Category Archives: Identity Issues

Identity Issues

Fear Of What I See In The Mirror

Somehow, today, I feel I have completely lost touch with who I am and where I am going with this project. I have spent the past couple of days researching and trying to figure out how a blog actually works. What it needs to have, how to expand it, and how to make it grow. I am finding it’s all way too overwhelming to think about and plan. Have I already been derailed from my concept by the very means needed to capture the concept? It’s perplexing, confusing and downright distracting. I have so many thoughts in the head. It’s swimming with ideas of what I want and need to say. Suddenly there are a lot’s of eyes with their focus on me, responding, recognizing things in myself I have never been aware were ever present. I feel like there is now an expectation. The bar has been raised and as I began to write today become paralyzed, gripped by terror, almost frozen unable to move. Can I live up to the remarkable things others see within me? I have always heard fear is a great motivating factor to get things done, so I guess it’s worth exploring.

When I look in the mirror who it is that I really see? I have never been much of one to admire myself. As a child I was awkward, gangly, and very uncoordinated. I didn’t have many friends and totally lacked any semblance of self-esteem. My retreat was to create a world of my own, a world where I could create something remarkable beyond myself. It’s taken years to get past those painful remembrances of self-loathing and isolation. Of being able to trust in myself  and recognize I was really worthy of any kind of talent. Growing up in a rural sate like Montana, creativity was completely misunderstood because it wasn’t in the norm. It was a non-sustainable hobby that was more often discouraged as sentimental or emotional. Athletics were the suitable substitute to suppress sentiment and emotion; you could work out your aggression on an opponent. My family really didn’t get me. I was that creative black sheep. Though I was involved with plays they never once came to see what I was involved in. I just learned to adapt and was persistent to fulfill my driving desire to create. I never was never quite sure what, but knew I needed to create something, anything as long as it revealed my hidden self and let me express myself.

When I become an adult and began to explore my sexuality, I suddenly found a place where I was accepted, where I did belong. It was exciting and intense and filled with wonder, beauty and mystery. The raw sensual self was allowed to emerge and celebrate the release of all kinds of emotions: love, beauty, seduction and passion. My body was not as disjointed and awkward as I had been lead to believe. Yet I could not see these remarkable qualities within myself. I guess, have always been filled with self-doubt. Through photography, this exploration of myself and working to revealing others I am coming to terms with my own self-image. Why has it taken me all of my life to get to this place of feeling safe and comfortable with my own identity? There are still a few residual temporal insecurities that emerge when I look in that mirror and see a man approaching middle age. Self-portraits have always been a difficult thing for me to create. I have such a different image of my self then what appears in the image. I look deeply into them and ask myself: is that really me? Self-portraits become an agonizing search for who we really are. So many people come into my studio fearful or afraid of what they might discover.  Yet I am a master of discovering and seeing all those remarkable qualities in others, why do I have such difficulty seeing it within myself?

To strip away ourselves and really look at who we are is very unnerving. For some reason when we look in the mirror, all we seem to see is a reflection of our flaws, our imperfections, things we don’t like about ourselves, yet I know if we look deep enough there is a discernible beauty buried deep within all of us. Photography becomes a mirror, and in that mirror of art we can see the most remarkable things.

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.

Through the Glass Darkly

I am finally getting a chance to focus on my imagery.   It feels like focus has always been an issue with me.   Those that know me will say I am prone to distraction.   I have so much diversity in my life and have become a master of multitasking.   I have so many passions and directions I am drawn and dabble in a lot of different things.  I am good at whatever it is I take on, but have a hard time making a commitment to just one thing.   I love landscaping and being outside and working in the earth, I actually make money at this, but it’s only seasonal.   I love to cook and create amazing foods, I always wanted to go to cooking school, but could never afford it.  Unfortunately I do not make money at this.  I am passionate about live theater and the process of collaborative creation.  I did make money at this and found it was the prefect balance of my right brain/left brain activity.   This was one thing I was very good at but didn’t like constantly being on the road and scrambling for work. Recently I did a make-over of my studio; well actually a takeover, a complete reinvention of the space.  I designed it, build it, even did the wiring.   I didn’t realize what a creative process building actually was.   I also work for UPS part-time in the evenings and surprisingly love this as well.   I am what’s called the system’s operations manager; bringing the drivers in from the end of their days, linking their data, solving issues that may have come up, and closing out their payroll.    It’s a constant challenge and is ever changing as I am allowed to come up with innovative ways to look at problems and streamlined my process. It’s surprisingly more creative then you would imagine.   I defiantly make money at this. You could say I live and survive on a life of being creative. To do it in Montana is truly a feat in and of itself.  To epitomize the core of myself: to be curious and always explore, to grow and learn, and to constantly challenge myself.

