.: Life With Bryan - Bryan AC Ried 1982-2013

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Life With Bryan - Bryan AC Ried 1982-2013

The first weekend of 2014 and I am spending it with my friend Bryan whom I love for the last time. Bryan is dead and I am going to his funeral. I don’t mean to be blunt but that what this whole experience has been like… blunt force trauma on my emotions. A blow I or anyone else didn’t see coming. Short on the details that got us to this moment yet in a sad way I am not completely surprised.

I met Bryan at a Michelle Ross performance in 2010… He was a short human lightning bolt of energy, jumping and dancing on the stage with his shirt off, his defined chest showing off his signature Bear Claw tats… he was a whirling durbish and a sight to behold. Shortly after meeting him we caught up on the street in passing and I asked him if he’d be interested in photographs and while he said yes it was several weeks before it actually happened. In fact I thought it was off but one night he called me at 3:30 am and claimed this was it! It was a warm June night and I didn’t have to work the next day so I was kewl… it was spontaneous and I have always liked the outcome of spontaneous shoots. Bryan was spontaneous, it was that energy thing again. He came up and we shot till 5:00 am…. I was a bit tired but Bryan was wired.

Here are a few images from that early AM shoot...

As I got to know him I learned many things about him, he was very open with his life, his loves and joys and the low moments and burdens as well. With that unguarded honesty and trust I knew quickly that we would be life long friends. Over the course of 4 years we shot five times, each very different. Creativity was a co-operative moment with Bryan… He walked in always knowing what he wanted to do and we would talk through it and make it a reality.

For me the most enjoyable was our second shoot in October of 2010, A combination of underwater stills and video which for the most part Bryan had orchestrated in his mind when he walked in the door. For some of you the images will not be a surprise as he put many of them on his face book and other places… The video which we made together including editing and even the choice of soundtrack will debut soon.

The next shoot came in May of 2011 and really showed his enthusiasm for life, to me Bryan was almost always a very happy person who was trying to live his life to the fullest… regardless of the obstacles.

Our last shoot was June 13th 2012… Bryan was one of the many individuals who was there for me when I had my open heart surgery in March of that year…. He would make time to stop by and spend time and help out around the house. When we met that morning he walked in agitated and not his usual self. After a few moments I turned around to find him sitting on the studio floor head in hands and tears flowing. It was a whoa moment… When I asked him what was wrong he confided that something had him down though he wouldn’t be specific.

We sat quietly for a moment and he mentioned that he wished sometimes he had made better choices in life. I assured him that he was not alone in that thought… and that I too had shed many a tear over my choices. He finally cracked open a bit more that he was about to turn 30 and that he was not satisfied that he had done enough with his life. I immediately went into my pish posh speech to crush his pity party… Im 52 and even I haven accomplished what I want to do but then again most of it happened in the last 20 years and those are the best years yet for you… Anyways its not about the quantity of life but the quality…. while you were here did you live in the moment and to the fullest?

After a pause I asked him if he wanted to reschedule… at which point he looked at me with full indignation and said hell no I want these photos for my birthday! He got up off the floor and became…. well Bryan again.

People sometimes ask me what is it about photography that attracts me to it. I always answer that aside from the obvious creativity that it allows me to get to know other people in sometimes deep meaningful ways and by means of sharing I learn more about people and myself. I also feel an imperative to document people…. In this youth oriented lifestyle we are in it is important to have images when we were young and vital to look back upon… to allow the memories to flow over better times and be able to take stock in a life well lived. Ultimately a photograph is a form of immortality 1/ 60th of a second long…

My sadness this week is again overcoming me as Bryan won’t have the chance to have those moments anymore, but at least through these images in some small way he will be immortal…

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:

Anonymous said...: Those are really beautiful; 5:28 PM

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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