5/22/98
i get asked about this one often and it just came up again randomly another way. i shot it when i first moved to nyc in 1997 or early 1998 at a charles gatewood party. all i knew at the time is that was some sort of blood letting ceremony. one night i stapled it in the journal and started writing on the page next to it the most amazing part of the whole thing to me which revolved around the color of dried blood more then the event itself. that story reminded me of another thing the same color made me think of, and on and on and on.
to see it larger, click below:
MAY 22, 1998
my journals are dated the day the page was made, not the content of the page itself.
i first got asked about it by a student at RIT, i sent her a larger file so she could read it, then i got a list of questions about my journals in general for a class of hers, it’s all posted below, it is from 2005.
the other day i got this link from JOHN asking me if i knew about this film yet, i still don’t know if he connected the dots to ask me or if it was random, either way, it circled back to this picture again.
see why below:
UNSPEAKABLE
the artist profiled in the trailer is the one i photographed that night.
erika stupi interview:
1. How long did it take?
Well, the journal on my site I believe is actually a compilation of 3 different journals. The first page is 1997, the last is 2003. Each journal here started as an 11×14 sketch book that had 100 pages. I most often work on one two page spread at a time, but not always. So a spread may take an hour or two, 10-12 hours, a couple days, and some I even altered right up to the “end.” The dates I made the spreads are underneath them on the site.
This would be a good spot to answer how it all started. I left RIT after winter quarter of 1995, lived with my parents in PA/TN for a month or two before essentially running away to SF, CA. When I was at RIT I was immersed in photography and all the processes that it involves. A had a small circle of friends where we would actually blow off classes to go photograph, or hit the archives to explore some new book we heard about. I often showed up for class when I remembered to even go with a box of prints that had nothing to do with the assignments, but rather road trip pictures, landscapes, or way to many pictures of whoever I happen to be in love with at the time wether involved with her or not. Needles to say my grades and such reflected this even though I practically lived in the photo building working and sleeping wherever. While I always had a “portfolio” it was the random boxes of pictures where my heart truly was that I would share with friends, professors, whoever.
So by the time I got to SF, where I still couldn’t tell you why I went, I didn’t know anyone. Out of loneliness and longing for that shared passion of picture talk/life talk, I started writing letters to a friend on polaroids, prints, bus stubs, whatever I could find. Later it evolved into painting on pictures, colleges, etc. I realized I was doing so many and mailing something every few days, I should just get a little blank book, then mail the book when finished.
So the first one, journal one, was started 6/21/96 and finished about the end of March 1997. It really was a long letter, completed and mailed to a very specific friend, written for him all along, but only completed and mailed after the birth of his first baby. It would also happen that the day I did the most pages, something like 20 pages in one night, later turned out to be the day his daughter was born. So the journal/letter was sort of a present for them all.
Every journal since is now given away upon completion. Almost every one has had a similar experience, one day I did a spread on a friend and his girlfriend only to learn later that night the had proposed to his girl that day. Randomness coming full circle. Usually by the time I am half way through one, I know who I will give it too.
2. Process
Well the above answer may have eluded to it a little, but there isn’t much of one really. I have a table in my place where I work on them. There is a board I put up images on that I like, think about, or are for some goofy reason are important to me. I also have a few boxes around holding similar images and objects. Sometimes I work on it often, sometimes, months or even a year goes by without touching it. The motivator can be love, boredom, anger, lust, jealousy, confusion, all the same bizarre simple reasons we all have for doing any of things we do. There is no one way I approach it. Often there will be a certain image the whole spread hinges on, so I may place an image down and start going through all the random other images around the tables, boxes or my head that may for one reason or another strike a chord, then begin. The text sometimes matters and sometimes does not, its usually relevant to the images although sometimes it may just be something I thought of as I was working away and felt I should include. Rarely do I have a finished idea or look in my mind. I feel it all works or works out because in the end the result isn’t really the point, its the process itself that matters and what I take away from that process of creating that is rewarding and important to me. This is also why it feels so good to give as a gift to a friend later. The most rewarding thing I feel I have ever done is give away something that once, if even for a moment, was the most important, emotional, beautiful thing I ever made.
3. How long, how many?
Well the first started in 1996 and I have one on the table now, so almost 10 years. There are 4 completed. All given as gifts to a friend. The first, took just short of a year, I have no real copies of other than a point and shoot snap of every spread. The person I gave it to and I haven’t even spoken in almost 6 years. The second one, which I completed in only about 40 days, I have random copies of, and again am no longer in contact with the person that received it. The third, took a couple years was actually given back to me, so I actually have that one. The fourth also took a few years, but was color copied and re-photographed, then given away more recently. Relationships get messy, sometimes its my fault, sometimes its theirs, either way, its my way of telling someone that at this particular moment in time, I am glad you are my friend and that without you, I wouldn’t be who I am…. good or bad, love or hate.
4. Front/back cover.
Depending on which covers, its always different. All 4 that are done had a self portrait of one kind or another. It was me, doing something about me and the whatever in my head, so it always made sense. I sill photograph myself all the time. None of the covers are actually on my main site.
5. Woman in the red sweater.
The woman in the red sweater is a fellow student from when I was at RIT. I probably made the photographs of her in 1994, and then made the page in 1997. Often the material I use is older or new images that mean a great deal to me, but have no other place in my books, portfolios, etc. Just because there is no definable place for an image, doesn’t mean it isn’t as important to me as another. I see all my work as a collective, some are more successful than others, but that doesn’t make the odd ones unimportant to me. The journal is a perfect place for such images.
