I took these two pictures within a week of each other, during the summer that I turned 19. The first is a revamped version of a picture I took of my friend Matt portraying an icon of neo-classical male beauty; Ganymede. The second was outside a nightclub in Brighton, after a fight. I was not out with Matt, but came across him looking like this. I borrowed one of his friends cheap pocket digital cameras and took this, and begged them to email it to me afterwards. A few weeks later they did. When I compared the two images, I found it captivating. Here we have the same beautiful boy, displaying completely different elements of male beauty. The first is delicate, youthful, docile, almost unaware, whereas the second is aggressive and bold. And yet both retain a sense of submission. I have never been part of the same masculine world that this boy is, so he and his friends are not always sure how to act around me. When I possess the camera, they submit to me. They give themselves to me because, like the men in nightclubs deified me, I deify them.
For the new body of work, I chose to print out the picture of Matt as Ganymede, write on it and scan it back in. I chose to do this because I was pleased with the lowering of the quality of the image, I felt it was approaching a modern version of the sfumato style of painting, a blurring of boundaries between subject and background. I also felt it would work better with the low quality picture of him covered in blood. The text works on a few levels for me. It urges us to not worry for this boys safety because bodies are essentially shells for what is truly important; the soul. And yet, in the very next picture, I feel forced to care for him because he has been violently attacked. But also, he himself seeks out these situations, so is he deserving of our pity or not? I am so consumed by his beauty that for me it is no longer a question of his well being, he has transcended.
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