| One of the great things about the series is how different the subjects are from each other, tied together only by their mutual queerness. How did you find such a diverse group of participants?
It really started by shooting friends, then friends of friends…but now the internet has become my main method of seeking people out. A lot of times it’s just from broad searches like “Queer Detroit,” “Queer Ohio,” that leads me to people. Other times I find people through social networks like Myspace.
I think that meeting people like this is an interesting (to me anyway) part of my project because I have heard from some of the older folks I’ve photographed that the internet is filling the shoes of the gay bar of years past… a place where you can seek-out like minded people and not feel so alone in the world. That’s what I tell myself anyway to not feel like such a stalker. Haha.
Sometimes the photos have an almost-candid feel, but they’re also clearly composed. How long do you spend preparing each shot, and how many different shots do you generally take for each subject?
I shoot about 6 sheet of film for each subject and it takes anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours… but normally I spend about 20 minutes just talking with the subjects and then we shoot for about an hour. It’s always a really natural progression of poses and people are always so open to push the boundaries a little bit, which is something I’ve learned as I’ve gone along. I was much more shy in the beginning.
Composing honest glimpses into these people’s lives that are also aesthetically captivating seems like a tricky balancing act. How do you work with your subjects to find that perfect image?
I think the most important thing is reading body language to make sure that the subject is feeling strong about how they’re representing themselves. If they’re not comfortable it’s really clear and I don’t shoot till its feels right.
Do you try to use available lighting, or do you mainly shoot with a lighting set-up and a camera assistant?
I use available light most of the time and sometimes I bounce a flash when it’s really dark. I’m trying to get better about using a flash because so often I have people scrambling around their houses bringing in more lamps! It’s kind of a nice icebreaker. I always shoot solo but sometimes I recruit for assistants along the way. Twice now I’ve had someone’s 10 year old cousin or camera shy girlfriend holding an umbrella over me while I shoot.
What are the advantages of shooting on a 4×5 camera? How do you feel about shooting digitally?
I shoot digital for other things and I love it… like for my collaborative work, but for this project I like the slowness of large format. I also think that it puts people at ease to work with a format that they’re unfamiliar with and as a result they have less inclination to put on their “camera face”.
“Embodiment” reads like an anthropological study of today’s queer youth. What have you discovered about over the course of the project that surprised you, or conversely, re-affirmed your ideas about what it means to be young and queer today?
What surprised me is the discrimination (or rather criticism) I sometimes see within the queer community, and it often involves “not being queer enough” or “being too queer”. Even though there is a reoccurring theme of people feeling very close to this term “Queer,” as well as the community as a whole… it still sometimes feels like I’ve placed myself in the middle of a huge high school with 100 different cliques.
I’ve noticed that race and age really play an important role as well when it comes to how people define them selves and how they feel defined by others. Right now I’m trying to expand my project, making the scope of age and geographic location much more broad so I can look closer at this dynamic and gather a broader diversity of stories and images. Oh yeah… I’ve started having subjects write statements about who they are, etc. They’ll be on the website soon! |
