okay, so as i was skipping to class overjoyed today

i fumbled when my friend sent me information via text messaging that proposition 8 had passed in california. proposition 8. passed. with all of the support (both emotionally and financially) that people have received to vote NO to prop 8, i honestly could not fathom such a ludicrous ban passing. call me naive. call me crazy. call me an insane dyke fag hag, but it’s two thousand and motherfucking eight. gay rights shouldn’t even be an issue.

 

marriage equality is a BASIC HUMAN FUCKING RIGHT. i joined a group on facebook a couple of years ago that was titled “Don’t Like Gay Marriage? Then Don’t Get One and Shut the Fuck Up.” homosexuals aren’t asking for world domination…just the right to say I Do and be recognized as a married couple in the United States of America. there’s a proposition that passed in Arkansas banning gay parenting. 

i can understand why…….you dont want the gay to rub off on your children.

to quote my beautiful friend Kate and her loving girlfriend Christina, “we believe that our love is stronger than anyone’s love if that anyone would vote against love.”

 

FUCK you california.

 

VOTE

did everybody vote today?!?!

 

if not you still have a few moments left. leave. right now. wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, the future depends on YOU!

 

i just spent 14 hours at a band competition

it was heaven, but i’m exhausted.

however, i wanted to post the pics from my newest critique. all i have right now are the digital files and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to scan my transfers (that i looooove) without getting 8428425671 pieces of dust on them. help? please?!

anyway, i’m becoming more and more and more more more excited about this series the more i work on it. i think my work is improving (but maybe i’m just biased?) and i hope to eventually complete this as a kick ass series.

anyhoo, here are my images. the photo of anne sexton is my favorite. i sleep with it every night…

 

 

EDIT: i realize all the images posted twice but i’m far too tired to try and figure out the reason as to why that happened…

 

ahhhhhhhh damnit

i’m drowning. the beginning of the semester (like all beginnings of all semesters) went quite nicely. i had plenty of time to set up shoots and never worried about where my next model would come from. i worked 40 hours a week with my second job and didn’t have a care.

the end of the semester (like all ends of all semesters) is a different story. i’m drowning. i have too many papers and too many projects due in too little of time. i’m going to have to start paying people to model even though i dont have time to work at my second job, therefore i have no money to offer. my priorities need to be shifted. dramatically.

otherwise, my work is going along at a steady pace. each time i set up a shoot i get more excited about my concept. however, i’m afraid that i’m not making my concept clear. i have work on the photography exchange here on wordpress, and without my explanation, people aren’t understanding my images.

one person critiqued and said that if i wanted to acknowledge Virginia Woolf, i should have stones in my image. there are stones…they’re sitting on the toilet seat and she’s even placing one large stone in her pocket. 

my problem is in showing homage to how they committed suicide without making that the point of the image. i want to focus on the feeling – that fleeting last moment of one’s life. i fear i may be failing.

 

it might as well be snowing

i dont have heat in my apartment. sucks, right? i loathe going home each day because the temperature averages around 45-55 throughout the place. what i hate even more is that I’M not the one who has to put up with it 24 hours a day…i get a break while i’m on campus or at work or visiting a friend (preferably one with heat). however, my kitty Adrian sneezes her face off all night (normally directly into my face…just to get her point across) and it’s starting to weigh on my conscience. 

unfortunately i have $11.73 in my bank account, so the heat is not getting turned on any time soon.

 

other than that, nothing new has happened. i decided to switch my smith hall project around, but a lot of the images i’ve shot coincide with my new concept. 

i was telling another photography student about the night i thought i was getting robbed on the second floor. it was 1-2 in the morning and i was working alone in the darkroom. i stepped out into the hall to get a breath of fresh air and noticed a group of boys at the end of the hall with hoods over their heads. i slowly stepped back into the room and shut the door, and i immediately heard them coming down the hall. one guy whispered “which room was it?” and i freaked, haha. there’s no way to lock the room from the inside, so i ran back into the corridors of the darkroom and hid until someone came to save me.

no one ever came in, but i’m glad that i knew that darkroom like the back of my hand. 

soooooooooooooooo…….for my smith hall project, i want to photograph the parts of the building that typically go unnoticed. it could be a cubby hole in the darkroom, a white tile on the floor, a note written in a bathroom stall…but all these little things make up your experience of being here.

ohh snap it’s time to leave.

 

meetings

so i had my mid-semester (seriously? already??) meeting with my photography professor Hans today. it went well enough…he gave me some much needed feedback and suggested a couple of books and movies to help in my research of suicides.

however, we both agreed that if i want to stress the importance of the media’s portrayel in my series, i need help. the problem is that after obsessing over this very aspect for weeks i have yet to come to a conclusion. i think the tableau aspect showcases the romanticism of suicide by the media, but there’s something missing – that one thing that pushes my work over the edge. i’m thinking of perhaps reshooting the images using models that look absolutely nothing like the person they are meant to portray. if van gogh is suddenly immortalized by a black woman, then it becomes less about the individual and more about the concept. i think that would also enhance the fact that the media doesn’t give two shits about who you are until they can write a 5 page spread about your “tragic demise.”

but then i fear that people won’t understand what i’m trying to convey and instead wash it up to yet another suicide series. i need help. this is why i’m in grad school. any opinion would be much appreciated.

 

current work

so i’m doing a series on famous suicides. a longer explanation will come later considering i am, once again, at work.

 

 

…

i have a mad headache. this morning we had interesting discussions (for perhaps the first time this semester) in advanced studio and i didn’t even participate in a single one. my head was exploding and certain voices were making my ears bleed.

i really don’t have anything to discuss right now. i just wish i could leave work and take a much needed nap in the uncomfort of my ridiculously cold apartment. i’m putting off turning on my gas heat for as long as possible because both my jobs suck and i spend too much money on alcohol and cigarettes. ahhh life. i’m thinking of quitting smoking anyway. i said i would quit at 22 (5 years after starting) but once i actually turned 22 it didn’t seem like such a good idea. now i’m thinking 27. a good ten years of smoking should suffice. 

speaking of smoking, i feel a nicotine attack coming on. check yous guys later.

 

immortality through death

marilyn monroe, sylvia plath, hunter s. thompson, vincent van gogh, anne sexton, kurt cobain, virginia woolf, diane arbus, eva braun, thich quang doc, elliot smith.

 

suicide has been extremely popular in the world of artists and celebrities since the beginning of artists and celebrities. just yesterday, on october 2, 2008, a korean actress took her own life in her apartment in seoul, south korea. an actress that i had never heard of prior to the incident. however, taking her own life deemed her worthy enough to make the headline news in the united states.

why?

death is indescribable. no one can explain it simply because no one has lived to tell about it. what is it about taking your own life that excites the individual, and – in all actuality – the ones remaining who view the event?

right now i’m working on a series involving the suicide of celebrities, artists, musicians, and authors. what is it about the individual that has given them their legendary status? was it the work they created while they were among the living? or is it the act in which they ended their lives? 

uploaded images and better explanation to come. right now i’m working and i assume my boss doesn’t want me “playing” on the internet…damn shame.

 

amber, hands down

“There are many myths surrounding the origin of amber. Ovid wrote that when Phaethon, a son of Helios, the sun, convinced his father to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun through the heavens for a day, he erred too close to the earth, scorching it. To save the earth, Zeus struck Phaethon with a thunderbolt and he died, plunging out of the sky. His mother and sister turned into trees in their grief but still mourned him. Their tears, dried by the sun, are amber.”

 

fuck you guys. i love my giant, extremely overpriced and gaudy heart-shaped ring.