What is real?
Do you know? Do you care? Does it mater?
Real is what is real to you. If you believe it, it is true to you and it does not matter who or what someone may say to you. So if you don’t believe that you can or be something then you can’t. and if you believe that you can or are then the wold is your oyster.
So here is something that I have been wreasealing with in my mind…
What is offencive what is exploitive what is masogonastic?
Recently I have managed to offend many a folk, some that have taken me aside and spoken to me and others that have written to me. Now I want to publicly say that I respect and welcome constructive criticism and from some of these people their opinions I truly value and it makes me ponder… Perhaps what I am doing is not having the impact that I desire… Now I know that you can’t please everyone all the time. Maybe what I am doing is “Unequivocally, that a lot of the stuff that you do would be considered categorically, across-the-board offensive” and more to the point “misogynistic, exploitative and disturbing”
Offensive. I can deal with, I don’t expect everyone to love my work or even care for it. But if my mother and father think it is great, I can shrug off offensive.
Exploitive. Well as Richard Billingham put it “All photography is exploitive”
http://www.designboom.com/ eng/funclub/billingham.htm l So I don’t quite get this… What is exploitive? I don’t understand this…
Misogynistic (Of or characterized by a hatred of women. Yeah I had to look it up too. Sigh). Wow that one stings. I am really sorry that someone feels that way when they look at my work, because I know that threw and threw that I am not. and maybe she is seeing something that everyone else sees too but no one else has the guts to tell me.
And Disturbing. Again I am OK with that so long as it gets my point across… and my point is that you can be whoever the fuck you want to be and all you have to do to make this happen is start believing that you are and act accordingly.
Now I really respect her opinion and she may be very correct in her sentiment that what I am doing is hindering my career as a commercial and successful photographer… And I am stubborn to a fault and I want to be successful on my own terms… So yeah maybe I am taking the long way and the hard way, but I know that I am not following…
So I have been pondering something for some time. and I think I may have mentioned it before… Can you make an impact without using force (Now please don’t get hung up in semantics here, if another word would fit better for you like intensity or passion use it, but for the metaphor I am using force in the physics sense). So I would like to enrich the lives of those that I interact with, and with my work I want it to have the same intensity and passion that I have in real life… I don’t just want to make pretty pictures that are forgotten the moment the page is turned, I want to affect peoples lives. Maybe that is a grand dream for someone like myself but hey I can dream right. That’s not going to offend anyone is it? but I must warn you my dreams might not be for the faint of heart…
And besides if you think what I am doing with a consenting adult, not breaking any laws, and calling it art is offensive then boy are you going to be in for a shocker when you open your eyes and see what’s going on these days!
I am sure by now you have heard about the Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas Jiménez (who is in his early 30s, goes by the name “Habacuc”) down in Nicaragua that as the story goes had some children that he paid go and find a starving dog from the streets that he tied up in an art gallery and just out of reach he put bowls of food and water. And in dog food he wrote the words “Eres Lo Que Lees” (translates as “You Are What You Read”)
http://www.theginblog.com/ 2007/10/artist-chains-up-d og-until-it-dies-is-this-a rt-or-animal-abuse/
How does that make you feel? Do you feel outraged? Do you feel like doing something? Do you feel like acting? Do you see how the intensity needs to be there in order for you to feel anything?
So I mean if that can pass as art, can’t I ruffle a few feathers, why hell I really need to really step it up if I am going to come anywhere close to calling myself an artist.
Now from his perspective he was just taking one dog that was already starving and on the street and saying look at the hypocrisy of this! You would chase this dog out of your yard and yet you will come downtown to see the very same dog starve to death in an art gallery.
He was making the point that there are all these animals around that no one cares about until you make it the center of attention. In his own mind he was doing a good thing by bringing awareness to the plight of all these strays. Doing a good thing right? So do the means justify the ends? The dog was pretty scrawny so it was not like it got that way over night in the gallery, I am sure it was in it’s last legs and died in a nice warm gallery surrounded by adoring fans… Right?
http://marielouiseplum.blo gspot.com/2008/04/starving -dog-as-art-gallery-confir m.html
http://www.snopes.com/crit ters/crusader/vargas.asp
http://arthistory.about.co m/b/2008/04/20/the-starvin g-dog-exhibition-controver sy.htm
So here was the true genius of what he did. The words on the wall. Think about what he chose to put on the wall “You Are What You Read”
Now neither you or I were there and we were not behind the scenes so we don’t really know what actually happened. You can choose to be outraged by some monster that kills dogs in the name of art and go on living in your comfortable bubble where you are spoon fed opinions and don’t have to think for yourself. or you can look around you and start asking questions…
Don’t believe everything you read 
And remember the camera lies, just as much as the printed word!
So what next?
What’s real?
Who do I want to be and how am I going to succeed?
I have never been more unsure of myself and yet confident in myself that something will work out. Maybe I am being naive or maybe I am being cautiously optimistic but it does not really mater so long as I move forward.
The next big think that I am throwing myself into is a secret!
In fact it is a Super Secret!
So if you want to be involved you must prove that you are open minded and willing to do something that will push boundaries, it may, no scratch that will offend some and most certainly be loads of fun!
And there will be a test
Q
