I saw the University production of You Can’t Take It With You last night. The play was written in 1936 and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1937. It’s about a woman, from an eccentric family of contented misfits that live life to it’s fullest, falling in love with a man, from a ridged tight wound capitalist family and clash of the two ideals. The play is still quite brilliant and seemed completely relevant to where we reside within our modern culture and what is happening in the current recession. But ultimately the play, for me becomes a complete summation of this Naked Man Project, all that I have been working toward and writing about the entire year. Ultimately revealing that we must seize the talents and gifts we are giving in this life and appreciate and enjoy those things we cherish most. In the end of the play the grandfather character states that so many people are never capable of doing what they dream. They become stuck in their lives, sometimes not by choice and then life goes so quickly that suddenly they wake up too late realizing the lives they thought they lived really have little meaning to what they have actually set out to accomplish. Dreams of youth pass compromised, left in the closet to be forgotten or ignored. The play suggests perhaps it time to clean those things stowed in our closets, reconnect to those lost dreams we have forgotten, and once again live our dreams because life is too short to let the simple pleasures pass without engaging them.
This has certainly been a year for me to get back in touch with my own idealistic dreams from youth and allowing those creative dreams to prosper. I certainly began the year in a different place then what I will end it. I have faced a lot of fears and anxieties and over come so many of the obstacles that held me back. One of my greatest fears was being able to express my appreciation for beauty of the naked male in a place like Montana. Previously feeling a certain amount of shame in my process, I keep it hidden in a place of security, veiled in secrecy, remaining in that metaphorical closet, yet knowing in my heart what my desire was, but to afraid to reveal it. Now I will end this year, content, sharing my secret obsession for beauty and art. I began the year thinking I was too old to be vibrant or have anything to offer in a modern culture based on the modern media of the Internet. Yet the vitality of my life and expression seems to have moved so many others and have found a niche following which now seems to flourish. With the modern recession it feels like we live in a dark time were we are discouraged to be in touch with ourselves. What is happening within our environment is stifling to so many that as a culture we are becoming weary and more often depressed. Last year I lived in fear of my world collapsing and it felt like it was a struggle just to maintain my existence. So I took this year off to focus on my creative process and myself and to truly follow my passion. This year I have not made any more money, but I have not lost any more money either, always in past spending a great deal of money to make money, mostly all that going to others. In so many ways it becomes a wash with nothing gained but ending up right where I started. At least this year I have lived the life of my dreams and followed my heart and so far it has been one of the greatest adventures of my life. Perhaps it’s time to examine your own dreams, remember things forgotten, that has been put far back in your own closets, and makes a leap. There is no time like the present. You have nothing to lose and perhaps you might just discover something about yourself you thought was once lost.
I have been working on finishing my final income generating projects for the season this weekend. Spent today working through the images of the last wedding of the year. Next week I am going to begin to organize myself, get the studio cleaned out, to begin shooting again on this Naked Man Project the following week. It’s been several weeks since I have had the opportunity to shoot something creative of this nature. Many of my subjects are students and most of them will be out for break that week. I have not paid a subject for shooting yet, the entire project so far has been done out of pure passion. It becomes an exchange thing where they get images in exchange for working with me. Though the images are for sell on the site, I make a standard agreement with my subjects that if anything of theirs sells they will get a third of the commission from the image or artwork. My standard agreement has always been: one third goes to the studio for supplies and equipment, I take a third, and a third goes to the subject; so it becomes a commission only basis. This is pretty standard for most photographers approaching this type of work. The images are still highly experimental and the whole process actually began as a way for me to test lighting designs or concepts for other paying gigs I was working on at the time. But it seems recently my focus has begun to shift more specifically to shooting this style of image and so I have actively begun seeking subjects. My subjects come from a variety of sources. In the beginning I mostly drew subjects from gay chat rooms or pick-up sites, because first of all most of them already exposed themselves on those sites and I often thought if they are willing to do it there they might be inclined to work with me on some my ideas. But my age becomes the biggest limitation as most of them are exposing themselves there to pick up other hot YOUNG guys and not really interested in the creation of art, silly me to think otherwise, right! So I have completely shifted away from looking there much anymore. Now they mostly become friends that I either meet or run into at social events in the community. Oddly enough, not many people in my community know about my work and what I am doing. Not even in the gay community. And oddly enough more of my subjects are actually straight and not gay at all. Occasionally I will see someone that I think has an alluring quality that draws my attention, an attitude, and a look in their eyes, but I am mostly drawn to personality and I will approach them. I am not really concerned about the physical shape of the person, as I am they will be open to honestly examine and explore their identity with me throughout the process. Most everyone is just an ordinary person you would meet off the street. It’s actually quite remarkable the transformation many of them go through during the process and the qualities they take on in my images, may not be what you would see in them passing them on the street. To me this is what makes the process so utterly fascinating because I believe everyone has something remarkable about themselves, if they are allowed to tap into it. It becomes a new way of seeing ourselves, in a new light, so to speak. But once someone has worked with me. It seems they always want to come back, and this is where the process really become interesting. People are rarely comfortable with the idea of seeing themselves naked the first time. The response is often startling for most everyone who comes in. Often is as startling for me. Each session is as unique as the subject. I do not have a standard formula and the beauty I seek becomes revealed in the moment. So far everyone has been from Montana, mostly drawing from the Missoula area. I am always looking for new subjects and ideas, so if you know of someone wanting to explore some images with me please send me an email. It’s a simple fun process and you do not have to expose it all, you only take it where you are comfortable. Fully clothed is optional after all it’s about you.
