WHO IS THIS FOR
I’ve been working on this gay photo project, kind-of on and off, and two days ago I took pictures of Kristopher, who said, in addition to other things (“gay is gay face,” “gay is erotic”), “gay is making your own rules,” before we hooked up, because, for everyone, “gay” has, fundamentally, been “erotic” or “sex,” and so, I’ve shot a lot of bedroom portraits, always looking at objects like Kristopher’s dildo-candle that he won at the Eagle, which, if object and place represent a culture and rules we create, are still centered on sex.
So, the next day, eating tacos for taco tuesday, I texted Kathy, “hey do you want to see the art project I’ve been working on,” and she said, “Yeah!,” so I drove to the community college, where Kathy was helping Jim (an older man who works at the college) hang up portraits for the portraiture class. And I placed my laptop on the table, while I separated fused magnets for Kathy and Jim, and they talked about the portraits. I said, “why are these all pictures of women?” because there were two display cases of portraits of only women, and Jim said, “no there’s one of a guy; they used to come here all the time” and I turned to look, across the hallway, at the very edge of a case, a man dressed in drag. “Uh that’s drag,” I said, and Kathy said, “why do you assume he uses they pronouns,” and I said, “they is ambiguous and neutral, plus drag is she, playing on femininity,” and Jim said, “dudes never like their pictures getting taken,” and I burned a bit on the inside, and told Kathy, “I have over a thousand pictures of gay men on my computer right now,” and showed her the pictures.
“This isn’t you,” said Kathy, and I said, “well it literally is,” and she was like “Blake you’re more conceptual than this,” and I said, “yeah I know these are very literal portraits, and you’re kinda addressing one of the difficulties I’ve had with this project; during the sessions, I’ve turned to these men and said, ‘this is out of my comfort zone because normally I have a working concept, but I feel like that’s really prescriptive for portraits, and I don’t want to reduce your existence to an abstract concept,’ so I’ve been asking these men to do theoretical work, by defining for me, themselves, and the camera, what gay means to them, in an open-ended way, so that I’m not just finding images to support my own definition,” and Kathy said, “I think you need a new mentor for this project because I don’t think these are interesting. They’re not you. They’re not conceptual enough,” and I said, “you’re right,” and then, after Kathy (who is straight) said a lot more, that was not very helpful but incredibly discouraging, I walked away, going to an event to test out an $8,000 camera at Samy’s Camera. I sat in the car, pulled out my phone, and told my friend,
“WHO IS THIS FOR?”
Because the only reviews of this work I’ve gotten from gay men have been, “you’re a great photographer and I love these,” or if I send them, for example, a picture of a foot piercing the sheets and folding the fabric in an anxious and energized angle, they’ll say, “holy shit,” but show that to Kathy and she’ll say, “that’s not very interesting,” and show the picture of a barely-showing cock cage to my mentor, who is a straight man, and he’ll say, “I think that’s a really subtle, tender, and intimate photo, but I’m curious what the blue thing is,” and I’ll say, “that’s his cock cage,” and immediately, although not aesthetically supported, the mentor says, “THAT’S TOO MUCH,” as if the euphemistic, deferred suggestion that gay has something to do with non-normative sex is way off the script. And I told my dad about this gap between gay and straight audiences, and he said, “bridge the gap,” and I said, “all I can do is show them the gap, I can’t bridge it for them,” (I told snooze, differently, that all I should do is put portraits of every person, even the photos from sessions that the professor said had failed, with each subject’s definition of “what is gay,” because snooze said, “if I had seen this when I were younger, this would be really really powerful,”) and the question keeps coming back, always, WHO IS THIS FOR?
While I drove to Samy’s Camera, Taylor said that he’d show up with his wife in a bit, after their Ikea run, and I walked up to a studio setup, surrounded by people who brought their own cameras to an event designed to test a very expensive camera, when the host in a Fuji shirt saw me walk up, and immediately put an $8,000 camera into my hands, asking whether I brought my own memory card (No?? I said), and I saw the studio setup, which was plain to me, without dynamic lighting, and a woman centered against a backdrop as a model, and I rolled my eyes, took the camera, and began shooting pictures of people taking pictures of the model. The host came up to me. “You can tell the model what to do. She’s very obedient,” and I said, “oh, sure,” and I kinda told her to look around, and she defaulted, as if programmed, to sexy-poses, and I said, “you don’t have to do that,” and moved the light, and the host said, “dude I love the shadows where you put the light,” and I said, “thanks.” I walked to the side of the studio, where the model could face me directly, and I said, “I’m sorry but I’m just testing out how this camera looks, and could you do a pose that gives me a bit of depth, like putting your arms out in front of you? Yeah. So, your shirt looks really spooky! It’s October! It’s giving ghost!” and she was like “someone else said that my shirt was very-fall today,” and did this sort of arms-reaching-towards-me pose. From a side profile, against the backdrop, where most people stood, it looked zombie-frankenstein. And so I said, “thank you!” and she smiled, and then, one of these short nerds who brought his own camera ran up and spat out, “DO THAT POSE AGAIN,” but from his angle it looked flat and awkward. I walked up to Taylor’s wife. “Isn’t it weird that all these men are camera nerds, with their own memory cards and own cameras, surrounding this woman and taking pictures of her?” and Taylor’s wife said “I have not been able to stop thinking about that” and I said, “it’s weird. When I was at community college today, most of the portraits they had were of women!” and Taylor said, “this is so creepy,” and I said, “yeah,” and we walked around the store catching up, when a man followed us, asking about how my camera performs for low light events, and I said, “well it’s usually not a big deal,” and then he said, with his $50 camera, “Oh it’s awful for me,” and Taylor, later, said, “remember when that guy tried to tell you what ISO is?” and I said, “oh god.” I do not think, if I were given $10,000 for equipment, that I would ever buy that camera. Our consensual review of this event, altogether, was “that was creepy,” and we all know who it was for: the ones who brought their own memory cards to store away, in their own personal computers, images of this woman, subjected to their gaze and made interesting.