Posts Tagged ‘self shot’

I began work on a new series on January 15th of this year. “Hands” stems from an interest in more conceptual photography. Moving away from the camera by placing it closer to me, I’m relying only on my hands and a few select props to tell the story in each photo. I enjoyed the challenge of emoting without the benefit of eye contact or facial expression and learned several new lighting and editing techniques along the way, so it was definitely a worthwhile project.

The photos are in no particular order. I would say that they tell no story as a whole and that they have no cohesive thread as far as theme, but the series is ongoing and I don’t know when I’ll consider it finished. Probably when I get bored with it or it starts to feel redundant.

Once upon a time in a glittering kingdom by the sea there lived a dark man. He had dark eyes and dark hair, dark clothes and dark thoughts, and he lived by himself in a great dark castle up on a hill. This was strange, because the kingdom was warm and sunny, with warm sunny people, but the dark man saw none of them, and none of them saw him.

One day a little boy came to the glittering kingdom. His eyes shone and he wanted very much to be a part of that beautiful place, though in his heart of hearts he knew he did not belong there because he was made of the same stuff as that dark man on the hill. So he paid the man a visit, and dark met dark, and they enveloped each other like a black crayon in a puddle of oil in a cave at the bottom of the sea. Blacker than black.

They stayed together for many years and shared many things, their dreams and their thoughts, parts of their lives they’d never told anyone else, because no one would have understood them. They smiled sharp smiles and laughed sharp laughs and reveled in the darkness that was theirs because finally they’d each found something they’d needed all along. Life was good. They were suddenly, strangely happy.

One day the boy was exploring the dark castle and he found a room he hadn’t seen before. It was filled with giant cases and closets stuffed full of books and clothes and all kinds of things. The boy was curious, and he took the clothes out of their boxes and tried them on, one at a time. They were dark clothes, of course, but very finely made and they fit him perfectly. He was thrilled to have made such a find, though he was nervous that the room had been hidden because the dark man didn’t want anyone to see it. Even the little boy.

So he turned to leave the room. But on his way out he tripped over a heavy, beautifully ornate box carved all over with strange symbols. He opened the box and inside was a crown. It was the first thing he had seen in the house that was not dark, for this crown was blood red, glowing like Hellfire and brighter than all the bright things in that shining city. It spoke to his fingers of the tremendous power it contained and the boy couldn’t resist placing it on his head, if only for a moment, just to see how it felt. After all, the dark man was practically his father, and no harm would ever come to him in their dark home.

For a moment it stayed snugly atop his head and the boy felt a warmth pouring over him, bringing with it a terrible rush of strength and the awareness that the owner of this crown was far more than what he seemed. He had just enough time to wonder about the true identity of the dark man when the crown grew in size, big enough to slip down off his head, over his nose to land heavily on both shoulders.

This not being proper crown behavior at all, the boy raised a hand to lift the crown back to its proper place but it reverted back to crown-size before he could move it. In fact, it began to shrink even smaller, drawing tight around his neck and then tighter still, until the sound of the boy’s struggle for breath was cut off by the pounding of the blood in his ears. As his breath left him, his vision began to flicker out, first dimming to red, then brown, and finally to black. Blacker than black.

The dark man found him later that night, after an hour of walking through the dark castle, calling his name. By then the crown was crown-sized again, laying benignly next to the crumpled body with the hands still curled from trying to claw it away. The man stared for a long time before he scooped the crown from the floor, placing it on his own head. It fit perfectly, as it had for centuries, ever obedient. Shaking his head, the king gathered the body of the boy from the floor and took it away to yet another hidden dark room in the dark house, where it would lie with his other mistakes until a time when the dark outnumbered the light, and the glittering kingdom would be bright no more.

Medical brace to hold me in. Aquarium tubing to tie me together. Black garbage bag to save me from flat neutral painted walls. My favourite latex gloves size seven and a half stolen from my mother’s stash of hospital things. Bruise palette makeup, because black was wrong and red was distracting. Bag stuck to the wall with static alone, tripod set up in front of me. A chair dragged over with the lamp clipped to it. A full length mirror sideways and angled behind the camera, balanced across my humidifier and trashcan. I was hungry. It seemed fitting. I powdered my lips petal pale and reached for my belt, looping it across my goat’s eyes, kneeling on the floor with the long end under my knee to keep it tight and free my hands. I made a fist and my veins jumped out almost immediately, pulsing cables under white skin, eager.

