I began watching a television series last night called The Big C. Laura Linney plays a woman who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer with one year to live and how she suddenly begins to live her life for herself. It’s kind of a bittersweet approach to the subject. The series is quite up beat and focuses on the positive aspects of living instead of the downside of someone dying. I totally identify with her character so much, and in a sense, it’s how I came about my inception for this project. Four years ago I had been diagnosed with cancer, Lymphoma, for those who are just coming into the project, and my approach was much like Laura’s character. In many ways it turned my life around as I suddenly began to feel vibrancy in my living that I had never known. I spent a summer in hell going through chemotherapy and the out come was worth the suffering because since it has been in remission. It took me several years to get back on track and realign my life. I had always had in the back of my head an idea to do a project that would explore the most creative side of ourselves if we only had one year to make it happen. Hence this Naked Man Project was born. It is one of the reasons I am so candid about my thoughts in my writing. I have approached this project as if this were going to be the last year of my life and am trying to put down all my experience, thoughts and feelings into something that is a tangible marker for whom I have been.

I felt a certain desperation in the beginning to get it all out there at once, but now feel like it has matured into something beyond what I ever imagined. It has actually become a huge healing process for wounds I have felt so deeply for such a long time. Wounds that festered and, in a sense, were eating away at my livelihood. Facing my fears of aging, angst toward a misunderstood childhood, struggling to survive in a failing economy. It is connecting me to so many people that have identified with some of my issues and allowed me to develop some amazing friendships around the globe. But best of all it has brought me closer to the ones I love around me; I have re-connected with my family in a way I have never known. This weekend I am actually going to go up to spend the weekend with my brothers and father and families, which I really would not have done otherwise. To write about one self deeply brings the collective universe into alignment. This summer I have been more content then I have ever been in my life. I am finding clarity in so many areas I was clueless. My internal stress has completely decreased as I become more aware of the remarkable beauty that surrounds me.

I am almost to the halfway marker, which will be the end of the month. I still have so much to say and explore. To take a breath, sit back, and write each day has become the soul of my existence. To still produce images, searching for the core of my inner self becomes a reward beyond my greatest expectations. The barriers of human discrimination are fading into oblivion, where it becomes an examination of the naked self without judgment. Thank you for becoming a part of and following my project.

In the early eighties a writer named Larry Kramer wrote a play called The Normal Heart. It was a semi-autobiographical story of a writer living in New York City in 1981 when an entire community of gay men was being stricken by an unknown illness. There was little known about the illness and in this play Ned Weeks tries to rally the community of his peers into some sort of social or political action when his partner Felix becomes infected. Ned, filled with a fury of anger often feeling like he is over the top preaching, cannot seem to ignite any response from his cohorts, who are more afraid of the public humiliation and disgrace of publicly speaking out about what is happening around them. They fought to get the attention of the governor, who would not recognize it, the media who would not write about it, and the community it impacted the most who denied it’s existence, because it would mean that they could no longer love the way they wanted. The world had come to liberation during this time know as the sexual revolution. The riots of Stonewall had happened and for the first time in the history of gay culture it was OK to love whom ever you wanted how ever you wanted. Photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe began photograph men having sex, some graphic sadomasochistic acts that become high art. To be able to express the deepest intimacy in ones art was astonishing and instantly become celebrated as pioneers in opening the art world toward more freedom of self-expression.

Recently a production of The Normal Heart has finally made it to the Broadway Stage and while watching The (ungay) Tony Awards the other night it has been haunting the back of my memory. This being the third New York revival of this play, won three awards Best Revival for a play, Best Actor in a leading role Joe Mantello, Best Actress in a leading role Ellen Barkin.

