Diptychs II – CandyPoses

If you needed any more proof of how amazingly revolutionary the intraweb is, try and imagine any other way for a black gen-x photographer from Pittsburgh and a Lebanese/Polish gen-y feminist from Virginia to not just meet, but to become creative partners.

I first saw CandyPoses on ModelMayhem [I think] a year or so ago. I followed the lin to her blog and found an articulate, opinionated and occasionally pissed off young woman balancing a career as a nude model with her orientation as a feminist. While I usually cringe at anything that involves “isms” or “ists” I found her both beautiful and interesting– an irresistible combo to me. I added her to my mental “model wish list” without ever expecting anything to actually come of it.

Photographers tend to “suck up” to models they’re hoping to work with — sometimes to an embarrassing degree, taking care to always tell them what they [think they] want to hear in a given interaction, even is said photographer thinks the exact opposite. What made my conversations with Candy different was that I had no idea/hope she might even like my work, much less consider being a part of it. With this mindset, I felt free to openly disagree with things she said online, often coming into her own blog to do so. It’s not like I was burning bridges or anything, as I never thought there were any to burn. I can only assume that the reasonably intelligent and honest way I conducted myself in these encounters is what created the bridge that eventually connected us. Whatever the reason, something made her contact me about the possibility of working together — an idea which thrilled me, though I tried to be as cool about it as I could at the time. How was I to know that all the “fine art nude” work she’d been presenting was only a part of the story? After a few months of back and forth communication, we managed to negotiate the geography gap and meet at the February Collingwood Arts Center shootout. I actually didn”t want to go to the shootout at all, but I’m glad she coaxed me into it, because I learned how cool the CAC shoots were and now I’m a regular there.

We shot for a good 2 hours that day, with Candy braving my embryonic genderplay/strapon ideas as well as a 55F basement. Not only did we get some amazing stuff, we found that we had more in common than you’d think a pornographer and a feminist should. We actually keep in touch more than before, emailing frequently and even giving each other shouts in our respective blogs. Right now, she’s in the process of writing the foreword for my next covet book — I have no idea what she’ll say about me, but it will definitely be something to think about, whether you agree with her or not.

 

Diptychs…From the Begining…

A friend and model recently complimented me on the fact that I tend to revisit ideas and concepts often. I’ve never been sure why it takes multiple visits to an idea for me to declare myself “done” with it. Lots of different artists tend to have the same trait, so I wonder if it’s just a part of the creative temperament to keep trying something until it’s “just so.”

Anyway, I’m not sure what it is about diptychs and multiple imaging that attracts me. Perhaps it’s just that I love cinema and the idea of using more than a single frame to tell a story or convey a thought is second nature to me. I’ve always shot a lot of frames when I work, so I think a natural outgrowth of my process is that various images in a given context will “fit” together. I think there’s also a subtext in a multiple-image piece that “proves” the first image wasn’t an “accident” and that I truly do control the process by which the images were created. Photographers, more than most other artists, seem to have an issue with the idea that what we do is accidental. All those people claiming that we “just push a button” getting under our skin, I suppose.

I’ve probably been doing diptychs of my work easily for a year now. I started off in a fairly conventional way – placing vertical images side-by-side in a horizontal frame, placing horizontal images one atop the other in a vertical frame. I used a white border for a while. I was happy enough with my results and got lots of positive feedback. There was still something missing from the pieces, though – I felt they could have a little more je ne said quoi.

Then I found the answer – or rather I stole it! I saw a photographer on the ModelMayhem site who was doing diptychs and triptychs using a novel combination of one vertical image and one horizontal one, matching the short-side width of the vertical piece with the long-side width of the horizontal one. It was totally simple, but it automatically gave a new energy and novelty to the diptychs. After doing two or three, I switched to a black border and my “new” method was complete. The “strip” feeling of the pieces seems to really command the eye, if only because of how very graphic it is – the size and shape of the image is such an abstraction of how we normally view a photograph that the content of the image is further invigorated.

The diptych concept has impacted how I take photographs as well now. I find myself stepping back during shoots to make sure I “see” the idea from both the vertical and horizontal plane. The trick is not to just repeat the image both ways, but to find a way where the two images will combine to effectively tell the story I want the viewer to know. I do have to be careful that this process doesn’t end up overshadowing the ideas themselves – a tricky balance, but a nice challenge to spice up the work.

But that’s enough explaining. I thought it most appropriate to start with three collaborations with a true muse and inspiration, MayanLee

NEXT: Candy