Sunday, April 25, 2010

Less Than 1000 Words About A Certain Picture

Some of you - those of you who have known me for quite sometime - may know that I posed for a certain, kind of 'infamous,' picture. Well, the great folks at F-Stop (Neve Black, Donna George Storey, and Shanna Germain) asked me to write about the shot - which I have done.

It was really a very special thing to do and I want to really thank the great folks, the great friends, who gave me this opportunity to put my thoughts about the picture, and the man in it, out there. Thanks!

Since I try to make this, my 'professional' blog, SFW, I'm not going to post the picture but if you click here (or go over to Frequently Felt) you can not see the picture but also read the essay.

In the meantime, here's a teaser for the piece:

I know that’s me. I remember that afternoon: a house in the Sunset District of San Francisco with an intimate playroom in the basement, owned by a friend, since passed away. The woman was my wife, now ex-wife.

I remember Michael Rosen, the magnificent photographer who took the shot, saying “Open your eyes” over and over again. I remember she was almost standing on her head, laying backwards on a GYN table with her ass raised high. I remember the shot took a long time — so long my hand began to cramp. I remember the day Michael sent us a copy of his magnificent book Sexual Art with the photo published in it.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. They say that pictures don’t lie. They say ‘photographic evidence.’ I don’t know why ‘they’ are, but when I look at that picture I wonder about what’s real and not real, about who that man really is.

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