.: The Passing Of Perhaps The Worlds Most Famous Photographic Muse Charis Wilson 1914

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Passing Of Perhaps The Worlds Most Famous Photographic Muse Charis Wilson 1914 - 2009

I was captured by this story as I understand the power of the muse, that special model that not only drives your imagination as an artist but also connects with you to a degree that often boarders on a personal relationship. Indeed Edward Weston would marry his muse. The connection is mysterious and powerful.

Charis Wilson, died Friday at her home in Santa Cruz at the age of 95, carried a particularly potent and long-lasting brand of fame.

We knew her by her image.

Model and wife to photographer Edward Weston, Wilson's nude body is one of the most iconic human images in the history of photography. From 1934, when the two first met, until the middle 1940s and his creative partner in what was one of the most productive periods of his long career.

"She didn't really think of herself as a muse, or an icon," said her daughter Rachel Harris. "She thought all that stuff was nonsense. They had a good, collaborative, working relationship. They both gained so much from that union."

"She didn't feel that she was just a nude body," said writer Wendy Madar who collaborated with Wilson on her 1998 memoir "Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston."

Once they met, Wilson moved with him to Santa Monica where she pursued many artistic interests. At the time, Weston had had a checkered sexual history and had just returned from an extended period in Mexico where he counted among his friends and acquaintances Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

"Her identity was not wrapped up in being Edward Weston's wife and model. She was very much an intellectual and lived an active life of the mind to the end."

Indeed, Wilson emerged as a writer in her partnership with Weston when the two traveled the West as part of a Guggenheim Fellowship. The result was the seminal book "California and the West," in which Wilson contributed the text to accompany Weston's photographs.

Wilson was just 20 when she first met Weston who was 48 at the time. The two married in 1939 and divorced seven years later, after which Wilson re-married and had two children.

After divorcing Weston, Wilson married labor activist Noel Harris and raised two daughters in Humboldt County. Her oldest daughter was murdered in Scotland in 1967. After a divorce from Harris, she moved to Santa Cruz and lived close to her daughter Rachel for the rest of her life.

"She knew dozens of ribald limericks by heart, loved conversation, was a great story teller and deep listener, a person with a gracious empathetic imagination and absolutely generous of heart."

Her literary collaborator Madar said that Wilson enjoyed her status as a central figure in the life of Edward Weston, but never let it define her life.

"She never felt any resentment of being known as that," said Madar. "She was on the one hand very modest, but it wasn't false modesty. She knew the value of her contributions."

Harris said that her mother died surrounded by the animals that she loved, including a pet chicken named Emily.

"Every morning, she'd roll out in her wheelchair," said Rachel Harris, "look out the windows and just say, Oh God, how beautiful. Look at that sun!' It reminded me of that old New Yorker cartoon with the dog saying, Oh boy, the same old dog food again!' No one could experience the freshness of every single day like she could."

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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