LGBTQIA people and those who create art have always made magic.
When the world is dark, when it’s dark inside our own minds, we use that magic to show ourselves and others that beauty still exists and can be made from within.
The extreme changes in all of our lives these past few months have left me at times both uninspired and inspired artistically. The isolation of the pandemic and, more importantly to me, us seeing together behind the curtain of our society and discovering the harmful symptoms of systemic racism that bleed through our country’s history and run strong in its veins today, have hopefully changed us.
I feel in myself and in the ones I keep close in my life that we think differently now. There’s a shift in perspective. Waking up and seeing the online videos and articles of police brutality towards Black Americans and murders of innocent Black Americans like George Floyd, BREONNA TAYLOR, Ahmaud Arbery, and ones unheard of to the public until now like Elijah McClain have left me galvanized towards anti racism. I want to be a platform for change by whatever resources or privilege I have. I want to uplift and celebrate Black Artists and people of color that could benefit from artistic talents and resources that I have. If you’re reading this and have an idea for a way we can collaborate, go to my contact page and send me an email. I’m not playing about this. If you’re inspired and empowered by this movement that we are making towards awareness in racial inequality, and I can help you create art to send that message out, I want in.
Seeing the blatant disregard of the movement for justice for black people in our country by some of my peers has left me shocked and disappointed. So if I’m creating art right now, I want it to be authentic, honest, and aware. Because I do not want to seem like I’m being absent in the reality we live in now. My content on social media is a scrapbook to myself of my life, this year has affected my life deeply. So know that there will be a shift in my content.
As a white cis man, me posting content of myself right now seems irrelevant unless I’ve got some collective good to share.
Pride month is almost gone
And It is weird out here in these times
And sometimes I feel stifled
And I can still be extremely inspired and proud to be a queer person.
The freedom I can have in my culture was born from the course-changing actions of black trans women like Marsha P Johnson. I feel grateful and happy that this year, it seems like we have all realized and recognized the importance of trans people and people of color in our queer history more than before.
So with me wanting to come from a place of honesty and authenticity, and also wanting to show the magic of being queer and an artist, I took this series of photos.
I wanted to give a perspective shift and show how little actually changes in how we access fantasy and escapism from when we are young. As a little queer kid I put t shirts on my head for hair and shot reverse karate films in my bedroom on my vhs recorder. As a grown ass man I do essentially the same thing with a soft box and a camera. It doesn’t take much more than a spark to create art, and I wanted to show the elements that go in to creating self portraits that I post so that those out there who have the spark can feel less intimidated about creating their own.
Happy Pride
Love others
Love yourself
And let’s keep loving towards justice