It is a simple yet crucial question I feel gets far too little attention: What do you believe?
I ask because I now understand that answering that question, with regard to your artistic practice, is absolutely crucial to understanding What & Why you do what you do.
Having a conviction of what underpins your art will anchor you as you weather the mercurial art world at large. That knowledge will guide you when you stray, bring you back when you grow disinterested, and nourish you when you are empty.
The strength of your convictions is the strength you (can) bring to bear when it comes to making, speaking of, promoting, and championing your artwork.
I think this idea has surfaced in me because of the relationship I’ve had with my primary artistic output over the last two years.
Over that time, the time during which I’ve (met-fallen in love with-married-and-we are merrily on our way to the happily ever-after) photographed Roxanne, I’ve had to grapple deeply with the nature of our domestic life and how that is presented (represented) in photographs.
The primary difficulty I’ve been unable to hurdle has been some patina of impropriety, some fear of seeming to fit into an anachronistic model of domestic relations. Roughly: that the images’ mode of representation are those that fit into the mould of objectification, inequalities of power, and the treatment of the woman as something to be dominated, held up to scrutiny with impunity, and being made to provide visual-sexual gratification without the need (or chance) of reciprocation (on the part of the viewer).
Even though I’ve felt that the images were defenseless against such claims, I’ve not been able to square those notions – particularly as they relate to my role in the relationship and as an artist relating to his subject – with what they really show. Roxanne is never subservient, or subjugated, or coercively put in any position that we do not arrive at through collaboration.
None the less – our relation is not egalitarian, symmetric, or free from differences. These spring as much from our own individual character as they do from how an organism (the married couple) moves through its environment (the social landscape). Marriage, and the accompanying photography that is seen here flowing out of it, is not the construction and inhabitance of a plain, but the co-construction of a three dimensional field of relations. There are a myriad arenas, social and psychological spheres, the pair can inhabit; each of those niches comes with its own stance and position with relation to the rest of the marital landscape.
What makes the marriage and the nature of the relations sound, and fundamentally moral, is the unwavering quality of love in the interactions between the partners. It matters little if the individuals are by nature more of less demure, more or less sexual, more or less active or passive in their joint efforts; what does matter is that the exchanges between them is steeped in love, respect, admiration, understanding … elevating, not denigrating.
It is from that foundation of Love from which I operate as a husband and as a photographer, and so it is that I am certain that the work that I’ve been producing is not in fact the product of the “male gaze” unfettered – but of a male gaze enamored.
I believe that where something is found to fault, in particular in my photos of Roxanne, it is the maleness of the view that trips the sense of gender equality and triggers the notion of impropriety. However, to view something as a man is not the same as viewing something as a misogynist. To efface all traces of maleness from imagery is no more a cure for misogyny than the notion that if we simply skinned all of humanity we would be free of racism.
The conviction I have of the quality and character of my relationship with Roxanne is, I’ve recently come to understand, the cornerstone of my certainty that the work we are bringing to the public is not something retrograde, but indeed affirmative and sound. The images form a visual lyricism of the environs of this couple’s Love.