.: Much To Be Thankful For!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Much To Be Thankful For!

(Kieth Haring's balloon debuts in this years Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade)

What a tremendous year I have had! To say that I am blessed could be an understatement and I wanted to take a moment to just reflect publicly these blessings. To start I am blessed with relative health and the well being of a good job and a roof over my head and clearly this is something to be thankful for going into the end of this year. Photography as you might tell is such a big part of my life and this year I was able to move my craft in so many significant ways. My first Book Dance Through Life was published and while still early has received allot of positive attention! Additionally I was able photograph the Poster and Card for the holiday presentation of Ballet Creole's Glorious Soulful Messiah which was such an honor! So many thanks to my friend Kevin Ormsby, Patrick Parson and all of the dancers from Ballet Creole! And to all of the other dancers who participated in our book!

I've also been able to contribute to Toronto's Expose Magazine at several amazing events this year including Fashion Cares Gala, The Bell Gala, and Pen Gala just to name a few!!! So mush thanks to Cindy and staff of Expose!

I am also blessed with great friends and family who have all contributed in significant ways in 2008. Your support of me and my life is so important you just don't know...
Special shout outs to Black Cat, Polly and Murchy for bring me into their worlds and allowing me to photograph some amazing events like Summer Splash 08! To Travoy and the entire House of Monroe! Wow you guys are awesome! Nigel,Dave,Abdi & Rinaldo,Andre (both of them;-)!),Prince,Fidel,Kenny,Kareem,Kyle,Arlando,Paul...yikes and all the rest of my kids! Erin my manager, Brian my mentor... Lasaunji (my crack reporter in the field and need I say best Judy!),Jerris, Dewayne and Derrick for making a home for me when I am home! To Curtis for still KICK'n it in Detroit and everyone else who has crossed my path in 2008! If I missed your name its not because I don't love ya!

To my Blogoshere friends, Joe, Ocean, Frank, Nijadude(Mo Ni Fe e Temi!) and the over 50,000 visitors from all over the world. Your stories,comments and emails inspire me to move forward with my dreams.

Finally I just wanted to say how much I'm looking forward to 2009! I know that times are looking to change in ways we may not like in the coming months but I want to remind everyone that many of us elected a new President on the ideal of Hope and Positive Change with the rally cry of Yes We Can! Remember that energy and thought can work for you as well! It works you have seen it and you know its true. Things may look bad but its all in how you face it that makes the difference in life! So Yes You Can.... God Bless the United States and Canada and God speed Barack! We got ya back!
Let me leave you with this:

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.

1 comment:

Naijadude said...: Lovely 2008 dear!! Looking forward to more fun and active 2009 !! ;)

Naijadude..; 3:41 PM

The Dance Through Life Project

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.

Order your copy today by clicking on the books above!

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