it is art. If it moves its audience with universal appeal, it’s art. For obvious reasons, though, it can’t be art if it addresses the inner angst of its creator. Only if this angst resonates universally can it be said to be art. We all know this is hogwash, but it is what makes society feel better about itself. Society says that you can go ahead and be depressed, but it would rather hear that you’re medicated than hear your tale of woe. Go ahead and be transgressive, but don’t verbalize or act upon it. Above all else, don’t do anything that will make us feel uncomfortable. We’ll tolerate your difference as long as we don’t have to see it.

This is where society and I part ways. If what I do makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you need to look within yourself.