Trepidation

"Lonesomeville" is finished.  Done.  Complete.

I think.  I wrestle with it.  It has been fun for me, and difficult, too.  You can't do this if you have a conscience (consciousness) and not suffer from the ridicule and tribulations and self-doubt. I could have taken on the less dangerous, popular photo projects of the times.  I know how to photograph the blank, empty spaces of America.  I've done it.  And I've engaged people in street projects as well.  It is all thrilling.  But being a certified white male girly-show photographer is a different thing.  "Bonerville" my feminist friend Q deemed it.  "Hooterville," and "Cooterville," . . . it's been hailed a lot of things.

And it has been nothing but hard and constant work.  The girls show up.  I don't know them.  We chat.  I show them some of the many things I do.  You do not see them here.  I have no way to show the encaustic and transfer pieces.  I print on transparencies and glass.  I print on a variety of papers with different coatings.  It all takes time.  Some work, some don't.  The models usually have not seen works like this before, so we talk about how I do things.  I show them where we will shoot and pose for them.  They show me the wardrobe they've brought, then they get ready while I check lights and exposures.  Then we shoot.  I am, of course, nervous the entire time.  It is work and I sweat through my clothing.  When the model leaves, I work another hour or so in the studio.  Then the labor begins.  Weeks later, I have some images to show to them.  Meanwhile, I've shot again.  Or again and again.  And this is not my life.  I get up, go to the factory, come home, work again on photos, and collapse.

And then I post the pictures here on my site.  Sometimes people like them.  It is thrilling.  And sometimes people tell me that they don't.  After spending minutes looking at them over a long period, they are tired of them.  Bored.  And I am wrecked.

I tell myself it doesn't matter, of course.  I have a vision and in the end it will prevail.  And then I think, "all you've done is a bunch of pictures of naked women."  And I despair.

If, though, the only reward was to meet and talk with the women I've worked with, it would be enough.  I've learned more than I knew about the variety of life from them.  The thing that I sometimes think about is how little they have learned from me.  I ask them questions and am truly enthralled to hear them talk about themselves, their families, their pasts and their futures.  They rarely ask about me (for which I am greatly thankful).

And now. . . I am left with this.  You all have seen it much.  Now I want to spring it upon an unsuspecting audience.  I think.

It could be awful.  I am afraid that I will be reviled and eschewed, driven from decent society like an oddly shaped dog seen in the distance.

O.K.  I'm melodramatic.  Trying to make a point.

Though I have many more images from the series, I don't know that I am going to show them here any longer.  Trouble is. . . what next?   Until I get my Frankencamera back from John Minnicks, I'm not sure.  And so there may be more of these, just not so often.

Who knows.  I'm not a good judge.  I like the Black Keys more than the White Stripes.  I'm sure I'll be embarrassed by that some time in the future.  It is the way I roll.