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New post on Always On: “On the Constant Moment”
Wherein I argue that evolving photographic technology is killing Cartier-Bresson’s concept of the Decisive Moment, replacing it with a form of 24/7 surveillance curation, and that it’s totally OK.
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READER MAIL: THIS IS FOR THE MISFITS
hello clayton
yet again, i see something in you that inspires. as a kid, i wanted to go to art school, i wanted to create. i had a good eye for color, and i enjoyed putting visual elements together. it calmed me. my mother did not nourish this creativity, and absolutely shunned the idea of me ever going to art school with the intention of making things. to my mother, and to many people in general, art was a hobby. art was not something people did to make a living, and she was poor enough as it was. she worked hard, lived with a man who i did see make much effort to help, and seemed unhappy. i thought about escaping a lot. but the belief was ingrained in my head, that i would never be able to make art, go to art school, etc.
the fact that you went so far as to have the motivation, the encouragement, to enter an art competition [and win!] as a kid is really cool. and having the determination to still create beautiful things, despite not having money to go to art school, is inspiring. i wish i’d had the strength and foresight to do likewise.
i’m making small steps. thank you for inspiring.This is for the poor kids. The misfits. The neglected dreamers.
You sit in the back of the class because you’re ashamed of your hand-me-downs. You can’t afford glasses so you can’t see the board. You don’t have enough money for your own art supplies, and your school doesn’t supply them because all that money goes to the jocks, so you guiltily shoplift them. The entire machine you’re being pushed through is engineered to ignore you in favor of the elites. The athletes. The rich kids. -
On: Always On — My new portfolio and "art magazine"
“But it’s more interactive than a magazine. I already have Instagram for mobile snapshots, and Twitter for brief thoughts or links, and Tumblr for ephemeral daily photos. So why this photo blog? I’m excited about this part as well: I’ll be using those things to act as a focus group for this thing. Using a complicated set of algorithms collectively known as “my gut,” I’ll be assessing interest in the work I post on social media, based on retweets, reblogs, and likes. Periodically I’ll be taking the content my followers have “up-voted” via those other social platforms, and I’ll explode it in more depth here. The stories behind the scenes, the inspiration behind the aesthetic, the cultural references implicit in the creation, and special editions for the Shop tied to each post. So my followers can, in effect, vote for some of what I will post here, using their own social media accounts to let me know what they’d like to hear more of, or collect, or both.
So, welcome to my new thing. I’m excited for it. Thank you in advance for helping me keep it Always On.”
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Reader Mail: Do you sell your work?
Q: I am a fellow New Orleanian and have been following you on Instagram for some time now. I have to say that you are the only reason I check Instagram anymore. In fact, now that I check your Tumblr site I really don’t log on to Instagram very often anymore! My wife and I are not wealthy but we have a passion for art and try to collect pieces that move us. Much of your work really challenges and engages us in a manner different from other artists. Do you by chance ever sell any of your pieces? Thank you for your time and please keep creating and posting. It brightens my day when I see one of your new pieces that surprises and shocks me!
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My Subject’s Thoughts on My “Thoughts on Neogender” 2007
I’m an intimate, relational artist. My personal work takes “personal” to new levels, and I have some form of a relationship with each of my subjects. In fact, I can’t really do what I do without one. All of my photographs are collaborations in intimacy with my subjects, and I care deeply not just about what the work means to me, but what it means to them. This is why I’ve linked to the personal accounts of Hysterical Literature sessionists Stoya, Danielle, and Solé, I think seeing their perspective makes the art richer.
So as a follow-up on my “Thoughts on Neogender” (link warning: graphic, NSFW) piece, here’s the email I received from the subject after she saw it in 2007. I’m still friends with her, and she consented to its publication now:
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There is transgender. Is there transracial?
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Reader Mail: On the Topic of NSFW Tags
Q: “I hate to ask you to do this because it feels in some small way like it could be considered asking you to censor your work which I would hate to do and would never suggest. But would you please consider adding some sort of NSFW tag to your posts where appropriate? I subscribe to your blog via RSS and love looking at your photos or inspirational quotes during my lunch break, but occasionally I’ll see a photo that might get me in a little bit of trouble at work. If you would rather not do this you will not be losing a follower by any means, but I would very much appreciate it if you could make things a little bit simpler for me.
Regardless of your answer, I would love to take this opportunity to express to you how in awe I am of the things you create. Your work is an incredible combination of challenging and accessible that I’ve found far too rare in the art world. Thank you for making so much of it available on this site.”A: First off, thanks for your polite and thoughtful message, I’m happy that you appreciate my work, especially those aspects of it that challenge.There are two answers to your question. One is easy, one is difficult. One is something I can do as an artist, as a courtesy, the other is one you must do as an individual, as a life choice. -
The more of your life’s snapshots that require pixelating, the better you are living it.
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Hey art school students, when you’re not around your teachers ask me for advice. I’m a high school dropout. Save your cash.
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Generational poverty and poor rural infrastructure leaves single mom walking miles to work at McDonald’s. #WhitePeopleProblems
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Moments of real intimacy are becoming elusive. However, it seems, photographer Clayton Cubitt has found one.
“Rather than present them as objects of sexual satisfaction, as they would be in porn, the women involved in this art project are the subjects of their own erotic satisfaction. They choose what books they read, as well as the selected passage from the book. While they read aloud, their minds focus on the well-crafted sentences and verses of the literature, their breathy voices pronounce the words in a calm and deliberate cadence, but their bodies slowly begin to tingle with the teasing pleasures leading up to climax. Breathing shifts, words are mis-spoken or dropped, their bodies squirm, smiles spread, hands wipe perspiration from the face, and eventually, their entire focus shifts from the intimacy of the words to the intimacy of their pleasure, from their minds to their bodies. It’s captivating to watch. Imbued with all the great guilty pleasure of voyeurism.”
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The future of photography is now
Imagine an always-on 360 degree HD wearable video camera. With a constant feed of all that she might see, the photographer is freed from instant reaction to the Decisive Moment, and then only faced with the Decisive Area to be in, and perhaps the Decisive Angle. Evolve this further into a networked grid of such cameras, and the photographer is freed from those decisions as well, and is then merely a curator of reality after the fact. Any ”live” input would consist of a “flag” button the photographer presses when she thinks a moment stands out, much like is already used in recording high-speed footage. The grid might not even be traditionally photographic, rather more like a 3D LIDAR array. A primitive test of this has already been used artistically in Radiohead’s 2008 video for “House of Cards.”
None of this is science fiction. Artists are already commandeering Google Street View to hijack omniscient eyes for their own expression. Nick Knight has been using 3D scanners for fashion work for over a decade. In less time than it took me to originally learn and master film and darkroom technique at the beginning of my career I’ve seen digital tools transition from massively expensive and low-resolution to ubiquitously cheap and high-resolution.
It’s taken over 165 years for photography to truly fulfill its promise to be the ultimate democratic art. I’m thrilled to be alive to see it.
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Tokion Magazine, 2009
Clayton Cubitt: “I think photography is moving towards seamlessness. The future of photography won’t be about capturing a decisive moment by timing a shot perfectly. Cameras will capture everything – thirty or sixty frames per second. Then you choose. Like a DVR for life. ”Tokion Magazine: “Doesn’t that sound like cheating? ”Clayton Cubitt: “If you think a photographer’s creativity comes from their shutter finger, then it’s cheating. But if you think the creativity comes from the setup, the perspective, from the editing and the craft, then I think it’s no big deal.”
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