Kevin Dunn lays it down, Winchester Mass, June 2012
The sweetest version of the sweetest song of all time, Velvet Underground live in 1969
Jane is in her vest, and Me? I’m in a rock and roll band…
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Tag Archives: portrait
A Complimentary Life
Oh man.. There is only so much I can say (literally I lost my voice from talking all night like a amphetamine freak and smoking rolled cigarettes) but my work is really starting to come together, and people are starting to notice. I’m not just getting death threats any more, I’m getting the opposite, life compliments? I’m thinking about how my work is changing because the subjects are starting to see them and we are having a dialog, some times good sometimes bad. Its very interesting. Here’s an email I received from one mother
“You took some pictures of my kids the other day at Puffers Pond. I would be interested in seeing how they came out. Also I’d appreciate seeing any images before you use them on your blog/site.
I like your black and white work. – the photos of the people waiting for the parade are great.”
This is exactly what I wanted to happen with my ‘Threat Level Zero’ post. She totally understands and I feel great about it. Maybe this is what my procedure should be with kids shots, the only problem is that only 1 in a 100 people ever email me after I take their picture. Hmm, its something I can work on. On a side note the pictures of her kids are photographically rubbish (all my fault) and I have no intention of putting them on the internet. So it worked out great for her, they are pictures ‘only a mother could love’.
Picture by Sam Quinn
I was working my (and Jairs) ass off last weekend, after loading up on Friedlander’s big yellow book and 20 rolls of tri-x I stayed out all night Thursday taking pictures
On a technical note the slow speeds on the Mamiya camera I’m working with are VERY SLOW, that’s why I’m getting all these ‘spirit photographs’ but for these ones I kind of like it. We got up early on Friday to hang at the Otherside Cafe and because my hands are useless for anything but changing f-stops, Jair hung the show in record time.
After that I went to park street. Its been far too long since I’ve haunted downtown crossing, I used to prowl it a couple times a week and I get nostalgic. Oh man I’m getting old, but not this old.
I met a bunch of ‘The street photographers’ there, the same ones who were hunting preteen girls in packs with their fancy vaguely Aryan equipment. Click between the (((()))) to watch the video, I can’t make links work right DAMN YOU WORDPRESS
((((http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/04/15/downtown-crossing-street-photographers-crossing-the-line/)))))
It was funny, I never was really part of their club, but I miss those guys… I’m glad some one is down there ‘harassing’ the people of Boston. I hope ‘King Leica’ sees his portrait, I think he would like it, its funny, I’ve photographed him before and he was always scowling. Maybe he was happy to see me.
The Otherside was great, good friends, decent nachos and great photography. I had to duck out too soon and drive back to western mass and SLEEP, but I’ll be back Other Side. I need to have a pretty girl notice that I’m the man from the picture and buy me a beer.
If you read ‘the world is wonderous’ you know I got permission to shoot in a bar called Hugo’s, I almost didn’t go I was so tired, but I’m happy I did. Drunk people are great material and this leads me to another ethical quandary. Arbus shot developmentally disabled people acting like retards and made haunting work. Pula shot college kids after too many pabsts and made funny ass pictures. I don’t know if it all adds up. Take a look at this pair of pictures. (You really got to click on them to view the large)
The girl in the center changes from deranged to cutesy in 10 seconds flat, both are a honest depiction of events and neither of them is what she really looks like. I hope she would understand why the first one is the better photograph, its the look of shock on the blonde to the rights face to whatever conversation she and black hair are having that frames the seizure like expression of the center girl. I’ll have a long post about the interviews I’ve been doing with all sorts of portrait photographers about how they sleep at night, but for now lets all sit back and laugh at the drunken antics.
Threat Level Zero: An Artistic Dilemma
“That picture is not for publication and you need to remove it from your web site or else you HAVE just comitted your suicide !!!! Ever hear of the Diablos !!!!!! Remove that picture and I suggest you discard any negatives NOW”
I received this email the other day from one of the people I photographed at the Holyoke St Patrick’s Day parade, from what I remember they agreed to have their picture taken, it was a pleasant exchange and ended in me giving them my business card. This begs several questions. What went wrong? Who are the Diablos? What the hell should I do?
I forwarded this email to a bunch of people, first as a lark, then more seriously as the fears set in. As usually happens, my initial anger was softened when I started to piece everything together.
It was a picture in conjunction with some pretty terrible writing that made this person angry, I realized that the picture on its own might come off weird, but it was my over enthusiastic hyperbolic caption that brought the Diablos (a biker gang out of Westfield whose members have been arrested for drug trafficking) into the discussion. Let me quote the most offensive line of my prose
“Her disaffected stare repeating the dead plastic smile of her stuffed animal, the decapitated parents reinforcing her alienation from the nuclear family”
I talked to a couple parents who were sympathetic to my cause, but they all said that the idea of you’re child being taken from you (metaphorically through photography) and then injured (ditto) through words could make anybody murderously angry. When I reread my comment through their eyes I realized I sounded like a raving lunatic, some one who just might deserves a visit from the Diablos. So I took down the comment. Looking at it with fresh eyes changes the whole meaning of the photograph.