I used to use all kinds of things in place of blood. I had countless mixes and little bottles left over from botched, aborted, or occasionally successful previous shoots. Store bought. Homemade. Improvised. The first time I used my own blood for a photoshoot was my command performance shot with Gabriel back in 2004, photos Manson requested months before we met or spoke personally. I remember gashing myself up with a safety pin, dozens of whitehot stinging kitten scratches, until my chest felt the way it was supposed to, my skin burning and stinging. I sipped my La Fee and snorted line after line of powdered caffeine tablets until the pain and the herb and the pace picked up and lifted me off the ground, set me on my feet on the path, my feet grown big enough for the footsteps already laid for me. That shoot was perfect for the time. Baby steps, laughable now, but exactly right for when it was. When I was. The next time I cut myself for a shoot it was (s)AINT, more a suggestion than a request. I’d wanted to do the whole video rather than just stills and while only pieces were ever filmed, it went much the same way. Cut, cut, cut. Three for my chest, and many more than three when it came time for the cocaine. Realism was the key, always realism. The faker doesn’t fake, this shoot was important. After that it was the MMIX shoot. Crimson robed, newly single and damaged in every sense of the word, I razored open every scar he’d given me that I could find, and made a few new ones on top of those. My chest and my eyes leaked as one and I photographed this newest rite for my newest passage.

Peter Murphy was telling me about the passion of lovers. I knew all about passion as I unwrapped the syringe. It felt good in my hand and looked great with the glove and I had a sense of readiness and rightness. And nervousness. I’d taken blood this way before with mixed results, when I needed or wanted more than I could get from just a cut. Once I went too far in and the crook of my arm panged with a cold dullness that took days to stop. This needle was brand new, glinting metal gorgeousness, so sharp it caught the skin as I touched the tip to my elbow slightly below the tiny crater of a scar left over from months of faithful (read: desperate) plasma donations. (Ask me again the things I’ve done for concert ticket money, there are so many ways to sell yourself.) Peter wailed his heartbroken cry and the needle was in, a burning cold itchy feeling. It was tricky to hold it still and pull the plunger back but I have long fingers and managed it. At first, nothing. I shifted my leg to release the belt. The leather went slack, my hand went warm with the rush of blood and the body of the syringe immediately bubbled up with that beautiful purple red I love so much. I drew it full and decided against going for the second syringe that I’d considered filling after the first, mostly because I wouldn’t be able to twist off the full one, move it somewhere safe, and twist on the empty one with only one hand and without pulling the needle out or making a giant mess. One would have to do. I slid the needle out and watched with satisfaction as the blood beaded up at the crease of my elbow, the near-black giving way to cherry red as I spread it over my skin in a thick line halfway down my forearm. Beautiful.

The syringe’s warmth always startles me when I hold it. So alien, to see my insides on the outside, still warm from me. Almost sexual. I fit the needle into one end of the tube, pressed the plunger a bit and watched in rapt fascination as the blood flowed in red spirals along the tubing. I put the other end in my mouth, sucked hard. The moisture of my breath fogged the plastic, made the blood thin slightly, spreading further. I plunged more and sucked until I tasted copper, then fit the needle to the other end of the tubing, taping it to my arm where it was supposed to be placed. I didn’t think I could shoot with the needle actually in my arm as I needed to be able to move to operate the camera and the bleeding would get to be very messy, tube or no tube. There’s a limit to how much I can drink, too. so I left it out, worked around it. The tubing felt warmer with my blood in it, curled around my throat like a tiny snake or an expensive piece of jewelry, studded with rubies. It felt holy. It felt right. Later I untaped the needle, held it to my throat, imagined the red circle of blood through the needle to the tube, up and around into my mouth, swallowing it back into my throat again. I pressed it too close, felt it catch, a pinprick dot of red. The girl from Concrete Blonde sang of vampires and gardens. The camera clicked, beeped, stopped on DSCF0360. Card full. Game over.