I remember reading this play as a young theater student at the University of Montana in the mid eighties when the play was first published, and how moved I was at the time. It stirred such deep emotions and I ended up using a scene from it as a piece for the then mandatory auditions, much to the dismay of my theater peers for taking on such a topic, so filled with emotion, I was overwhelmed. In a sense it was about my community that I was so desperately trying to relate to. In 2004 I saw the 2nd revival of this play at the Public Theater with Raul Esparza and Joanna Gleason. It was like a bombshell had gone off in the theater. I have never felt an audience so collectively moved by such a piece of theater.

In the end Felix tells Ned: “Don’t lose that anger”. Here 30 years later it feels that anger and rage is still relevant. But I think the complacency of issues surrounding HIV and AIDS seems to have been forgotten. That time of fear seems to be some sort of ancient history, and in many ways today is forgotten and ignored. The Normal Heart is a time capsule that should not be forgotten and I am glad that it has finally made its way back to the social consciousness of the world. It is a look back at shattered innocence and a tough look at who we have become and for me at least still stirs deep emotions.

It seems the play was not overly accepted during its inception and that first production. We were not ready at that time to hear such cautionary tales and the writing’s of Larry Kramer seemed to be more the rantings of a man who was trying to force the subject on deaf ears. Thank you Larry for such an extraordinary vision and courage to speak your heart. In many ways, this Naked Man Project is a tribute to your inspiration so very long ago and the relevance of one gay man’s life can impact others.

Yesterday I received an email from Marklin that I think better sums up what I was trying to get at yesterday. So I am using it as today’s project writing because I think this is a discussion that is beginning to influence the way we see ourselves as artists and how we approach our work:

“I enjoyed your post today. Funny, it is a subject I have been thinking lot about lately. When I was in Europe earlier this year, I had the opportunity to stand before the master painters I always loved. It dawned on me that before the invention of the internet we had to work at seeing the art we cherished. You had to find books or travel to see a Caravaggio, or Michelangelo. Now we just put in a few key strokes and there it is for your viewing pleasure.
I think it is a double edged sword. By all means there is the ability to expose yourself to work you may never have had the opportunity to see, yet at the same time it feels like it’s cheapened and artificial.
Does the ability to see an image with out the effort take away from it’s core value? I have been wondering about that ever since.
On a photography level, I remember when the whole Bosnia Herzegovina tragedy was unfolding, both Time and Newsweek, had the same cover photo. It was of a emaciated man behind barbed wire. I remember clearly thinking my god that’s a concentration camp. It dawned I me I had only seen this in my history books.
Our technology has advance so much in the ensuing 60 years of then, that we can literally watch men die on the other side of the planet the instant that it happens, what has not advanced is our humanity.
Our art is what makes us human I think. It goes for words as well, in the not so distant future will anyone remember the pleasure of the feeling of turning a page or the smell of a book ?
Maybe because of our ability to see the image so readily we have become desensitized to the rarity and beauty of what it took to create it in the first place.
I wish you an incredible journey. Bring some Kleenex with you if you are anything like me, you will bawl like a baby when you stand before a Caravaggio paintings. The other masters of Italy had god given talent. Caravaggio had the balls to steal the hand of god to paint.
Marklin”

It feels that the world of art and presentation is about to shift. The world of online galleries seems to be shifting. They just seem so saturated with over hyped, non-artistic, computer generated stuff. Its like films anymore, all special effects with no substance. We spend so much time on line socializing and researching, that for many of us we want the interactive pleasure of walking through a gallery or museum and seeing works hanging on the walls. It still does have an impact on seeing these things the way they were created and as they were originally intended instead of broken into a bazillion little pixels. Now that we live in a world where everyone can take a picture, the next step is to make a leap and connect the soul of ourselves with what we are doing and make something extraordinary that reflects who we truly are.

