flickr: 1000 Photos and Counting...
This is my 1000th picture posted to my flickr account. i have been wanting to do this particular shot for sometime. i have always admired the work of Annie Liebovitz and her photo of John & Yoko, taken earlier in the afternoon on the day he was shot and killed, has become one of the most iconic pictures of her generation and Rolling Stone magazine's most popular cover photo ever. You can see the original photo here and images of it as the cover here.
To produce this, i enlisted (coerced?) my long-suffering husband, kiwi59, and our buddy, Lance (coming soon to an LJ near you!!). The first thing you'll notice is that i'm nowhere near as limber as John was. i used to be, but i haven't done a lot of stretching (or anything else vaguely resembling exercise) in a long time. So i didn't get my knee up to my chest (or Matt's for that matter). Nor does Matt have long black hair and i substituted our sheepskin rug for the beige carpets of the Dakota (i'll bet she's got hardwoods in there now anyway!). No matter, the spirit of the piece is there. i even dropped in an RS logo, but Matt liked it better w/out. Here you can see both versions. i had originally thought about putting it behind a cut, but have decided against it. Would you cut the original? Granted, it was considered a bit controversial when it was first published, and a few places refused to sell it. But for the most part, it went as is.
Since then there have been covers with subjects like Demi Moore nude and pregnant and the Dixie Chicks with words scrawled on their bodies. Granted, i'm a fat boy, but that shouldn't matter. It does, i'm not deluding myself, but it shouldn't. Fuck conservatives...i won't hide from them. Case in point, when i first uploaded this shot Saturday evening, by the time i got my administrative work done on the uploading (adding tags and comments), i got to the photo's page and was greeted by a comment from some 20-year-old kid that simply say's "WTF?". Man, that was pretty damn fast. And what did he mean? Granted, the RS cover was published nearly 7 years before he was born, so i could understand if he didn't get it. i looked at his account and he has a lot of pics of scantily clad women (which i doubt he took). On flickr you can't reply to comments directly, which would make things simpler. i sent him a message to ask him what his issues were and to expand on what he meant. i doubt i'll hear back from him and it's no big deal. Just wonderin' is all.
So, there it is..."fat boys as art". Hope you didn't get fired. Do you think that by putting the RS logo up there gives it a touch of "commercial approval" and, by association, makes it more socially acceptable? Do you think any magazine would actually ever put two fat guys on their cover whether one of 'em was naked or not? Bear magazines and cover stories on how "America is a Nation of Big Fat Fucks" doesn't count...that's just ridicule. Hell, even "mainstream gay magazines" like Advocate or Out or shit like that wouldn't do it. Just something to think about.
At first i was all "ooh...i've got 33,000 views!" Then i thought, oh, well, if 33 folks viewed every picture...that's not too exciting. Oh well. If you like 'em, keep coming back for more. If you don't like 'em...well, i guess you won't be coming back. Or you can leave comments like "WTF?"
...and that's the cruelest cut of all.