SER Tees

[SlimPickens]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/234/cwhite/interview_content_1.html

i\'m kinda shocked to see the author of these photo\'s being interviewed by PBS and NPR

[Whathefunk]

its supposed to represent frailty and male self-loathing

 rotfl

[Jim Cobb]

its supposed to represent frailty and male self-loathing

 rotfl

not kidding

What the hell is going on in “Getting Lindsay Linton”? [the first picture of joshua freddie posted]

Revenge. This is an image about rage, hatred, and the discomfort of experiencing those emotions. In “Understanding Joshua” the world is, among other things, divided between blondes and brunettes. The brunettes exist (in the mind of Joshua) on a similar plain as he does, while the blondes inhabit a superior world of cleanliness, beauty, and organization. “Getting Lindsay Linton” illustrates a violent outburst against a blonde, maybe for Joshua’s entertainment, maybe his torture--it is unclear as they hold him and force him to watch. I feel that the image “Fantasy” helps further explain Joshua’s position on such acts against those he perceives as socially superior--at least his repressed urges. “Getting Lindsay Linton” is important because it helps to destabilize reading the events and actions within the image as literal, that is to say, Lindsay does not have milk on her face, and this gang of young men is not just holding her.

[freddiewaht]

pic deleted - not work safe, and if you upload those pics to imageshack and link them here, they\'ll cut us off. -dp

"Using a humanoid puppet he calls "complete fragility manifest in a body," White presents human frailty through a fictional character, much as a novelist might.

As White tells Jacki Lyden for Weekend All Things Considered, his puppet, called Joshua, helps him to explore the themes of male self-image and self-loathing. White places Joshua in a series of vulnerable situations -- at a cocktail party or a lover\'s house -- and photographs the scene."

[Whathefunk]

Well now that i read the interview i can see that you were not kidding.....

really interesting way to show "frailty and self loathing"...imo

[kyndkate]

That\'s some ser messed up shit.

[Jim Cobb]

another work of charlie white

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/234/cwhite/interview_content_1.html

Interview with Charlie White

EGG: Tell us about your photographic series "Understanding Joshua."

Charlie White: I made a series between 2000 and 2001 over the course of two years, called "Understanding Joshua." It was nine images and it created a psychological profile of a character of an individual pathology. ... I would say that Joshua is not by any means a specific or individual case study with a specific or individual history. He is the pathology that I think is more prominent in our society than we may accept -- that we have a distorted sense of self in relationship to what we\'re supposed to be, who we\'re supposed to be. Now, some days we\'re strong and some days we\'re not. When we\'re not, I think it starts to reveal how fragile we are -- that we\'re able to have a pinhole turn into a crack that can ultimately shatter our complete sense of self.

EGG: Does Joshua fit into any psychological categorization -- how would you diagnose Joshua\'s condition?

CW: I think that -- and this is more of a way of looking at case studies, actual psychological case studies, of psychiatric case studies instead of looking at Joshua or how I see Joshua. Inadequacy may manifest itself as a result of someone feeling unclean where everyone else is clean. Someone may feel dead, where other people seem alive. These are kind of symptomatic of an individual who is suffering from extreme ontological insecurity. Ontological insecurity in a nutshell is a destroyed or distorted sense of self -- that their ontology has been destabilized and they don\'t feel real anymore. So, in these kind of case studies, you\'ll find a patient saying, "I\'m there but I don\'t actually feel that I\'m there" or "I\'m in the room with people but I don\'t feel alive or I don\'t feel that they see me as alive." That\'s really the starting point. Everything threatens Josh. Everything threatens him. So, what would physically touch Joshua is going to fall short of being human also because it accepts him. And that which doesn\'t, becomes a more perfect being.

EGG: Are you trying to undermine the idea of "the powerful American male" through your portrayal of Joshua?

CW: The photographs are definitely an understanding of an American identity -- an American male identity. I think that in some cases people feel that it is specifically Californian and I\'m taking this opportunity to explain that it\'s not, it really clearly isn\'t. It\'s not California. It really has much more to do with a model that is created out of California to the extent that we have an understanding that Hollywood is representation of America. So, it plays off a representation, not a reality. I\'m not trying to make anything that feels like a documentary of an American life or an American reality. It does play very specifically off of a way in which we represent ourselves as Americans and inserted inside of that environment is a situation that we do not often represent or expose, especially about males. I mean, it\'s very important to put males in a very specific position in terms of their dynamic with women or their dynamic in a situation or position of power. So, I wouldn\'t see Joshua as a political maneuver to undermine a representation of the male as a powerful figure. It\'s not really much of an interest.

EGG: Do you think your photographs specifically speak to men?

