.: November 2012

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Dreams Of A Past Life

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.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

A Different Perspective

I have followed Kehinde Wiley for a number of years... I have always found his work to be interesting and thought provoking. I recently purchased his book published by Rizzoli and I find myself even more entranced by his paintings and photographs. I am still processing what his work means to me and I am interested if any of you have thoughts... please leave leave your thoughts as a post comment below!

By superimposing Art In America:

the opulent worlds of rulers and rappers, Wiley sought to visualize conventions for representing power in European portraiture on the surface of his paintings. Wiley recognized that “[t]he history of painting has been the history of those [powerful] men trying to position themselves in fields of power that are very defined and codified as a type of vocabulary that’s evolved over time…” The painter scripted black urban youth into this history in order to ripple its codified visual field. In so doing, he took care to represent his black male subjects in such way that they appear both within yet outside these defined vocabularies.

…

Wiley, by portraying his subjects within the conventions of portraiture but not carrying this through the entire painting, allows the illusion of portraiture to arise and then dissipate on the surface of the work. His figures inhabit the surface of the canvases, between visibility and invisibility. They appear both luminescent and transparent, statuesque and ephemeral, photorealist and abstract, present and absent: accidental inhabitants of history on the verge of disappearance.

-Krista Thompson, “The Sound of Life: Reflections on Art History in the Visual Culture of Hip-Hop”, The Art Bulletin, December, 2009

Monday, November 12, 2012

Twenty Years Ago Today.....

Twenty years and I still remember this day. We walked in the woods on that cool colorful fall day and quietly spent time together. I loved our walks, I loved any time I could be with you. I love that I took these photos and while I would have remembered this day as I remember so many others the photos transport me with ease to the fondest of those memories.

I love that you are happy today... Life was not always easy or kind to you in ways that I never experienced myself. I learned so much during the days, months and years with you. That can never be taken away from me or you. I hope you feel the same.

Real love may change shape but never dies, never fades... lasts for ever... No matter the distance between us and the others in our life. Thank You Aaron for this gift given twenty years ago today.

Friday, November 09, 2012

Lincoln

I can't help but see a very direct connection between Abraham Lincoln's America and Barak Obama's America In the Steven Spielberg bio pic of the last 5 months of Lincoln's presidency. Both contended with a severely polarized Country and government. Lincoln had issued the emancipation proclamation nearly two years before his re-election to a second term. Winning a second term proved his mandate by the American people to abolish slavery and so the film takes on the passing of the 13th amendment as its framework for the next two and a half hours. In many ways Obamas second term affords him a mandate to finish what he started. The script was written by Tony Kushner famous for the Gay themed TV movie Angels in America. A script adapted by Doris Kearns Goodwin's best seller Team of Rivals: The political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Team of Rivals was a book read and taken to heart by Obama during his first election, resulting in his appointment of Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State even though they had been intense political rivals during the primaries. Daniel Day-Lewis portrayal of Lincoln was well researched and implemented into a character easily beloved and for some feared.

Ive written several times about my distaste for revisionist history, specifically those who would negatively portray Lincoln's true intentions relative to slavery which was a most complicated knot to un do magnified even more by the horrors of the civil war where well over 600,000 people perished. It is put into quite clear light in this movie of Lincoln's long term feelings about slavery and what he had to do with the right opportunities politically. The man had a steadfast guile.

Had Lincoln lived I believe the 100 years of Jim Crow laws would have never manifested.. but we will never know and unfortunately the matter was left up to honorable men of another century to finish.

This was a great movie. Spielberg's direction, John Williams Soundtrack and a cast of characters including a stunning job by Tommie Lee Jones rounded off this superb film!

Monday, November 05, 2012

Cassidy!

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