..December 2002 The Valley of Fire, Somewhere North of Las Vegas..
Posts Tagged ‘Tracy’
Fragile
Monday, April 12th, 2010Chasing the Dragon….
Thursday, March 25th, 2010..November 2004 Somewhere north of Las Vegas, The Valley of Fire..
The dusty desert road transcending down to the Valley of Fire has as many curves as a coiled cobra ready to attack. My rented 1978 white Cadillac wasn’t made to handle this type of driving. The fat-ass of the Cadillac fish tailed across each twist in the road kicking up thick clouds of dust.
It was easy to see why the Valley was named “The Valley of Fire.” At dusk the fading hot red sunlight cascades through the cracks in the surrounding mountaintops and paints the valley floor a fierce blinding red and yellow.
I have a fear of being outside New York. I don’t feel comfortable in any other place besides New York and Europe. I confront my fears by forcing myself to drive through towns like Chandler, AZ, Taos, NM, and places too small to show up on maps. It’s not the stringy tumble weed or tall emerald green pine trees that make me uncomfortable. It’s the people. The truth about the US is that a lot of people between New York and LA, with the exception of Chicago and Las Vegas, are humorless, naïve, Jesus freaks.
At the end of the roller coaster road, a hamlet of trailer homes welcomed me at the floor of the valley. There are lines of weather beaten silver aluminum trailers that look like a maze. Small rusted bicycles randomly propped on top of crocked fences hammered into a dusty floor. Menacing stray dogs dart between the trailers. Greeting me by smelling my crotch and pissing on my shiny car tires.
Everything about this place is foreign to me. I’m from the big city, dressed in stylish clothing, college educated, and have traveled the world. My appearance is opposite of the locals. I have a hair cut that resembles a Mohawk not spiked in the air. I walk quickly as if I were walking down Broadway on a weekday afternoon and speak with a heavy New York accent.
To the locals I may resemble a Martian. After my crotch was sniffed by the stray dogs, the locals got their first glimpse at me. It was probably bizarre for them to see a foreigner wander around their trailer homes, like a bad hallucination.
Fragile
Saturday, February 27th, 2010
Rocky Horror Picture Show cast
Thursday, January 7th, 2010..February 2003 New York..
A series of photos for an off-Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I tried to keep the spirit of Mick Rock’s original photographs done in the 1970′s.
Angels
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009..September 2002 New York..
This shot was taken during the first portrait project Tracy and I shot. At the time, Tracy was in a theater production of Angels in America. About 2 years before Angels in America was made by HBO for tv.
The shot was inspired by the character she was playing, Harper. It was good to have my own vision of the play and character before it was produced for a tv audience.
It was the first time we seriously worked on shooting portraits. We hadn’t worked together for a year prior. After this portrait we worked almost non-stop for 5 years. Photographing constantly, finding locations around New York to remote areas in New Mexico.
Fragile
Monday, December 7th, 2009
Editting for Striptease Burlesque at Gallery EF
Thursday, November 19th, 2009..March 2007 New York thinking about Tokyo..
Fragile
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
Halloween
Saturday, October 31st, 2009..October 2009 New York..
We have a big Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village. Some of the drag queens dress up as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The straight people dress up as Disney characters. It’s an interesting sociology study.
Tracy
Monday, October 19th, 2009..August 2001 New York..
This was the first portrait I took of Tracy. It was taken during a fashion shoot at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. We had to deal with curious tourists, an August heat wave, and crazy fashion designers who wanted to shoot 20 looks in 3 hours with clothing to big for the models.
We didn’t shoot again for another year. After that Tracy was a muse for 6 years. We traveled almost everywhere to take photos. 8 hour car rides to the Midwest looking for old wooden covered bridges, sunrise trips to remote deserts close to where the military tests missiles, dirty alley ways in Venice, the vile bathroom at CBGB’s, and countless other locations all times of day, morning, an late night.
All to get photographs. Not much seemed far away during those times. We found a way to make the camera work with whatever resources we had.
This was my favorite photograph from the fashion shoot. Tracy looks almost like a boy in this photo. The eyes and tilt of her head always catch my attention.
She was always able to give me emotion. The intangible that makes our photos. I haven’t been able to consistently get that out of the many people I’ve photographed.
I don’t know what happened to those fashion designers. I’m not even sure what they did with the photos…..But it resulted in me and Tracy working as an effective team for many years.
After all the passed time, it’s still spontaneous and unpolished when we photograph. A lot like the excitement of the unknown when we photographed the first couple of times.
