first draft of my project, where have you been? (which may or may not remain the title). this will all make more sense soon.
Another image from my final analog photography project, The Ramble
Click here to my website to see more work.
Again, thank you all for your continued support.
Here are four images from my final photography project entitled The Ramble
For more work, take a look at my website. To date, I am most proud of this work, and I couldn’t have done it without the help and advisement and encouragement of others. Thank you all so much.
Artist Statement:
It was towards the end of sixth grade. For any number of reasons, I called my best-friend’s boyfriend a faggot, once during a conversation over the phone and again the next day as he was leaving the locker room in gym class. Whether or not I actually perceived him to be gay, it matters none. But what did matter, and continued to matter for the following seven years, was his response. Apparently unmoved by my ignorant remark, he said, “It takes one to know one.” Those very words marked the foundation of my consequent neurotic sexual analysis.
Until the end of middle school I was tormented by this incessant self-interrogation, perpetuating the societally normative view that regards homosexuality as one of the worst conceivable things a person could be. From my own mind I sought refuge and consolation, both in the compassionate arms of my mother and the confines of a psychiatric office.
For a while it seemed that my troubles had receded, thus allowing me to peacefully assimilate to whom, fundamentally, I was “intended” to be, a cisgender male. However I was never truly unaccompanied by these thoughts and any moment of “peace” became short-lived. In accordance with Abraham Maslow’s theory on humans’ hierarchy of needs, it was essential that I felt a sense of love and belonging, first within myself and eventually by my social world. Thus, by the end of my senior year in high school, I understood that I wanted nothing more than to realize who I most accurately was so that I might transcend the most basic terms of my identity and fulfill greater potentials.
I was first introduced to The Ramble, as it came up amid casual classroom discussion, in my first semester at New York University. Generally noted as New York City’s premier woodland, featuring an extensive community of various bird species, The Ramble further functions as a ground for gay cruising, the act of gay men seeking, usually after dark, anonymous sexual relations in urban parks and woods.
While I had already affirmed my identity in terms of my heterosexuality, my interest in men was yet to be discovered. The intentions of the men visiting the space certainly varied. There are those whom desire brief, strictly sexual encounters. And then there are those who desperately seek social companionship in an outdoor community that is not majorly preoccupied with the more commercial representation of the gay community — the Grecian, the young and the beautiful; “The cruising ground is a more democratic space,” asserts Mark Turner in his 2006 article in The Observer, “…your body size matters less, thinning hair isn’t noticed so much… You can be your plain, unremarkable self and still be attractive to other men.” The Ramble offered me a space in which I could introduce myself without second thought or restraint; here I was simultaneously known and unknown. My discovery of myself could go as it pleased, uninterrupted with a strong interest in soul edification and a rejection of negativity.
The Ramble, my final project for my analog photography course, is a testament to my enlightenment, specifically as it relates to honesty, creativity, and new beginnings.
allamericanevil Ellio are you just working with film now?
for the most part yeah, i’ve grown a love for it. i’ll probably go back to digital primarily come summer
Small photo shoot I did last week with Carolyn of Jewels Model Management.
Styling by Kia Marie Primus, makeup by Ari Kaplan
Small photo shoot I did last week with Carolyn of Jewels Model Management.
Styling by Kia Marie Primus, makeup by Ari Kaplan
Small photo shoot I did last week with Carolyn of Jewels Model Management.
Styling by Kia Marie Primus, makeup by Ari Kaplan