There is nothing as beautiful as a properly finished piece of photography. It seems the art of finishing is becoming lost now that we can proof and show our images online. It allows me the time and energy to create a lot more images and it seems since I have moved to the digital era about triple the volume of truly remarkable images. When I was first beginning photography, I spent as much time on the presentation of my images as I did on the printing or exposure. I bought very fine fiber based papers, beautiful rag mats and clean simple frames. I invested a heat dry mount press so the images were clean crisp with fine edges that looked like they belonged in a gallery. It was a very time consuming process, a process I actually kind of miss. To me it’s the hand finishing of an image that gives it value. It seems the art of photography has lost its value. It no longer seems collectable, the market seems saturated by images that we can just steal online, add to a folder on our computers, look at every once in a while and just keep adding more. Most of us now live in cyber space world where we don’t need to surround our selves with collectable art. Therefore, the role of the photographic artist has changed. The process has become simplified, less equipment is needed, less expense. It seems almost anyone can take a decent picture now with very little effort or any knowledge behind the artistry. So the question I am trying to get to is: What separates modern photographic imagery and make it art? Is it still art?

As I plan this trip to meet other artists and collectors, what do I have that represents the best of me? Last night I began dragging out my old portfolio boxes and cases that I used to carry a set of my finest images in for presentation. At the time I invested a lot of money in a beautiful leather satchel that I could carry a box of 12 to 20 mounted matted images in a linen box that I represented the best I had to offer. I have not had these cases out in years. I must say it’s still an impressive process. I also found a beautiful hand crafted limited edition box that felt wonderful just to hold in my hands. This was something tangible. An actual physical object of remarkable beauty. There was a time when images of nude men were taboo; when photographers risked their public reputations to create such images. These were days when such images were highly collectable and hidden away in such boxes.

It is going to be my goal in the next couple of weeks to go back, look at and refine this process of creating a physical portfolio utilizing the modern process. I want to have it to take on my trip to Europe. I somehow have a need to reconnect this old process. To separate my imagery out from others work. To rise it back to a tangible collectible art form. I feel a giddy excitement growing within me just to think of the possibility. I know it’s an expensive endeavor, but it is also a challenge to reconnect to a part of my traditional artistry that I feel I have been missing. These will become limited edition signed prints or boxed sets.

I have to somehow get myself back on track this week and get back to working on my art. I have five shoots from a couple weeks back that I haven’t had a chance to process and work through yet. It feels my time is consumed with so many distractions; summers are always particularly bad. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I am not sure where to begin. I just realized that my vacation dates are coming up in about 2 months and I have yet to get any of that organized. I still need to get my passport renewed and need to do a new photo for it. I filled out the forms a couple of months ago but then it got buried. With all the rain and not being able to get out and work the gardens, they are becoming filled with weeds. I have so much in my head that I have a hard time getting to sleep at night and wake up late, so a lot of my mornings are lost before it actually begins. Perhaps today I just need to make a list and begin checking it off, but that also takes time. I do have a new kid that I’m meeting this afternoon to begin shoot a new series, which has been scheduled for some time, so I must prep for that. My focus really needs to be and remain on my artwork and this writing project. Suddenly the writing is becoming as interesting and important as the images. I never in a million years thought I would be able to write anything that I could put out for others to read, but this feels so natural. It’s just kind of a stream of consciences that just flows out of my head and I have a lot in my head.

Last night I watched the Tony Awards, about the only television I ever really watch, and was struck by how we as artists must face the truth of our craft each and everyday and make it interesting, viable, but most of all honest. For the theater that is eight shows per week, with a pretty good pay incentive. Though I work at my imagery and some form of art each day, I do not always get paid for the energy or effort. I think this is where my greatest struggle lies. I have to actually sustain myself by other means that are not art related and this is where the greatest distraction lies. Some days become a struggle against time just to do something creative that will move me forward in my art.

I am hoping this upcoming vacation time, the middle of August, will yield me stronger connections to the world of art and what I do. I want to head to Europe and meet others over there that can help me along, some of the trip is already set, but some is not. If any one has suggestions of who can help me along my artistic career or possibly host me in my endeavor on this trip I am open for suggestions. There are so many of you out there I have talked to but have been so busy I did not continue my communication. Today is a focus to become organized and get back on track.