Nothing in man—not even his body—is sufficiently stable to serve as a basis for self-recognition, or for the understanding of other men.
Michel Foucault, from "Nietzsche, Genealogy and History"
My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that. Let me have that.
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
I wish my butt did not go sideways, but I guess I have to face that.
Christie Brinkley
Dave Hickey has defined beauty as the "iconography of desire". My latest series, ISO (in search of), reaches beyond desire, into the realm of idolatry. These images are culled from gay Internet dating sites such as www.gay.com, www.bigmuscle.com, www.jockbod.com, and www.m4m4sex.com--also known as "cruising" sites. The images are copied, enlarged, blurred, and otherwise manipulated to give the appearance of a luxurious studio figure study--one that incorporates the tropes of the cruising website profile pic (no head/face, semi-nude, etc). They are then output as large-scale rag paper fine art prints, thus granting corporeality to images that heretofore existed only as data on the web, becoming my "response" to the personal ad, and creating a subjective archive of these ephemeral images.
Plastic Bodies
The advent of plastic surgery in the last half-century has dramatically altered the way people view their bodies. Flesh, once solid, is now considered malleable--that is, we in the industrialized world now view our bodies as somewhat plastic. The series Plastic Bodies: Surgically Altered Gummi Bears includes real-life accounts of plastic surgery experiences, both good and bad. The operations described were then digitally performed on the candies, simulating the invasive procedures undergone by actual people.
For the last year I supplemented my income by working nights in a sleazy sex shop. When able, I borrowed a digital camera and documented the space and product. The series is composed of almost 100 images depicting this environment. Unfortunately, before I could finish the series, I was fired because I refused to clean the toilets.