.: New Kid in the Hall

Monday, November 20, 2006

New Kid in the Hall

This summer I had the opportunity to help a young guy out with his modeling portfolio. Unlike most guys who want to be a model, Andre Hall came across as someone who just didn't say the words, it was easy to see he would do anything it took to do it. We met for a shoot that took all afternoon and resulted in a good start on a portfolio which he parlayed into an interview with a Toronto agency... and as it turns out the job! If you get the chance to meet this guy you can't help but get caught up with his enthusiasm... a quality that will serve him well on the road to his future, in his words "to be America's next top male model!"

I Recently caught up with him:

Epiphany: So Andre, thanks for coming on...What made you want to be a model

Andre: Well...as soon as a turned in to an adolescent at the age of 14. I decided that I wanted to be one of the guys in the magazines. Then I learned it wasn’t that easy but I decided I would go through the struggles to get there.

Epiphany: What was the hardest part in that process?

Andre: Basically, the hardest process was to have enough confidence to actually go to an open call for an interview at an agency… from research and sources I was told that agencies could sometimes be very harsh when it comes to taking on a model...because they pick at all your flaws and miss nothing!

Epiphany: Is there a model that has inspired you?

Andre: Well yes my major influence is Tyson Beckford... to see a fellow African American make it so far in such a dog eat dog industry... It just fueled the fire inside of me to want it even more.

Epiphany: Wow that’s a great inspiration.... I know that you signed to an agency... who signed you and how did you feel that day?

Andre: Well I’m currently signed with Velocci models. They are one of the most renowned agencies in Toronto. The day I got signed I was so excited… Once I had the contract and was on my way out the door I screamed with joy!

Epiphany: I bet that was a great moment for you.... are there other moments along the way that made it all worth the effort?

Andre: Yes… well I met a photographer (you), who helped me to get started by helping to boost my self-esteem and also by doing a creative shoot with me to get my portfolio started

Epiphany: Awww you’re too kind.... (I’ll make sure your check is in the mail for that shameless plug;-) LOL

Andre: Ha-ha it’s the truth!

Epiphany: I heard you worked fall fashion week what was that like?

Andre: It was exhilarating ... Once I went out for the first time... I felt fierce!

Epiphany: Who did you walk for?

Andre: FCUK, French Connection UK

Epiphany: Wow nice start! I remember asking you to take pictures... as I thought you had the look, but you already knew you wanted to be a model, what was it, in yourself that you saw that made you do it… to make that leap of faith?

Andre: I felt as if my journey was just beginning and it felt great knowing that I was going to have my own photo shoot, it felt pretty sweet but I had to tame my happiness and focus on the camera while at the shoot.

Epiphany: I saw the comp card from the shoot, you tamed it pretty well! I know you are just finishing High School, most models start at your age... where do you see yourself in 3 years?

Andre: I can see my self doing big things in the next three years… I feel three years from now I will be strutting a runway in Milan.

Epiphany: Wow! You think big, but hey that’s what’s gotten you this far, so who could argue? If you wanted to give advice to someone your age what would it be?

Andre: Once you devote yourself and focus anything is possible, there is nothing that you can’t do with hard work

Epiphany: Great advise... well Thanks for talking tonight!

Andre: Thanks… It was a pleasure!

Here are some pics from this summers shoot! To see more you can check him out at: http://www.modelmayhem.com/member.php?id=192755

Note: All images and text (not specified) is copyrighted by Christopher Cushman. This site does not specify or denote the sexual orientation of any model and as such please post your comments accordingly. All models are above the age of consent and have a signed photo release on record.

1 comment:

Naijadude said...: Nice pictures as ever!; 3:16 AM

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Photograph project dedicated to capture the Art of Dance within the parameters of everyday life. The project hopes to capture the innate relationships between dance and everyday life. Images of dance performed in non-traditional locales hopefully demystifying dance as being inaccessible and drawing the obvious metaphor that while all can not express life with such movement and physicality, we all love with our own signature grace. Therefore we all dance.

