June update + playlist

Hello patrons!  

Welcome to June - a month I arbitrarily would be the end of traditional photography with models for now.  I  wrote extensively about it on other social media but have clarified it a bit more for myself and others, essentially the cycle of setting up a photo shoot with some young woman in her 20s either locally or another city feels like something that is not what I should be doing with my life nor something I can justify as some exciting new extension of my art- I mean I've been doing this for 10 years.  

I don't know or really care anything about fashion, don't like "photo set" style photography, despise social media and the assumed fact that somehow an ass photo is more valid than something showcasing a personality because it earns more likes, and it frightens me how much of the model photography scene involves older predator photographers tricking young women into believing there is a career for them if only they'd show their tits.  

What I do love and respect is photographers who tell stories, who do things that feel personal to themselves and the people in their images, ones who have exciting design aesthetics.  Obviously there's a lot of overlap between work with young women models and that kind of photography, like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, who were phenomenal fashion photographers as well as true artists.  Even so, I couldn't imagine either of them constantly generating "dope content" for social media.  

People like them, or Trent Reznor or John Lennon or Tim Buckley or many of my other artistic heroes poured their heart and soul in their work and probably never gave a flying fuck about the kinds of pressures and demands we have today with social media.  

So I want to make work that has meaning, also work that is on a bigger scale and involves modern technology- Installation, VR, casting fx and mould making, zines and books, web series, music with a singer.  

These are projects that take a lot more time and energy than I have if I keep spending 90% of my time shooting models, setting up shoots, editing shoots, getting addicted to their praise when it goes well and being devastated when they are disappointed I'm not a person who carries a HMUA in my pocket or make work with them that I wasn't feeling as much as the person I shot earlier in the day.  

Patreon will continue as normal for the foreseeable future and I'm still making new work with friends I met via modeling but are artists in their own right.  It's going to be more video, publication, new media focused but there's always a visual component I can include in Patreon, not to mention I have hundreds of images from just this year alone worthy of their own sets.  

The good thing for you people is I'm not putting any of this on Instagram for months so if you're still here with me you'll see what's happening with the new media etc. 

 I've sent some of my camera gear off to good homes and feel this enormous relief that I can, like, go to Los Angeles and go see a comedy show or museum or have a meal with friends or chill on the beach without feeling like I need to book a studio and shoot something.  All that real life stuff can just as easily inform our art as constantly go go going.  Or, maybe, instead of constantly making new art, putting what we've made into some context and having a gallery show, a book, a kind of video interpretation.  More than one way to skin a cat.

Now some of the feedback I've had about this is:

-problems and frustrations go away

-most people think of me as a photographer

-cameras have brought such joy into the photographer's lives

-spending time around young women is no sin and makes life cheery

-maybe being one of the non-predatory photographers made the scene a better place

-it's a compromise with social media to have interesting artwork with women and most stuff in museums is that anyways

-in the modern era keeping/ maintaining a following is pretty important

...and while I don't think I can address everything there, I do know for a fact that the artists in my job Wonderspaces have pretty small followings.  Most museum people I have met have small followings.  They seem to do just fine.  The installations and VR at Wonderspaces bring INCREDIBLE joy to the patrons and the artists are well compensated for their participation.

That most art involves one gender is a struggle and even when I directly ask men to be in photos I'm often met with blank stares.  Most men, myself included, are like "why?" and certainly not comfortable expressing themselves in front of cameras, and hence I don't know what to do with them either.  I suppose athletes, actors and musicians would be better subjects because it's a requirement of the job to be expressive but it feels like that's the uncomfortable reality of art.

In the end, art making has to be exciting, fulfilling and healthy for me so I hope that translates to people who enjoyed the basic model photography I've done for the last decade.

Anyways!  Here's the June Spotify Playlist full of a lot of 90s alternative and modern Alt-Pop.  It's amazing how much Nirvana came up in conversation lately.  I love this playlist so much.