Category Archives: Art

Art

Postcards from the Edge

We are a week into the new year and I have accomplished the first phase goal I had set for this new new project.   I have created a Facebook page showing a large assortment of my imagery and varying styles.  In case you have not seen it Terry J Cyr Photography on Facebook. This process is defiantly forcing me to look at my library and sort though my images.   It’s actually kind of fun to begin working toward creating some semblance of a portfolio of what I have done.   It surprises me to see my images together.  As I am looking at it I am thinking wow did I actually create all this.  I think sometimes, as artist, we stay so focused in the details of what we are currently dealing with that we don’t always see the over all picture of who we are or what we have become.  I have begun this blog to pull my thoughts, ideas, dreams, and experiences together collectively.   I do not really know if anyone out there has the time or inclination to read or become involved with other peoples lives or experience.  I have always journaled and spewed forth what was in my head.   It has somehow always helped me to gain perspective and it give me direction.   The more important part of this process is that I have actually become disciplined enough to post this each day.

Today is a hallmark day for me as I have an image that is opening in a show in New York City.  It’s part of a show called Postcards From the Edge as a benefit for an organization called Visual AIDS.   My friend John Douglas from Sydney, Australia has submitted work to it before and suggested I also do so this year.  He suggested it would be good exposure for me and start to get my images out there.   So here it is!  I keep questioning: with the world filled with so many images and artists how does one get their stuff out there and begin to become recognizable.  I feel my talents have been hidden from the world.  I just didn’t know how to approach expanding my market.  I know it’s something I have got to constantly work at, to network and reach out to others globally.  But who are these people?   Last summer, I joined the Red Bubble community, which was a collective of international artist based out of Australia.   It was the first time I had shown any of my images and I was quite surprised by the response.  It felt as if I immediately become a hit with a community of like-minded artists.  I even put several pieces into a show in Sydney.   But then I got busy with the summer and was distracted with other work.  Without constant working of the site I soon dropped below the radar and disappeared back into oblivion.  The big question: is there a market for any of this kind of stuff and where do I really want to go with it?  I would love to focus on this sort of imagery, but it takes time and how do I juggle everything else to still maintain this?  Where, or even will I find a tipping point when I can make money on such images and be able to sustain myself economically, to be able to make it grow?   My big hindrance has always been; are my images worthy of going into a global market?   I believe they are!   I am surprised by what a body of work I have amassed over the years.   I think this show in New York is a step in the positive direction. I now need to find other ways and places to submit my images.   I need some help figuring it all out. Anyone out there that may have a suggestion?   I am willing to try anything.

Today’s image is part of a series I called “End of the Relationship.”  Its was about two guys who had shared a remarkable relationship together, and realized they both were now heading in different directions, that it was time to let go of each other.  They wanted to capture the essence of what they had once held, and allowed me into their world for this brief glimmer, before they departed.   This is the image currently in the “Postcard from the Edge” show and auction.

Wraith of anti-homoerotic gods!?!?!

Wrath of the techno gods!!!!   For some reason I have been in technology limbo for the past couple of days.  Sunday as I was beginning this blog and uploading the first entry onto the internet my laptop, that I do all my writing, research, and finances on suddenly crashed.  I just barely got the text up when bam! The laptop, a Mac Book Pro that I have had for 8 years, which has been my constant companion, has now been in the shop for the past 24 hours awaiting the final verdict. And yesterday I finally received the call from Computer ER to inform me the disc drive was non functioning and the data on it not recoverable.   OK so when was the last time I backed the damn thing up…January of last year!  My fault!  You would think a man who deals with technology for a living should know better!  My main work computer I use to do all my image filing and processing on is backed up, by three different sources, in three different locations. One on a 2nd built in hard drive on the same computer, one in the loft on the other side of the studio, and one an external hard drive I can remove and take off site that I keep in a fire safe.  So I am not totally a bonehead when it comes to this technology.   But this has totally put a damper in my workflow the past couple of days.   I feel like I have lost a dear friend who knows all my deepest secrets.

I have set this time aside to begin working on this project, to open my life and begin sharing myself as a photographer of homoerotic art.  I now have to question; is there some cosmic force that is trying to stop me, that possibly thinks what I am doing in wrong or immoral?   I feel this is the first time I have ever attempted such an endeavor, have planned, noted,  journal, and saved money to have this time in particular to focus on myself and my images.

When I began photography, it was simpler.  It was about a box that could contain light, a lens that could focus and channel that light, and a strong desire to see how the universe would avail itself to me.  I put everything into photography.  My days were filled with wonder, observing the world around me. Watching and waiting for the light to change.  Recording movement of time, movement of space, becoming familiar with this concept of recording how I saw my world and my connection to it,  fitting it all into the constrains of a single frame. I had to develop a relationship with the space and the light and look at it from a lot of angles and possibilities.  It was a total exploration. Film (the actual stuff with light sensitive emulsion)  was expensive and the processing of it ate up lots of time forcing  me to really think about what I wanted to say with as few frames a possible.   I used to carry a cardboard frame with my cameras aspect ratio cut into it that I could pull out, hold up and look through and compose my shots before even pulling out my camera.   But now, with the age of digital, I can shoot a thousand images of the same subject just to get the one that works into my sensibility of style, weight, and balance.  It’s now quite extraordinary to work in such a way.  It’s incredible to explore so many possibilities.  Now when I bring a model in, I focus on my interaction with my stubject; the camera just becomes an extension of that interaction.  It’s almost like the camera isn’t there anymore.  The models relax, let themselves become comfortable and secure, and the session always seems to be over just as we are getting started.   I love this response.   I think it’s what gives my images such a provocative edge.  I often shoot for an hour or two and will walk away with 1200 possibilities. My style has definitely developed and is recognizable.  I have shot a lot of images for profiles used on Manhunt and though my name is not attached to the image, people often come to me and say, oh you’re working with so and so. To me this is extraordinary.