What was I trying to say with my super pompous, dark reading of the picture, was that a photograph shares only a tangential connection with the reality ‘recorded’ in front of the camera. I was showing off how I could take something as wholesome as a family on a Sunday stroll and make it weird and dark. I then took this somewhat unsettling image and jumped off the deep end with my words, in a way that frightened my once willing subject into anger. I want to say for the record that I apologize for that, it was bone headed and wrong of me, and my sister/editor wants to point out that I didn’t run it past her and that she would have nipped it in the bud (so really it should be her you’re angry with)
Now I’m a guy who sees the humor in everything, and whats really funny is both my accuser and I are guilty of the same thing, being too hyperbolic, bursting through the line between legitimate discourse and outright nastiness. I stand by the picture 100%, but I actually have to thank this person for opening my eyes to an important conundrum.
The material for my art is living breathing human beings with feelings. I believe that as an artist I have the right to use them for whatever purpose I’m after. The sculptor doesn’t care what the clay thinks when he is transforming it into an expression of his psyche. Unfortunately my material has turned around to bite me in the ass. So what should I do? If I try and censure myself into only finding positive things to say with my art, I worry it might lose whatever power it has and die. However I can never lose sight of the fact that these are people so decent and trusting that they let a fat sweaty bald stranger into their lives, if only for a moment, to make his art that they will never profit from. Maybe I’ve gotten so comfortable in the street that I forgot that the little image in my camera is a person just like me.
The only reason any of this happened is that I’m trying to promote myself, for years the images lived on a semi private photo stream, where I could be sure that the subjects would never find themselves and only other photographers, who would understand the stupid jokes, would see them. Of course as I discussed in the previous post (You Down with OPC) this was never really the case, but once I started handing out business cards that linked to this blog, I was opening up a can of worms that I am still struggling with.
I took part in the first ever All Visual Boston slide show event, which was headlined by the Great (if underrated) Bill Burke. I finally worked up the nerve to talk to him right before he went on, and I asked him a bunch of dorky pointless questions about how awesome it must have been to be shooting free Polaroid neg/pos film. What I really should have asked, in retrospect, is what are his feelings about portrait ethics. The big E word makes me uncomfortable, I feel that real photographers just go for the picture, while smart aleck pusses sit around on the sidelines clucking amongst themselves. Bill Burke’s portraits can be brutal, and he doesn’t shy away from a little editorializing in the captions either.
Intellectual property stolen from Bill Burke
What would make his opinion on ‘ethics’ so interesting is that he was using Pos/Neg instant film, so his subject knew exactly how they were being portrayed (admittedly after the deed was done) how did this change his interaction with his subjects and his photography. Hopefully I’ll run into him someday and be able to get some answers. In the meantime I’ll have to figure it out on my own.
This blog is for you (you being friends, strangers, and my subjects) but more importantly its a place for me to try and solidify my ideas about art making by writing down all the dumb ideas I have running through my brain, so I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll agree to look both ways before crossing the street from now on, if you agree to think twice before getting the Diablos involved. Deal?
The Fears at the Fair
A couple months ago I was giving my friend Karl shit about one of the pictures in his otherwise excellent play series (click here for the linkPlay series) “Bumper cars don’t interest me, its not up to the level of the others and come on, fucking fairs are in the nude self portrait level of ‘over exposure’. Not to say that I haven’t done it, and may do again, but its been done to death”. True to my word, this saturday I went to the tri county fair ready to flog that horse corpse. I paid 10 dollars, took a couple pictures and then went into the animal barn. I saw this boy who had his face painted to look like a zombie. He was racing other kids on these wierd little john deer tractor trikes. I stood there with my camera over my shoulder waiting for him to get off the ride. He finished the race and I stopped him “Are you a little zombie? Can I take your picture” he seemed confused but he didn’t object so I took his photo, I thanked him and off he went. I was approached by a teenage fair volunteer. She asked me if I was with the paper and I said no, she said that “well there’s been some trouble and we don’t want anyone but newspaper people taking pictures” I told her that I was a photographer and she shouldn’t worry about it and walked away.
little zombieface
A couple of months ago I was taking pictures at Revere beach and I was stopped by a lifeguard he said something to the effect of “You see this is a public beach so you can’t take pictures” I was so angry at that nonsensical statement that I blew up at him. When well meaning but uninformed people tell me I’m breaking some law that dosen’t exist I get electrified, I tighten my fists and start talking high and fast. The reason people think I’m doing something wrong is because I’m an odd sight, man with giant wierd camera approaching strangers, and because its not something they see everyday they assume its wrong and try to stop me. I point out how there is alot of people taking pictures, either with little point and shoots or their cell phones, and the only reason they are singling me out is that I have a different camera. Sometimes I say that if it was my perogitive, I could be taking pictures secretly and no one would ever know, and that in contrast I am very open about what I’m doing, I ask permission and answer questions, and that actually is the least creepy way of photographing people. Anyways I yelled at him “I don’t have to listen to people who don’t know what they’re fucking talking about” and walked away in a huff.
