Category Archives: Relataionships

current and past relationships

The Boys Of Fall

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning. We about 30 guests over to the studio late yesterday to watch the opening of the Griz football game on television at the studio. They were playing an upper division team from Tennessee. Needless to say we didn’t win, but it really wasn’t expected. Sometimes you just have to compete with others that are better than you to push yourself to a new level. I have not always been a football fan; in fact when I was in college I never attended a game. But when I started dating Glenn he was a huge football fanatic. Our hometown University of Montana team are known nation wide as the Grizzlies. They had been on an amazing winning streak for the past 20 years working their way to several national championships. So when I first met Glenn he said if we are going to be together you are going to have to buy season tickets to the Griz games, and we did. We have the most remarkable seats at midfield just a couple of rows above the home team. Conversely I told him we would also buy season tickets to the theatre. There is a nearby town that brings the National Tours of musical productions to our region. That year he saw Les Miserable, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Showboat, and Annie. Probably some of the best shows to be introduced into the power and spectacle of theater and I donned the apparel and entered the realm of college football. I can’t say how utterly captivated I became with going to football. At first I didn’t know much about the sport, in fact nothing. I saw them toss a coin at the beginning and then they would scramble and bash into each other, everyone yelling “get the quarter back, get the quarter back,” and I thought what a lot of fuss for twenty-five cents. No seriously it was not quite that bad but I love that story. There was something about football that rocked me to my core. There is a collective patriotism that fills a sea of people that utterly overwhelms your senses. It becomes a visceral reaction of the most primal nature as bodies collide in a test against strength and strategy. To see men, so well tuned in body, mind and spirit to put every once of their being into a team effort to come out of top as a winner. I realized my life has been this focused in mind and spirit but not body. Football for me also appeals to my core erotic psyche that is also very stimulating. Hot men in overly tight uniforms that show off all the greatest assets of their youth and manhood, out there struggling with each other. I very quickly became obsessed with the sport and fell in love with football. Eventually learning the strategy of the game. I actually bought a book on Football for dummies that I read in secret to bring myself up to speed of all the various positions, rules and plays. I remember Glenn found the book in my office and came out with a sheepish grin. I guess he knows it was love as he found my closet desire to learn more about something he was so passionate about. Football has also brought me closer to my father, because along with our seats I added another for my father. I knew he was very passionate about the sport playing in high school. Suddenly we had found a commonality and it was one of the things that broke that ice between us, opening the world of communication between us. My fascination with football has waned a bit over the past couple of years because as I have begun to put my focus elsewhere, more into my art. But there is defiantly a raw, venerable sensuality that exudes and inserts it’s way into my work and gives me a fearless strength to boldly pursue it.

“Standin’ in the huddle listenin’ to the call
Fans goin’ crazy for the boys of fall”

Kenny Chesney The Boys Of Fall

“End of the Relaionship” series

So “The Postcard from the Edge” fundraiser in New York seems to have been a huge hit. Another photographer named Steven Rosen selected my postcard and sent me a message. “It’s such a lovely image, but I have to say I was saddened when I found out the title. I was drawn to the shot because the two men seemed so in love. There were loads of images of beautiful men both alone and engaged in all sorts of sex acts, but your shot was the only one that seemed to have any real emotional content. Knowing that the relationship was ending casts a bit of a pall over the image for me, but it’s still very beautiful.” There was a huge response to my posting “Postcards from the Edge” so I thought I would follow it up with my journal entry from the photo shoot and another image from that series.

October 25, 2009
A great Sunday morning lying around the studio sipping coffee, listening to Dexter Gordon blow the sax, and catching up with myself through my journal.  Color begins to fill the sky though windows above my bed and create a beautiful blue glow on the textured walls surrounding me. It’s been forever since I had such a great morning. This morning I am filled with wonder, confidence, and longing. I am finally feeling peace and in touch with the space.   I am loving what I have created here. What an inspiration. Last night I had a gay couple over to work on some nude couples images. We all worked together to fixed a really great dinner of Paella, had a couple of bottles of Pinot Noir and chatted.  We took and break and work on some of the most beautiful images I think I have ever captured. The first set of images was of them in the shower entwined in each others bodies. After dinner we moved into the studio and did some extraordinary images of them lying on a bed. It stirred such a longing in my soul to watch these two extraordinarily beautiful men captivated by the other. Their bodies moving, twisted, entangled, arousing and igniting sheer sensual pleasure, writhing, rubbing, caressing, tender, passion, deeply gazing into the others eyes, responding to the others soul, colliding, giving, receiving, touching, fondling, tasting the others flesh, totally in tune and turned on by the others tenderness, excitement and pleasure. I was overwhelmed and in awe of the beauty of the love and passion exploding before me. It made me realize what an extraordinary life I have had and all the experiences I have been a part of. To photograph this was one of the highlights of my existence. I recalled these moments within myself when I was that age and consumed by such passions; and now to be this age and able to step back, connect to these desires and record these feelings once again. I was caught in a hypnotic trance of reliving my own passions igniting as if I become a part of their flesh and passions exuding before me. This was the way I approached sex!  How have I gotten so far away from it. Modern sex seems to be only about fucking. Modern pornography is only about fucking. Is this all we know or learn. Is an orgasm the ultimate goal and do we miss all the sensuality that leads up to and in between. Sex was never really about the actually climax for me, it was always about the building of pleasure, giving and receiving. I was flooded with old memories, thoughts, and impressions of my own experiences with these passions igniting from my past. I suddenly felt a stronger connection to Glenn and all that he means to me. Once they had left I called him and almost burst into tears still overwhelmed by my experience. I guess that’s what a great artist is, someone who delves, explores and then expresses all those emotions within his medium. It becomes my inward connection to how I present and express my feeling toward my subjects.

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.