More Lovers

Jasper Tanning
Jasper Tanning.... just fell to temptation. He was "assisted" by his assistant, and literally caught with his pants down by Helga. He is based after Man Ray, a man whose personal life wasn't terribly eventful other than cheating on his wife with an assistant or two.
Sargent Jacques
Sargent Jacques is a Partier and cheat gallivanting around France in his undies, much to the embarrassment and disappointment of Helga. He wasn't always this way, but a new environment changed him, much like a new model changed the life of Edward Weston.
Weston was married to a homely, boring woman but she was devoted to him and he to her.
Then Tina Modotti arrived. She was beautiful, vivacious, and everything that Edward Weston desired in a model and a mate. She rocked his world and his photography, and sadly Mrs. Weston was left in the dust.
Dirk Calligan
Dirk Calligan is the first lover to break dear Helga's heart, and commit a crime against her with abandonment and stealing her motorcycle. He is based off of Paul Gauguin, and the abandonment he committed against his wife and children when he left them in Europe for a 13 year old mistress and richer art atmosphere in Tahiti.
Dublin Baker
Dublin Baker conveniently takes after his namesake and is a baker who beats his women like his dough. He is an alcoholic, and when he drinks, he beats. He feels guilty for his behavior, so with cig in hand he takes advice from the Holy Bible, but never does anything about it.
Dublin Baker is based off of Jackson Pollock, who's life long struggle with alcoholism eventually leads to his own death. It almost leads to Dublin's too, when, after beating Helga and passing out due to a night of heavy drinking, Helga castrates him.
Clark Klent
Here is another example of the great luck Helga has had with cheats, in this case, Clark Klent.
Now, Clark Klent isn't necessarily based off of Superman, but the pun works nicely. Who I had in mind for Clark was Alfred Stieglitz, who ran many galleries in New York, promoted fine art and fine art photography in America, and was married to the painter Georgia O'Keefe.
Stieglitz for the most part was a devoted to husband to Georgia O'Keefe, but when Georgia decided to travel to New Mexico continually for her art and Alfred continued to be devoted to his photography endeavors his interests momentarily strayed.
Alfred began seeing a woman named Dorothy Norman who was married and had a child. She would come to the studio doing mundane tasks for him, and before long they declared their love for each other. Georgia O'Keefe knew of Alfred's interest in Dorothy, but just considered it a short lived infatuation and wasn't too concerned about it. She continued to travel, and Alfred took advantage of her absence to photograph Dorothy. Their affair was short-lived, but even after the physicality of it had ended, they continued to work together whenever Georgia was gone until he died.
The real betrayal happened in Georgia's mind in 1932 during a retrospective of Alfred's work where he placed a young attractive photograph of Dorothy next to a photograph of an aged, sun damaged Georgia O'Keefe. It was a public act of spite to Georgia, and perfect inspiration for an immature lover of Helga's.
The story of Clark is simple: he isn't a terrible guy, he is just a low dirty cheat. Being with Louis Lane is something that is easily accepted, there isn't a deep shock to it. It's unfortunate and predictable, but it is what it is and not worth Helga's time to do something drastic... maybe just a little disorderly conduct.

Mugshots

The process of # 6

#6 or Cowboy Coolidge, was a lover of Helga's that eventually shot himself and devastated Helga.

My inspiration for Cowboy Coolidge began with brainstorming the different ways someone can hurt another through self-absorption. I looked at various artists who had committed suicide and left a significant other, and the most prominent I found was Mark Rothko. Granted, the circumstances are slightly different. Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm, and refused doctors orders to change personal habits that might have improved his condition. Because of his deteriorating health and impotence, he felt estranged from his wife and they separated. Two months later he overdosed on anti-depressants and slit his wrists.

The most prominent collection of Mark Rothko's work that comes to mind is the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas... Cowboy Country. This was the last collection of paintings he did, and he never saw the chapel in its completion.

The whole idea of art, suicide, and cowboys came together; three things I don't typically associate. Cowboys are known to be rough and tough, so to depict the vulnerability of one was interesting to me. Within all the crimes perpetrated against Helga, the culprits all have a strange sort of vulnerability to their character, and I thought this series would work well in that concept's favor.

This photo series was deceptively one of the hardest to prepare for.
Technically it was one of the most legitimate, too. I needed to find the proper attire for a cowboy which I lack, so I went for help. I was able to scrounge up a $300 rodeo hat, a suede shirt used for rodeos, cowboy boots, two separate shotguns with one dating back to 1894, man jeans, and angora chaps. I was also able to find some excellent locations in Eastern Oregon at various people's ranches where I was allowed to photograph.