One of my passions is shooting classic art.   A perfect day to me is going to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and shooting the classic Greek and Roman statuary.  You may think this sounds kind of static, well it isn’t!  You begin to develop a relationship with an inanimate piece of stone.  This statue of Ugolino and His Sons by the French sculptor Jean-Baptise Careaux captivated me.  At the time I probably spent a good hour trying to capture and understand my relationship between it and my own imagery.  Today Ugolino’s expression, waiting in Dante’s ninth circle of hell, captures the essence of my own angst and feeling of my techno blundering and points a middle finger toward the gods who dare to impede or deny my creative quest.

Objectives of The Naked Man Project

My goal and objective in creating The Naked Man Project is to explore my own precepts of art and the creation of male erotic art.  When I first began photography in 1997 my teachers always said “shoot what you know.”  My background was theater and I was a gay man living in the wilds of Montana.

I spent 10 years on the road working as a professional stage manager and lighting designer.  Eventually, I reached a point, growing tired of being nomadic and scrambling for work that I decided to return home.  Montana, as you may have guessed is not a hot bed of professional theater, although it does have some very good things going on.  The fact of the matter is I was born and raised in Montana and my family still lived here.  I had visited or lived in most of the major cities and realized that my small town sensibilities just did not belong in that kind of environment.  My first love true love was with a man. There was something exciting about growing up in Montana as a gay man during an era when it all felt taboo.   Forbidden passion ignited a hidden sub-world of intrigue, mystery, and allure. When you connected with someone you knew it would probably be fleeting, so you had to savor every possible moment and take the experience to it’s fullest sensual potential.   Often times the experience become like an intoxicating dream that remained in your head as a romantic reverie.

The nude male body certainly seemed to have been a taboo subject among modern artists.  To paint, to draw, or to photograph the nude male generally implied you were gay and that fact often needed to remain hidden.  Certainly images were still produced, but most of it remained underground.  It wasn’t until Robert Mapplethorpe in the 1970’s that homoerotic art really began to emerge.  Ironically it was Mapplethorpe’s work that brought me to photography.  One fall, while I was working backstage at a small regional theater, with little to do and a great deal of time on my hands to read, I accidentally received his biography from a mail order book club Mapplethorpe: A Biography by Patricia Morrisroe.  At first I was appalled by the graphic descriptions of his explicit sexual lifestyle.  Yet I was captivated by a man who had the courage to utterly express himself, to explore his own sexuality , and create a remarkable visual representation of his perceptions, experience, and environment though the creation of his  imagery.   I instantly knew this was to become my destiny and when the current theater job finished, I wanted to returned home to begin my own process of discovery.

My goal with this project, is to explore my own artistry and desire and my need to create beautiful images of the male nude. To expose my inner sensual/sexual identity though a daily blog. The project: for one year I will post a new image each day that I have created and examine my need to create it.

The Project Begins

It always excites me to begin a new year.  I spent a good portion of yesterday doing my annual year-end summary, which I have done since I was a kid.  New Year’s morning I like to spend a couple of hours writing several pages about everything I had accomplished through out the course of the previous year.  It brings into focus all the amazing accomplishments I have achieved though out the year and reminds me of weakness I would still like to work toward overcoming. Last year was brutal, I began the year engaged in an application process for a job I was absolutely perfect for which would have ensured me a life of security.  But mid year, when the job finally opened I was passed over which forced me into a painful introspective look at myself.  I began to look outside of myself, which lead to year of amazing new discoveries and getting back in touch with a side of myself I had lost since undergoing treatment for cancer four years earlier.  So what started as a painful process became a year to reclaim myself.  I am an incredibly talented guy who’s weakness is my inability to promote myself.  No one knows about me as I struggling to survive and keep my head above the water.  I see it is now time to change all that.  My focus and energy this year is going to be about creating a public image of myself as an artist. Yesterday I took the first step by building a Facebook page that will feature my artistry as a photographer, but today’s focus was to create a new self-portrait.  It is time I really take a look at who I am at this stage of my life. I find self-portraits the hardest type of image to  create. It’s difficult for most of us to look at ourselves and examine who we really are with out being overly critical. The self-portrait isn’t merely a snap shot of ones likeness; it is a mirror of ones ideals, emerging style, and perspective. It needs to capture the essence of how we relate ourselves to our work. It’s far easier to photograph someone else as  a subject, because you can see their personalities emerge and draw it out of them, coach them into the best light. But most of us have a hard time seeing who we actually are and therefore want to project what it is we think we want to be or become.
I have therefore conceived of this idea to present a new image everyday of my artistry and write something about who I am,  how I have lived my life, and what  has led me to this moment.   I now commit myself to somehow create a chronicle, everyday, for an entire year;  to examine and expose myself and reveal my own journey with complete candor, honesty and truth no mater how painful.  To create an odyssey of  one man’s exploration in finding himself and his search for light, beauty, desire and art.