Sally Mann had, early in her career, been accused by some of shooting child pornography for making photographs of her naked children at home …the FBI raided the studio of Jock Sturges and confiscated his lifetime of work often concentrating on naked pre-pubescent teenagers on a public beach in France…and Antoine d’Agata will, at some point, have to explain to his 3 young daughters why daddy takes pictures of prostitutes….
there is no explanation needed of course at the fine galleries who represent these photographers works…and, of course, even the conservative lawmakers no longer chastise these artists for what they do…maybe they now even want to invest in a print or two!!!
these artists quite simply photograph their own lives….
one of the leaders in self documentation is of course Nan Goldin…her eloquent "Ballad of Sexual Dependency" is a landmark testament to the concept of "my life is art" with sexuality as just a part of everyday life…Duane Michaels and Robert Mapplethorpe certainly felt no need to "stay in the closet" and their work often reflects an inner peace…and the remarkable love story by Jacob Sobel, "Sabine," is a newer addition to the collection of fine personal essays…
so, how does one determine when a photographer is making "art" or stepping over the line to indecency???
last week, right here on our squeaky clean forum, controversy arose….our man Panos, never one to be called shy in the first place, took us all down his road of "discovery" with a new woman in his life….the revelations in his new work shocked some, rocked some, and made some readers here fire off charges that Panos had just gone too far this time..
now, wasn’t Panos supposed to be photographing his life??? no holds barred….to stick tight to his assignment ,yes this "event" should have happened at Venice Beach!!! not up in the mountains somewhere… but isn’t it all a part of his rather irreverent self exploration of his California lifestyle???
now, the other photographer who is doing self exploration here is Patricia….she is just as stylistically free as he….Patricia’s hypothetical "immobilization" keeps her from doing absolutely nothing…Patricia knows no bounds… she is as "liberal" as they come…and where some would see storm clouds, Patricia sees clear to the blue horizon…
i am mentoring both Patricia and Panos towards book projects…these two photographer’s works quite literally "look in the mirror" perhaps more than any two essays we have going here….these two have much much more in common than whatever differences may be apparent…i think i may be the only one here who has met them both and i see the irony of their similarity…
in critiquing much of the work here from you, i usually ask most of you to "loosen up" a bit…let yourself go…be who you really are….this does not mean i want to open Pandora’s Box and have you spin totally out of life control …but frankly, i would rather mentor a photographer who is "too loose" rather than one who is "too tight"….."too tight" is hard to unwind …"too loose" can be guided to lead to the "edge" and it is right along this "invisible edge" where the real magic of creativity lies…..
what do you think about this??? not just the right of photographers and artists to explore sexuality , but the deeper value of documenting their own lives for its own artistic sake…
HELLO ALL…
i am having the most amazing afternoon…the sun is setting over
lower Manhattan..such a cliché…Mike and Marie are here and we are having a
rollicking good time….i asked them to do a "screening" of the self
portraits you submitted, none of which i had seen before….as you know,
i have been pretty busy since setting up this lighthearted judging..
i
always have more going on than i can possibly do, but that leads me to get
done more than i would do if i did not take on just a bit more than i
can actually do…get it?? probably not..well , in fact ,i am a lazy procrastinator by nature….so, i have to "trick myself" in many ways to "get motivated"..can any of you relate to this????
anyway, what fun!!!! you guys really did it..each and every picture is a treasure one way or the other…YOU ALL GET FIRST PRIZE!!! (metaphorically).. but, i have no clue how this can be judged…hmmmm, time to "pass the buck" i reckon…
but i promised a judging , so i guess i (and others)have to do it…but i want to publish a bunch…
so thanks to all of you for giving me so many inner smiles this
afternoon and, more importantly, no small amount of inspiration….this is my ultimate compliment to you as, in this case, a spontaneous collaborative "whole"….
ok, i gotta get back to seeing all of your work….i want to narrow the whole set down to about 35-40 for the curators…i just cannot lean on my friends to take the time to judge from 175 photogaphs!!! so i will make the "first cut"….
so so sweet the light right now….
cheers, hugs et al…david