Remember what I said earlier about issues? Here’s another example of how issues have shifted – instead of HIV/AIDS, now we have PETA pushing to spay/neuter our pets. Again, an important issue – both of my cats are neutered. But “Condoms don’t work- spay your cat” doesn’t have quite the same impact as “Silence=Death”. Again, not that I’m wishing to go back to 1993 when people literally did drop like flies. Progress is a wonderful thing. The nostalgia is more for the sense of shared community that came with having an enemy to fight. We were all brothers then. Now we’ve got Thai restaurants and PETA selling us pad thai and feline gender reassignment surgery. At least the salespeople are cute 😀
Truly the gamut of images of Pride. I was most struck by the young Latino boy marching with ‘Mpoderate! (Empower Yourself!) a gay Latino/a youth group. Talk about an at-risk population – kids who are aliens in their culture in so many ways- coming from a foreign country and/or a home where English is a distant second language, a culture where male/female roles are rigidly defined and deviation is met with anything from disapproval to violence, and a range of religions that fervently discourage homosexuality, and it’s a wonder that many of them make it to their 18th birthday without criminal records, HIV infection, or getting hurt/killed. This is NOT to generalize that the Latino community is monolithically oppressive or that there are no happy healthy well-adjusted gay Latinos in the US. But the kids who use the services of ‘Mpoderate! are the ones who are facing all those kinds of oppressions. If you’re interested in finding out more about ‘Mpoderate and how you can support their services, you can check out the website for La Clinica Del Pueblo – they’re the parent organization.
Suspenders & Tutu
Muppet, Jockstrap
Fellow Photographer at Work
Pride in Honesty
Miss Gay Alexandria
Gay Mens Chorus – “Out of the Showers and into the Seats”
Sexy Dancing Boy ( I think he was selling underwear)
On Friday morning I had the great honor and opportunity to go to the Renwick Museum of American Crafts (part of the Smithsonian Institution) to photograph an installation piece by a friend of mine, Nick Dong, an Oakland, California based installation/mixed-media artist. His piece, “The Enlightenment Room” was chosen to be included in the Renwick’s “40 under 40” exhibit showcasing 40 hot and talented artists under the age of 40 working in “craft” media. Nick’s installation consists of a long, narrow room with the walls covered in elongated hexagonal tiles (each of which Nick made, and hand signed on the back!) . The floor and ceiling are covered in mirror tiles. The opposite end of the room from which you enter is rounded, and at the focus of the hemicircle, a mirror-based seat with a white cushion is located. In the ceiling is a series of LED lights. Sitting on the cushion triggers the lights and music, which build in intensity for approximately one minute before fading out.
Shipping Crates, The Enlightenment Room
Nick, adjusting some tiles
Nick, inspecting the room
The Enlightenment Room, Exterior
The Enlightenment Room, Interior
Here is a link to the Renwick Gallery’s exhibit announcement:
I tend to be a bit of a stick in the mud when it comes to my artistic tastes, but I was truly impressed by Nick’s installation piece. Every component was extremely well thought out and seamlessly integrated to produce a singular experience.
I’ve been attending Pride parades and festivals for over 20 years now. Every year is different, in every city. One thing I’ve noticed as a sea change from the early days is the switch in emphasis from AIDS/HIV (not that it has gone away, but it is now very much in the background, which is not necessarily a good thing) to gay families – the most wildly cheered groups are PFLAG (Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays) and the gay parenting groups. There are as always the nearly naked dancing boys with the Supersoakers, the gay bars and the leather/sm/fetish clubs, along with drag queens galore. It is fascinating to see how the movement has changed as time has gone on… now that our basic civil rights are reasonably secure and the political focus has shifted from mere survival to guaranteeing the right to thrive. There’s a certain absence of frisson, rebellious tension and erotic possibility in the air that used to be there, and I’m not sure if it is because I’ve grown up or because the movement has.
