THE DEFEO ANGEL

Going along with my love of horror films we come to my tribute to the DeFeo family and and Amityville horror. Amityville is a place where the DeFeo family lived in a large house. The eldest son killed six other members of his family with a shotgun and was arrested. The next few families who lived in the house complained that it was haunted and this inspired a film franchise. I remember them as being swampy and not particularly scary. There was a great incestuous sex scene between brother and sister though, I remember that. But there was a doccumentary about the DeFeo murders I watched when I was quite young that terrified me. I remember it had fake CCTV footage of the son with the shotgun wandering the halls at night. There was also the reason he gave for killing his family which was decidedly interesting. He claimed an angel with black hands appeared to him and gave him the gun, instructing him to kill his family. It has since been theorised that the angel with black hands was none other than his sister wearing black gloves and working as an accomplice. I choose to believe the romantic notions of the former, and have created this image as tribute.

SAVAGE GRACE

Recently I've been having fantasies about being a glamorous middle aged woman with a young and beautiful son. I think this was part inspired by the Baekeland family and the film Savage Grace. Julianne Moore plays a beautifully decadent unhinged socialite who ends up having an incestuous relationship with her son, who later murders her. I feel like I would enjoy being her, except for the incest bit. There were lots of great shots of her dressed in a very elegant way walking around Paris with her young son dressed in a sailor suit. I think it's that bit that I want for myself.

Jacky Bushell is someone who I find myself in love with. I find him so beautiful, but so young to me, so I thought he would be perfect for playing this role.

WILDE ONE

I am very pleased with the pairing of these two images. The first I shot when I was 17 and is a version of one of the Stations of the Cross, the Pieta. It features Jack Rowland (the blonde) and he was a very important to me. He was the first person who ever allowed me to photograph them completely nude. I found him beautiful, with the body of a hero and the hair of an angel. We are exactly the same age and were born in the same hospital.

The text is a line from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I recently re-read and greatly enjoyed. I became quite taken with that line and knew it had to be included in my work. I think it works well with the picture of Lewis next to it, who I think has a really fascinating mouth and very full pink lips.

CHRIST

This is an image of Dagwell as Christ. I truly do find him to be an exquisite example of male beauty. I enjoy the use of photoshop here, as this was the first time I experimented with having a halo made of flowers. I think it truly adds to this image and it produces a simple yet effective icon of masculine attraction. He speaks to me of Tom of Finland, Pierre et Gilles and Kenneth Anger.

JOCKSLUT

Jockslut is a phrase which came to me when I was thinking of names for this body of work. It is a fusion of the phrase "cock slut" which is used excessively in gay porn and the concept of jocks, which is a very popular genre. I feel it is a perfect idiom for the kind of male imagery I produce. In many ways, I revere masculinity and male beauty, here, his skin is golden, he is posed as St Sebastian, he is a religious icon made out of gay porn, but in others, I enjoy objectifying men. I read a lot of feminist blogs speaking out in anger against the male gaze, and I find it an amusing slight subversion to turn the gaze back on to men. There is a famous quote which goes "Homophobia is the fear that other men will treat you the way that you treat women," and this I think is highly applicable to images like this.

SISSY BOY

This is an image of a non-female identifying person in female clothes. This is something I really enjoy. I like androgynous boys and girls, but I also like very obvious gender bending. I have mirrored the white sleeveless dress with my black dungarees to give the image contrast. This was also inspired by sissy boy porn, which is where men are forced to wear girls clothes as a form of humiliation and punishment. It's so bizarre, I love it.

PROJECTIONS

These are images of my muse Charlie Dagwell being projected onto my own body. I think that it is glaringly obvious what is happening but others do not think so. Many of my friends have shuffled through my pictures and not seen my body in these images. Or perhaps they are too polite to say. I have always felt a strong physical desire for Dagwell and these pictures are some of the only ways that I can have intimate contact with him. I do find it ridiculously exciting that a picture exists in the world of me with my dick on Dagwell's face. Horny. Or maybe, his face is on my dick.

LOSS

This is an image I shot when I was 19 of some friends on a night out. The boy, Emile, was changing his shirt, and one of our female friends was beckoning him to come to her. We were all aware of her unrequited love for him. Her gesture was caught in this picture and I find it so emotional, a tiny hand reaching blindly in the dark, groping for affection. Its almost pathetic in it's beauty.

Emile was the star of my previous book, where he portrayed Jesus and the text references some of the writing I did for that project. I have not seen Emile in a long time, and I miss him, so this image to me is a bout loss.

RAPHAEL

This is the Archangel Raphael, whom I summoned to give a blessing to my sister's new child; Raphael. I thought that it was a great and thoughtful gift, but she found it quite menacing and creepy. To me, he is a presence of love, of strength and of beauty. Again, this if a further exploration of blue, focusing on the stars. I shot this with a flash gun with the white balance on an odd setting for the whole image would have a blue cast, which I find very attractive.

THE MADONNA

The Madonna has been a constant fascination of mine since I was very small, and I have created countless reimaginings of Our Blessed Virgin. This is my most recent and currently my favourite. To start with, it is a definite exploration of blue, the colour most linked with the Madonna. It also is a pleasing mixture of doctoring and reality. Her tears are gems stuck to her face. Her make up was elaborate and flawless. I see this as a fusion between christian iconography and a Hindu aesthetics. She has many eyes so that she can see on many different plains. She is made of marble and lapis lazuli.