I have known this girl Lena for a while now and we once made out at some party ages ago but I didn't truly become friends with her until I was in Miami for the Winter Music Conference in March. I had booked my trip but my place to stay fell through two days before I got there. I hadn't slept in 36 hours when I landed in Miami and so I just went to the first hotel I could find and slept there all day. That night I went to a party downtown and I ran into Lena. It turned out she had a hotel for a few days and she let me stay there for something like $50. It was pretty amazing luck and we hung out pretty much non stop for the next 48 hours or so.
We talked about doing a real shoot while I was staying with her but we never really got into it but she did spend pretty much every minute in her room naked so I got to take a few snap shots and I really loved the way they turned out. There were three shots I was really happy with but I wanted to make this blog a little bit better so the other day I called her and asked if she would take a few pictures with me to help fill out this post. She agreed but she only had about 20 minutes so we took a few shots in my apartment and then we just went down on my street and shot her in front of an elementary school in the middle of the sidewalk. Quite a few of my neighbors enjoyed the view.
And to top it off when I was going through old photos I found the one 35mm shot I took of her from this impromptu shoot that we did in a shower at a random house party with our mutual friend DJ Fancy. Good times!
I started working on this project where I would have one of my friends go up to some random stranger on the street and ask if she could have her picture taken with them. Right before I would take the picture the girl would flash me and we would capture the reaction. Oddly very few people looked and I think about half of them didn't even notice. Obviously some of them did.
The project was supposed to be some sort of discussion of the fetishizing of public nudity while at the same time an attempt to desexualize nudity through humor. In the end I think they are just really hilarious badly shot snap shots of my friends boobs and creepy old dudes. I think we can consider that a success.
I was first introduced to the amazing Dana DeArmond by this site called Super Cult. You guys might have heard of it for some reason... Years later Dana is a famous porn star and ruling the Internet with an iron fist from the luxurious Los Angels, California.
I knew Dana a little bit through mutual friends and had met her once or twice but I didn't really become friends with her until last June. It was my last day of a week long LA visit when I checked out of my hotel room only to find out that my plans had been canceled. It was 11am and my plane didn't leave until late that night so I started making some texts. The first person I reached was my friend Madison who was headed to Disneyland for her friend Dana DeArmond's birthday party. It was just her and Dana and two other porn girls but they invited me anyway.
Most of the day was spent getting made fun of by Dana and being the 5th wheel in insane porn girl conversations about porn agents, STD's, and which porn dudes they refuse to work with. Despite this I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot about things I never wanted to learn about. It was great day and clearly Dana and I bonded because nearly a year to the day later Dana asked me if I wanted to shoot her while I was in town.
The day of our shoot I picked her up an we drove over to the Miskha Echo Park store and got them to give Dana some free clothes for the shoot. Then we headed over to the apartment I had subletted and shot two sets for my website. Between shoots I took a bunch of 35mm photos with my trusty T4 and now for your very own amusement I present you the best of those very shots. And if those do not sate your Dana DeArmond cravings you could always go look at the digital shots I took of her...
This Wednsday, I met up with the photographer James Graham who had invited me to his birthday party in Brooklyn. It was good times. He is a gorgeous man with a beautiful personality, I also met fashion photogs Christopher Bush and Marko 'La Seine by the Hudson Kercik', but most importantly, my enigma and someone that I consider a friend after only a few moments, George Pitts. My mind and soul had been running a thousand rpms, and to see/talk to him, it was like I felt like I was having a normal conversation with my mother on a sunday. Pitts breeds a sort of 'it's ok' mentality, you have to experience it my friends. I have been using my tiny apt. in harlem to do impromptu shoots, but my main goal is to spy on george and james, because they are like teachers to me and can show me things, teach me. Just talking to george about bubblegum, I know now better to chew.
mushrooms, exstacy, speed, crack, coke,alcohol, food, sugar rush get me to that point where i dont remember it being a symbol. it wasnt a fucking icon or an idol. today i was in harlem with falcon. she was cool to hang out with. i told her i dreamt the other night on three ambien that i was gipetto and i built a modern day pinocchio, then I immediattely ran to the bar to tell the story, and some fucking asshole friend that always shits on my parade was like "yeah well god did that with adam, and moses" "mary shelley did that shit with frankenstein' and as I was listening, the pinnochio girl was actually my ex hanging in my truck, she looked mad, then she limped over. bored, dead asleep!!