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Through New Eyes: The Photography of Christopher Cushman by Rinaldo Walcott

The Black male body remains an enigma despite its over representation in the public sphere. The dominance of hip hop culture globally, driven in part, but not exclusively by the innovative sounds of rap music have made Black men a standard by which Black men and other men judge themselves in contemporary culture. However, there is a paradox, because despite the prevalence of hip-hop’s popular global impact, Black men are also still some of the most despised men in Western culture. Stereotypes of criminality, disease and danger still abound and organize Black men’s lives, even within hip hop culture. Thus representations of Black men tend to be much more restricted, than open-ended. The struggle to bring Black men into complex open-ended representations has been an on-going historical struggle. One of the most potent forms of representation in the last one hundred and fifty years has been the photograph. Photography has offered the promise to represent the real in a manner that has both seduce its viewers and baffled them with its artifice. Black male photographic representations in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have promised to rescue Black men from the confines of mis-representation and stereotype. One of the most difficult and complicated circumstances of Black male representations has been in the realm of representing their sexuality. Black men’s sexuality is still over-burdened by a perceived threat and danger, especially now in the hyped-up era of the downlow. Then along comes Cushman. I first hear of Christopher Cushman’s photography from my boyfriend. He told me of a guy who was taking photographs of black nudes based upon how they wanted themselves to be seen, not how he posed them as his models. When I met Cushman he confirmed that he did indeed work from the models’ suggested posed and not impose his own. The idea is a great one because it allows the models agency in choosing what they believe to be an adequate representation of who they are. While it is now true that in contemporary culture subjects have learned to play for the camera, offering us artifice on command, this artifice can be understood as exposing inner senses of self and being. Cushman’s photography captures and reveals those inner desires. Look at me, many of the models seems to say. But look at me anew, is also what they seem to project and insist on. Cushman’s eye lavishes these Black male bodies with glimmers of light revealing their nuance personalities. While most of the men are naked their individuality comes clearly through. And yet, their eyes too reveal that they belong to a community, a family and possess desires, fantasies and needs. In these photographs, as viewers we are given new eyes to see beyond our inner voyeur. Cushman channels, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and many other artists, commercial and amateur photographers who seek to rescue the Black male body from the disastrous depths of mis-representation, and who almost always fall short. The conversations that his models create between his work and others whether unconscious or not reveal the profound influence of the image in our time. However, in Cushman’s eyes the Black male body is not being rescued, instead it stands on a self-made pedestal, not arrogantly announcing its existence but coolly (its signature) singing its own praisesong as swathes of light and behind the camera love washes over it. In each moment a small but significant revelation is made. Each revelation offers us the opportunity of an Epiphany – to think a thought about a Black man that we have not thought before. Professor Rinaldo Walcott is a cultural critic and Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Toronto.

FIERCE! Being Black, Being Gay in America

"What Chris has done with this important collection of images, Fierce: Being Black, Being Gay in America, A Photographic Essay, is to seek, lift, and affirm the identity and visibility of men-who love-men and express it in many ways. His photographs display Midwest American men from the outlandish and flamboyant, to the subdued and subtle. You’d think these were “ladies who lunch;” muscular men dressed for the “Park” in lace, and floppy hats to give effect for all to see. Brothers connecting in places we know are safe, such as our nightclubs, the discos, and special events targeting our interests.

The importance of Fierce is paramount: all men are created equal, and share a space on earth. These portraits of men have to be recognized as God’s beauty and not His damnation. Time will thank those who were strong and dared enough to express themselves for all to see and appreciate in a manner that’s loving and creative. Time will also thank us for not living in a paranoid state of mind, and afraid of our own shadows. Remember, this cluster of work isn’t Robert Mappelthope’s approach to black imagery, but the approach of documenting men as they wanted to be seen: with and without sexual stimulation, for shock value."

Curtis A. Lipscomb
Executive Director Kick – The Agency for L-G-B-T African-Americans
Detroit Michigan / 2005
www.e-kick.com