What story about men are we telling?

History. Philosophy. Science. Two men sit in a car discussing these subjects while eating their  food. Their conversations show them to be ignorant, shallow and inept. While on the surface these fast food commercials seem like harmless fun, they are in fact symptoms of a larger cultural phenomena that portray men as fools.  You can find examples of this across all forms of media.  This marketing approach taps into our insecurities via a proxy attack on all the men in our lives that have failed us.

Site of a photo shoot

My photography has primarily focused on male nudes. What story about men am I trying to tell? Men are richly complex: beautiful yet rugged; strong yet vulnerable; heroes and flawed. We take control over the story through the choices we make in art and in our daily lives. That’s a story worth telling.

If you want to learn about my artistic process and how I approach a photo shoot to capture these truths about men, you can check out this YouTube video.

Will we have the greatest ambition possible?

"Why will you not have ambition? Why? Have the greatest ambition possible! You want to be immortal: fight to be immortal. Do it. You want to make the most fantastic art...try. If you fail, it's not important. We need to try."

-Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a director who assembled an amazing team 

(Salvador Dali, Orson Wells, David Carradine, H.R. Giger, Mick Jagger, Pink Floyd) to create a film version of the famous sci-fi novel, Dune in 1975. Unfortunately, Hollywood didn't go for it, despite said team and having the entire film story boarded by famed comic artist Moebius.  David Lynch would go on to direct a different film version in 1984 that many considered (including this writer) a colossal disappointment. 

The rise and fall of the 1975 project is detailed in an amazing documentary, Jodorowsky's Dune, from which the above quote comes from. While the movie never happened, the story boards for the film directly influenced movies like Alien, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, The Terminator, Prometheus and others.

Screen shot from The Other Side of the Sun

Art can be a scary proposition, particularly when you have roadblocks that can derail the ambition of your vision. I've directed a number of short films and consider the first one to be a rather epic fail. Yet, it enable me to learn and get me where I am today: like recently directing a music video, The Other Side of the Sun. Are we learning in our daily lives to fail better and have the greatest ambition possible?