CW: I think that there\'s a relationship between Joshua and male desire that men when viewing Joshua can identify with -- this push-pull relationship between that which is desired and that which they can obtain. Men and their feeling of inadequacy is not often something that I think we talk about. I mean I don\'t think I understand it very well. I don\'t think there has been a lot of support or assistance in understanding how men feel inadequate. I think there\'s been a lot of understanding in terms of how women may feel inadequate. In a highly pathological manner, a beautiful woman on television, or that which would be considered an "idea" of a beautiful woman, will actually talk about women with eating disorders or talk about women and their relationship to their bodies. Yet, the way we present it because television in and of itself is so distorted, because she embodies the problem itself, yet she\'ll still talk about it. It\'s kind of like models against bulimia. I mean, it doesn\'t make any sense. Men because they fear the homoerotic aspects of that type of physical narcissism about their own bodies, they won\'t talk about their relationship with their bodies -- that\'s not masculine. They\'re not going to talk about a guy feeling bad about himself or feeling inadequate. It\'s either you can or cannot conquer the world. You either can or cannot conquer women. You know, maybe that\'s the issue, but there\'s no sensitivity to any of those issues at all.

EGG: How did you decide upon the homunculus physical form for Joshua?

CW: My first understanding of him was more of a living version of a puppet than what he actually was in the end. It was a very long road between the idea of what he was and then ultimately what he would end up being in the end when he was made physically. It was the contrast between Joshua and people -- that was the starting point. So, it wasn\'t really the complete understanding of what he would look like, but an idea of what he was. And what was clear from the beginning was he was going to be ontological insecurity, you know, complete fragility manifested in a body. How it was that he became in many ways more humanoid than puppet was the fact that he actually needed to be more human than the people he would be associating with. And that\'s pretty much kind of the road that I and the people I worked with followed in bringing Joshua to life.

EGG: What other changes occurred along the process of creating Joshua?

CW: Well, I guess my early understanding was possibly that Joshua was a somewhat more organic, furry guy. Not hairy, furry. And what ended up coming out in the end was actually he would be very fleshy, not that hairy, and almost, probably the wrong way to explain it, but almost like if Grover met Gepetto and became you know a boy only half way. That\'s kind of what Josh was physically, because he kept certain physical attributes of a Grover-like character in terms of the spindly legs and arms, and the kind of pear-shaped torso and the swollen belly and kind of the round head. These were kind of a guide of what his basic form would look like. It wasn\'t until much later that it was decided that Joshua would have to be a red-head and that became like this inevitable thing. He had to be a red-head because brown is almost too animal-like and red was kind of unique, even among humans, red hair is a little bit unique. So, it\'s kind of just slowly bringing him to life and bringing him together so he would be what he was intended to be which was this character that would be able to be, even in the most dormant state, this illustration of someone who is fragile with a very destroyed sense of self. Because in my mind Joshua\'s not actually any of those things that I am describing physically to anyone in the photographs: he\'s real. I mean he\'s just a human being, just a completely normal person. We\'re never able to see him, but that is what he is. We\'re seeing him as he sees himself.

EGG: Are we supposed to feel sympathy for Joshua? Do you feel sorry for him?

CW: I think some people might feel sorry for him, but I don\'t think he\'s so pathetic that you actually do feel sorry for him. I think possibly it\'s difficult to see within a single image that Joshua isn\'t what you may imagine. He isn\'t completely innocent. He isn\'t completely pathetic. He isn\'t completely disempowered. He is disempowered in many ways but he does lash out. So, throughout the entire series. I wanted to create a complete understanding of what he wants. So, there\'s nine picture in all, and there\'s a balance between one picture to the next to try to create a complete understanding. It\'s a limited number of pictures to do it with, to create a complete understanding of a character or personality or a pathology. So, I don\'t think there\'s one specific thing that is supposed to be clear in terms of what Josh is. I mean he\'s as complex as any other individual and he\'s more complex than the average in that he suffers from a very distorted sense of self. So much so that his pathological state of mind is being revealed in each photograph.

[SlimPickens]

pic deleted - not work safe, and if you upload those pics to imageshack and link them here, they\'ll cut us off. -dp

"Using a humanoid puppet he calls "complete fragility manifest in a body," White presents human frailty through a fictional character, much as a novelist might.

As White tells Jacki Lyden for Weekend All Things Considered, his puppet, called Joshua, helps him to explore the themes of male self-image and self-loathing. White places Joshua in a series of vulnerable situations -- at a cocktail party or a lover\'s house -- and photographs the scene."

yeah, that\'s exactly what I thought the first time I saw that picture :liar:

i certainly didn\'t think:  holy fucked up alien orgy.

[Jim Cobb]

[Spacey]

I have seen worse pics on this board but DP is the lord of .info

[freddiewaht]

davepeck=stickler.confirmed
art=worksafe,no matter what.
thats it,i quit the board!!!!
fuck you all!!

[davepeck]

I have seen worse pics on this board but DP is the lord of .info

and if you do see worse pics here, you should click on the button and let me know about it. i can\'t read every post, and if the site gets cut off from imageshack because of idiotic misuse, i will not be happy.

[kyndkate]

The guy is still wacko.

[SlimPickens]

yeah, his folks did a number on him when he was young

[Spacey]

I have seen worse pics on this board but DP is the lord of .info

and if you do see worse pics here, you should click on the button and let me know about it. i can\'t read every post, and if the site gets cut off from imageshack because of idiotic misuse, i will not be happy.

Thats what that little button is for. Will keep that in mind.

How was that concert out in Vegas?