Photography is one of my greatest challenges.  I feel a passion deep within me to express and explore my identity with it.   But it brings a lot of self-doubt.   As I am constantly questioning  if I have what it takes to make a go of it.  It seems the world is changing and everyone has become a photographer or knows a photographer. Sustainable work in this field seems to become more and more scarce because people can do it themselves and don’t need to hire someone anymore.  The new technology makes everyone capable of taking a decent image.  Now there is so much competition.   I have tried every way possible to get myself out there.  Thrown lots of money at advertising but only gained a marginal return.  Some times I make money at it, sometimes I don’t, more often don’t, hence the need for all the other distractions which I actually do need to sustain me.  As I get older, it seems to get more complicated and more difficult.  Landscaping takes a greater toll on my body.  I think for most people life gets easier as they get older, for creative people life does not, it’s a constant struggle.   Living in and being from Montana seems to be equally challenging.  No one here knows my work and what I do.  I have suppressed what I am really passionate about, photographing nude men.   I have been creating many of the images that are about to emerge from this project for years in total solitude. Something here; something there; always deconstructing my own life and examining it for truths about my own existence and meaning.  I have lived the life I have always wanted, done the things I have desired, visited the places that captivated me, been fearless.   Well there it is, I am finally getting to the core of what I want and need.

So here it is, facing my greatest fear and putting aside all the anxiety, exposing myself for the entire world to see and judge.  Several years back I was diagnosed with Lymphoma and spent a summer under going chemotherapy; it scared the bee-jesus out of me and somehow put my life into hyper-drive, to overachieve, to find meaning.   Suddenly, last fall I began realized I needed to stop and and find a focus.  I now know photography needs to be that focus because it has the greatest meaning to me.  I also know this is going to be a painful process for me.  I am going to have to sacrifice to see this though.  The concept of this project is going to be my greatest challenge yet.  This is what I have always wanted, time will only tell if I am actually any good at it or not, but it’s time to go for the brass ring.   It’s time to reach for what has always seemed unobtainable and hopefully get recognized and actually make a living doing this type of work.   I am facing my fears of rejection and self-denial to put it all on the line. I give myself one year to make it all happen.

Does showing a man’s penis make an image pornographic?

When I was first getting into photography and still shooting on film, I had a young gay man come into my studio whom I wanted to shoot nude.   He was very excited by the prospect of seeing what we could create together.  His only stipulation was that he did not want any pictures where he would be naked and show his face in the same image.  He was okay with doing nude torso images from the neck down or face pictures from the waist up.   I agreed and said I would work within those parameters.   Hey, I had a live model who was willing to strip down and allow me to light and explore him naked through my photographic process.

He had a classic form and moved and stood in such a way that I knew would be reminiscent of a Greek sculpture.  I worked very hard to create a lighting design that would make him look fantastic. We had an amazing session and both were excited by what we had created.   I processed the film and printed the contact sheets.  Though the images on the contact sheets were raw still, but I could visualize the beauty which would emerge from the prints.   I called the kid and arranged a meeting, excited to show him what we had created.   When he saw the contact sheets, he too was excited and seemed quite pleased.  I gave him a set to take home because he had a boyfriend he wanted to show.   I headed back into the darkroom and began to work on one of the images. It totally began to come to life.   I printed it on a beautiful flat silver gelatin paper so that the tones and flesh had a smooth velvety finish that looked as if they were actually emerging from the darkness.  Everything fell exactly where I knew it would.  The print was remarkable.  I felt like I had created a masterpiece that could hang in someone’s bathroom, or in an open space, or maybe even a gallery – very classic in its pose, form, and structure.  To me it represented perfection for this type of image.  It captured the essence of the pictorialist style of the photo-secessionists from the early 1900s.   I had been studying the photographers and the movement from this era and was particularly drawn to the images of Fred Holland Day.   I had succeeded on every level to create his style of imagery.  In structure, light fall-off, and soft focus beauty on the flat paper.

I called the kid back and told him what a remarkable image we had created.  I immediately knew something was wrong by the tone of his voice.  He did not want to see the image and did not want to work again because he had shown the image to his boyfriend who said it was pornographic.  His boyfriend did not think he should lower himself to the standards of creating porn.  I was stunned and shocked.   It really got me questioning the distinctions between art and pornography.  It has been a question that has haunted me for most of my photographic career.   In my mind’s eye I had created a remarkable piece of art, yet someone else had seen it as pornographic.   Because there is a penis in the image, does it automatically become pornography?  In a sense, this kind of hurt me creatively.  I felt like I was heading in a positive direction and this reaction made me fearful of asking anyone to pose naked again.  If people saw what I was doing as porn, I would get that kind of reputation, and it would kill any chances of finding models to work with, in our small town.   It also put doubt in my approach and stirred a question in the back of my mind every time I worked with nude images thereafter.  It took me a long time to ask someone to pose nude again.

The kid never saw the final image.  I put it away in a box to be lost with other worthless images I had created.  Now to be pulled out many years later and finally shown here today.  Wow, what was I thinking?  How could I allow someone else to influence such a great part of my creativity and hinder my creative process.