All of these factors were difficult to put together, but the hardest technical issue was facial hair for myself. In this particular series, I wanted to have a handlebar mustache, and to purchase one that looks halfway realistic is near impossible. I resorted to buying a wig, clipping individual strands of hair, and gluing them strategically to my face to create the best illusion.
This was a very time consuming process, and in total took about 3 hours. The worst part was removing it, and my peach fuzz upper lip and eyebrows were sparser for it... in the name of art by golly.

Conceptually it was a difficult project to approach as well. The safest yet most legitimate way to feign a suicide was difficult to choose, especially keeping in mind the character traits of Cowboy Coolidge. For one, he is an all American rough and tough cowboy, and firearm suicide is the most common method in the United States. Men, especially white men, are the highest percentage of suicides in the country and the 8th leading cause of death for men with 4 to 1 being the ratio of men to women that successfully commit suicide.

This along with recent suicide cases in the national media and in my own life, it was a hard subject to portray and to receive cooperation with others in order to do it.

Here are a few of the preliminary photos, unaltered. I have decided to use a cropped version of the full bodied pose against the barn(not shown yet), but here are others taken as well.
The one beside the tree is one of my favorites because I was able to find this fence with a porcupine carcass beneath it that was on one end still intact with quills and flesh, then gradually wore away to white bone. I thought as a 'still life', it made for a very interesting comparison to the Cowboy Coolidge's character and concept of being a callus spiky creature that is still very vulnerable to death.

The last photo was an attempt at keeping up spirits, because despite all the the heavy depressing subject matter, a girl doesn't get to wear a getup like this everyday.

The process of # 5

Today was the first shooting of #5, and I am pleased. I got all dolled up in a beard, wrinkles, and temporary black hair dye, stole some of my mother's clothing from the 90's, and went on a walkabout to get the right setting.
Part of my inspiration for #5 is René Magritte's painting The Son of Man, where he describes it as:

"At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present."

The reason this appealed to me was how he described conflict in seeing what is there or only implied. The first photo in the series is my favorite for this reason, because #5's eyes are hidden with the hair. The stature of the man visible in the frame also creates a conflict by cutting the composition of the body off by the torso, then flat geometric cools in the background.
I wanted to capture this feeling in the portraits of number 5 not only for the conflict but also the implied masculinity, so I emulated Son of Man's bricks and composition in the photos.

A video/song inspired this particular character as well, especially the pearls and melancholy mood I strived for.

Another photo that I kept in mind was one by Diane Arbus I felt captured conflict and a strangeness I was after. The black and white is also appealing to me in the photo, but I also like the coolness in the skin and hair color the originals have.
I'll play around with them...

For this term I have decided to continue the saga of Helga Minelli for a different standpoint, and that is from her 'lovers. ' The inspiration for the project originally came from a fellow student's suggestion, at first I laughed it off, but the idea spawned another sort of concept. For a long time I have been fascinated with biographies, especially those of artists, and their personal lives. A trend and stereotype among artists is that they have rather turbulent lives, especially when it boils down to their love life. In this particular aspect, the common trend has been rather depressing, and very rarely does one find a fairy tale of an artist's life.
What I would like to do is look into specific artists that have influenced me, research their personal lives, and how their personal life made its way into their art, especially where it has been petty and vengeful. From there I plan on taking the vast source of turbulent love stories involving historically significant artists and concentrate on the ones who's stories directly parallel and compare them to “Lover” characters in Helga Minelli’s story. Pablo Picasso is of particular interest to me in this respect not only because of personal behavior, but for the brutally honest and petty portraits he did of his wives and mistresses varying on his feelings for them at the time.
So far I have developed 7 ex-Lovers for Helga, and have found seven stories in art history that, from Helga's standpoint, parallel to her own personal tragedies:

Lover 1.) Dirk Calligan/Paul Gauguin
Crime: Abandonment/Stole Helga's Motorcycle

Lover 2.) Sargent Jacques/ Edward Weston
Crime: Le cheat de France

Lover 3.) Clark Kent/Alfred Stieglitz
Crime: Lost glasses and found himself on Louis Lane

Lover 4.) Dublin Baker/Jackson Pollock
Crime: Beats his women like his dough

Lover 5.) Popeye Magritte/James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Crime: Traded Helga for a string of pearls

Lover 6.) Cowboy ("Billy Joe")Coolidge/Mark Rothko
Crime: Took his guns to Town, shot himself.

Lover 7.) Jasper Tanning /Man Ray
Crime: 'assisted' by assistant

My plan is to focus on each of the 'Lover' characters with photography. I plan on creating tableau vivants for each character and modeling for the separate character personas myself, just like I do with Helga. With each photo series, I would like to focus on the personal wrongs that the 'lovers' have committed against Helga, and catch them in the act.
Likewise, in response to these acts, I will do a series of mugshots featuring Helga that catch her response to these wrongs through crimes she's committed "lashing out" as a result.