Why is that so many of us don’t feel that we can live up to our potential or achieve what we often feel in our hearts? Though I feel appreciative that I have lived a fairly creative life and had the opportunity to follow my desire, I still feel I have lived in the shadows of self-doubt for large portion of it. I always think so much of it had to do with my sexuality and going against the norm. But the more I talk to others, the more I begin to see it’s really a universal issue that everyone seems to struggle through. The older I get the more I regret how much of my youth was fraught with angst and lack of self-esteem. While I was cocky and defiant, it always felt that something held me back. I always thought it was a lack of hustle and not being self-motivated, but when I look back, my achievements were vast and I have experienced a life time of wondrous experiences.
As an artist, I have always avoided politics. The daily yammering of it on new stations like Fox News, bores the living death out of me. It’s not that I don’t want to stay informed; I just don’t want to know all the details of everything going on. It feels like politics and arts rarely mix and it seems the people who are quite interested in politics are not the slightest bit interested in the creation of art, unless it becomes public, and contains something they deem immoral. Our economy still does not seem to be rebounding at all, everyone around seems to have been hit very hard by this recession as the impact still lingers in the standard working class, yet the people working for the government rarely are impacted by what happens in the economy. I find this rather disturbing, as I am a tax payer, whose taxes keep increasing at a consistent rate, the values of property in my neighborhood has dropped considerably, meaning the fair market value has still bottomed out, yet the property taxes only increase. In Montana we don’t have a sales tax and the bulk of the taxes that fund the state are put on the property owners creating a hefty property tax on top of a state income tax. Yes, America seems to go deeper and deeper into debt, yet the government seems to continually grow. It feels like it’s becoming very disproportionate and does not reflect what’s actually happening in our economy. It scares the heck out of me because it feels like I am living on the edge and what I once produced and made a good living on photographically seems to have lost all is value when the economy tanked a few years back. I see more and more people giving up and going on welfare, young kids in their twenties, completely capable of working, but giving up because the struggle has become meaningless and it’s an easier way out. You can work all day for a living and have nothing, or you can go on welfare, do nothing and still have something, though it’s very little you have to live on.
The Griz football team won their first round playoff game and advanced to the next round leading toward the championship game in January. Glenn roused me from my slumber early yesterday to join him for the daylong festivities that have become his game day ritual. I typically love going to the game portion of the day, but rarely like to spend the entire day devoted to the process. Hence no blog for yesterday, sorry. It was a bitter cold day that didn’t rise out of the twenties, but I was dressed appropriately for the conditions and was actually quite comfortable throughout the day. Most of my life has been lived completely oblivious of sporting events. But when I met Glenn, I knew it was one of his greatest passions and was willing to enter his world. Conversely he has also entered areas of my world that I know he was not necessarily comfortable with either. I think it is one of the things that has made our relationship so truly remarkable. I have to say a pride swells within me to hear the National Anthem sung in a crowd of 22,005 people and the players emerge from their tunnel into a cloud of smoke onto the field. The opening process for a football game is such a theatrical event, carefully planned, coordinated and executed down to the second to emotionally charge such a mass of people and you can feel that swell through out the stadium. It’s often intoxicating and over-whelming to the point that I am often moved to tears by the pride I feel from the experience. We have amazing seats, that we have had since the beginning of our relationship, a couple of rows up right behind the team and become the target of their stampede into the stadium and feel the full effect of that blaze of glory.