So with with that in mind I thought that just brushing the volunteer off was better by comparison, I wandered into the oxen pull, and watching it I understood why PETA was protesting it. I don’t know how much the oxen care when they are being whipped and yelled at while trying to pull cement logs several feet, but it didn’t seem like the most ethical form of (dubious) entertainment. I photographed some teens waiting for the Tiger show (which was super lame, they had the tigers ’waltz’ to a midi version of ‘my heart will go on’) and took some pictures at the Polish food stand, being half Pole myself nothing makes me happier than a sign proudly advertsing ‘Golumbki’
Man with Keilbasa
I was reloading the rollei when I was approached by two police officers. They asked me if I had photographed a child, I said yes, they asked for ID, and while one of them radioed my information the other asked me why I was taking pictures. I never know what to say to that question, ‘I take pictures because I’m a photographer… no… I don’t work for anybody, no I don’t really show them anywhere…’ Thinking about it now, theres no normal reason why I take pictures of people other than my friends and family. I remember one year for christmas I gave my grandmother a framed print of a kid in the ocean gathering water with a bucket for his sandcastle. She didn’t understand, was this a picture of me? No, just some kid. “Why would I want a picture of some stranger in my house” The whole family laughed at me, and I decided to never again expose my art to my relatives.
I was trying to reload my camera and calmly explain myself to the cops, but I couldn’t stop shaking and sweating and dropping things and generally acting like a child pornographer caught redhanded. They told me I was making people uncomfortable, and while I was down on a ground looking for my flash cable (I had to borrow one of their flashlights) they said that I can’t take pictures of children in this day and age, what with all you hear about… Anyways they heard back from headquarters that I wasn’t a known sex criminal, and left me alone. I found my friend Jair and he said that he had heard a guy talking to the police saying “Theres some 35 year old creep taking pictures of kids” and he just knew that creep was me. I wandered off into the midway, still shaking and sweating like a madman. I tried to take some pictures but I was a total mess and people were being nasty. “No I don’t want to end up on the internet” said a man dressed up as a leather fetishist at the battle of the bands, “Of course not” from some laughing teenagers lounging on the grass infront of the ferris wheel. I could barely get the words out, and I was dripping sweat and vibrating. I went behind the race track stands to try and calm down. They were doing truck pulls, which is like the oxen pull but with giant trucks and alot more noise and smoke.
In retrospect the cops were actually pretty cool about it, they were only trying to figure out who I was and what I was up to, but what freaked me out was that people had been complaining about me, suddenly it seemed that everyone was looking at me and whispering ‘creep’ ‘pedophile’ ‘weirdo’ and clutching their children tight as I walked by. I wasn’t a 25 year old art school graduate working on an awesome nightlife project, I was some sweaty pervy 35 year old who plasters the walls of his ramshackle cabin with pictures of children he took while hiding in the bushes, who knows what I could have buried in the backyard.
I took an intro to sociology class, and I found it fascinating. We know these things from our own lives and expierences but reading them in very first chapter of a text book changes the way you think about the world. Social etiquette is enforced by laws, customs and folkways, and when you break these rules they will try to correct this behavior, depending on the offense this could be anything from the gas chamber to the cold shoulder. The nail that sticks up will be hammered down basically. The best way to illustrate these ideas is through extremes so they always bring up the Amish, if you renounce their religon you are completely shunned by the community, even your own family. Maybe to a lesser extent thats what I was feeling, or maybe I was having a little panic attack, I found my sister and I told her I couldn’t stop shaking and she said, “of course, you have the fears”
People used to call me a Photo Bully amoung other things
I had forgotten all about the Fears. Thats what I used to call these ‘states’ I would go into back when I was running around flashing (with my camera not my genitals) people in downtown Boston. I would run up to people take their picture and run away while they screamed at me, the same thing would happen, I would stop to reload, or be on the subway going home and I wouldn’t be able to stop shaking, like I’d just chugged 10 shots of espresso. It was probably that acting like a freak with a camera and being chased around got my adrenaline flowing and when I stopped, my fight or flight response didn’t.
I had forgotten about the fears because it hasn’t happened in years. I’ve gotten so comforatble working this way that I forget how strange it can seem to others. I can’t make the pictures I want if I’m worried about what other people might think, so I try to push it down, not think about it, even when I hear people talking behind my back. To me walking up to people and taking their picture is natural so when I think about people being so distrubed by my actions that they go find a policeman to report me I don’t know what to do. I feel like a pariah because I’m interested in people.
Eventually I calmed down and managed to make some decent pictures, even though I was totally off my game. I think I have to do some more fairs, even if its well trod ground, if I want to make a whole project of night portraits some kids with chickens will break up all the drunk 20 somethings nicely. I could have gone yesterday and today but I devloped my film and licked my emotional wounds in the basement, which funnily enough is plastered with photo’s of children (and adults) much like the lair of a creep you wouldn’t want moving in next door. But no, I can’t think like that, I’m not a creep, I’m an artist goddammit and I’m not gonna let the fears or people’s stares stop me.
cows don't cast aspersions