I went to the Pride Parade yesterday here in Washington DC. It was a photo exercise as much as documentary outing because I limited myself to shooting the entire thing with my Canon 5D and 135mm F2 L lens. I was aiming for portraits of the people populating the event. I’m going to batch them in sets of ten give or take so I don’t overload anyone visually, or completely choke their bandwidth. And as always, the appearance of anyone in these photos is not to be taken as indicative of their sexuality or gender identity, one way or another. Gosh, I can’t wait for the day that disclaimer is absolutely unnecessary.
I went to the Pride Parade yesterday here in Washington DC. It was a photo exercise as much as documentary outing because I limited myself to shooting the entire thing with my Canon 5D and 135mm F2 L lens. I was aiming for portraits of the people populating the event. I’m going to batch them in sets of ten give or take so I don’t overload anyone visually, or completely choke their bandwidth. And as always, the appearance of anyone in these photos is not to be taken as indicative of their sexuality or gender identity, one way or another. Gosh, I can’t wait for the day that disclaimer is absolutely unnecessary.
Here is the first print in a series I’m working on. I’m going back through some negatives I made in 2004 with my Hasselblad on a trip to Spain. This shot is the cathedral in Salamanca, or more specifically, both cathedrals – the Romanesque and the Late Gothic/early Baroque, which oddly enough was built into the older cathedral instead of replacing it. I forget the reasoning off the top of my head. After I get a half-dozen or so printed, they will be going to a new gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia called Manu Propria, which specializes in handmade photography. The print is palladium, made on Bergger COT320 pre-treated with fumed silica.
I was asked the other day to contribute some images to an exhibit at LOOK3, a photography festival in Charlottesville, Virginia, coming up shortly in June. I decided it was time to troll my negative archives and see what I could find. I came across these images that I had shot probably 15 years ago, maybe more. They were shot on Konica Infrared film, which was rare at the time (they only produced it once or twice a year), and is now defunct. The negatives themselves were pretty dusty, and a couple of them had damage (I was a clumsy darkroom worker when I was younger – what can I say?). Anyway, I thought they were pretty cool, so I scanned them, fixed the flaws, and voila, the results you see below.
The model is an old friend of mine, Jose. Part of the extreme effect you see in the images is due to the fact that he bleached his hair for Halloween, when he threw on some silver shorts, a bit of body glitter and not much else, and then made a big Chinese takeaway box to walk around in that said “Cream of Sum Yung Gai”. That, or maybe “Mi Fook Yu”. It was a clever outfit except for the fact that he could really only wear the box outdoors, it was so clunky. I got him in the studio maybe a week after.
Jose #1Jose #2Jose #3
This last one was part of the same shoot, but since the Konica was such slow film (IIRC, it was around ISO 25-50), we decided to play around with movement studies. I think this was about a 2 second exposure. By my current standards of night photography, that’s FAST, but at the time, it was probably the longest shutter speed I’d ever used.
Jose #4
My plan for LOOK3 is to make some digital negatives from these and make platinum prints. Here’s hoping!
Here is my first print made with fumed silica as a pre-treatment before coating platinum/palladium. I’m seeing a bit of mottling in the lower left corner which I suspect is from uneven coating. This is on Bergger COT320. 50/50 blend of platinum/palladium, 4 drops 5% Ammonium Dichromate for contrast agent.
13th Street & Florida AvenueGraffiti, DC Flag Design, 14th StreetApartment Building, 11th and Florida Avenues
These were all shot with my Rolleiflex shortly after I bought it. It’s a 2.8E model, from the 1950s, with the Planar lens. There certainly are limits to the fixed “normal” lens on the Rolleiflex, but working within those limits, it’s a beautiful camera that produces beautiful results. I’m very tempted to take it with me on a vacation as my sole camera and see what I can get with it. I like how compact it is and how unobtrusive, compared to say my Mamiya RB67. All images shot on Kodak Ektar 100.
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