She was a girl I really liked and was trying to get to date me. I talked her into letting me shoot her, we went for a walk and I shot the pictures that are in the journal. I was of course broke, so its on outdated E-6 film I shot and then crossed processed. It was before digital took off, so I spent all my time in F series printing pictures of her. The KO all over the page is her initials, I had heard she married some rich guy, so it brought up all the goofy feelings cause nothing ever came of us. The red is ink soaked up by the the paper after scratching the text into the emulsion of the print. The image on the left is yellow pavement ink spilled on rocks/weeds by the side of the road, shot with an 8×10 camera, also on outdated chrome cross processed, and the other images are form a contact sheet, one of trees and one of an image from a book project, it is a shot of my mother.
The text says her initials, “I really miss you but you married someone else,” ”do you ever think of me,” and “touch. ” The touch refers to that extra pic, it is a pop up spread of three other shots I took that day of her, I keep all my test strips and reject prints.
6. Blood
Not to long after I got to NYC, a friend of mine got to meet and photograph Charles Gatewood. He is a fetish photographer I had known about a long time. (When I was a RIT, and every other library or good store, rather than look up a book, I would simply go down the shelves book by book, I found a lot of curious stuff that way) My friend and Gatewood had a good shoot, so Gatewood invited him to a party thrown for a new book of his. My friend invited me. Many of the people in Gatewoods photographs were at the party. It was a blood letting in the basement of the club, I also shot a human pin cushion and a whipping ceremony. (On the history section of my site, you’ll see I’ll shoot anything from portraits to events, I just love making pictures)
So the woman in the shot carved that shape in his back with a scalpel, then they made out in his blood. Meanwhile there were like 10 photographers and a room full of people watching. The text starts with a brief little thought/story about that night, then proceeds to go into other thoughts or memories about blood, then the color red itself.
I will try to find and attach a scan of the text so you can read it.
7. Boy in bed/Family on porch
The boy and the family photographs are from an assignment I did for US News & World Report on pesticide poisoning. It was one of the toughest assignments and weeks of my life. That being said, it was also a remarkable week in the power of the work, the openness of strangers, and just how hard and beautiful life is.
I had just been dumped by my girlfriend about a month before I got the job. I was in one of the most fragile, upset, hurt, and lost moments of life, even still. The girl, EAST, is in many the journals, that’s not her name obviously, just how I refer to her in the journals, I still haven’t been in love like that since.
So I got a call from US News, there is a chemical in almost all home pesticides that some people have horrible reactions to, I had to drive from NYC to Baltimore, do a still life of the chemicals in a “typical” home garden shed. Fly to West Virginia, photograph a boy who after being exposed became a quadriplegic on a respirator, then fly to Indiana to photograph a family where both the brother and sister reacted badly and are now and forever severely disabled, then go to the manufacturer of the chemicals itself and photograph the guys in charge on the business end and the research end. So I got to meet the effected and the guys in charge of the chemicals, both sides. I had no assistant and was alone throughout the job.
It was a tough week. The little girl I spent the day with watching her go through a whole day, it was tough to see. Then later that evening setting up the shot on the porch, the father came out and shared a beer and pizza and with me, he opened up to me on a level I bet he never had with anyone about what is was like to watch his kids fall apart. Broke my heart really, but to be shared with that way, on that level, was so special. The little boy on the bed was a similar situation. I only had time to do a quick portrait, the one in the journal, but again, his step father helped me pack my gear and told me stories about their lives I will never forget.
It was an amazing week, one moment fighting and crying on the phone with EAST after she dumped me, the next, watching these amazing families fight the corporation that hurt their kids, then photographing the people at the corporation, it changed my life and showed me a world I had never seen.
About a year after I did the story, I heard on the TV news that the chemical had been altered due to side effects in children. So I still think about those kids/families all time. The page was created sometime in between it all. The kid photographs and then on the left are polaroids of me testing lights without an assistant on a business magazine job and on the right, polaroids of an assistant I had a crush on for another business magazine job.
8. Money/woman
The woman in the photograph is again, EAST. We dated almost a year, she was a several years older than me, had dated many richer/more successful guys, and always had a way of reminding me about that. She was used to a life that I could simply not provide. Money was a huge issue. I always felt had I been more successful or richer, our relationship would have had a better chance. Who knows of course, life gets messy, it may have mattered, it may not. I just really missed her the night I made that page, used the money for the background, stapled one of the few intimate photographs of her she let me take on there, and the other page lists things I missed about her, some good, some bad.
9. 3.17.01/yellow page
After EAST dumped me, the mutual friends we had in common got messy. I had a good friend, the recipient of journal #3, that I simply stopped talking to because they stayed friends, he of course tried to not choose sides, but just seeing him reminded me of her. It all got weird and I sort of withdrew into work and wasn’t social for a long time. That page is emails exchanged between me and friends about life, love and pictures, random stories of trying to move on by internet dating I was doing, and a few stories revolving around those kind of experiences.
The yellow page is a story of the first time I saw EAST, a year after we broke up, it was St. Patrick’s Day at that same friends house.
10. The subjects
Obviously by now it is lovers, friends, assignments and family. Really anything or anyone I photograph. Most everyone in the journals knows me pretty well and the kind of stuff I do. I never actually asked anyone how they felt about being in it, I simply assumed that if they are letting me photograph them, they are more than aware of who I am and the things I make. I always found it really flattering that someone cared enough about me to take my picture, I can only hope they feel the same, many I believe do.
The people that know me well who are in it, I always assumed understood that they are in my life because they are important to me and part of this extended family that I really love. I never put this up or even created pages to hurt anyone. It pretty obvious that’s all about me, from my perspective, and for most part, it just makes people think I am the crazy one.
Now that being said, and in these days and times with the internet, and those that all the sudden realize they or something that happened with me is written down and shared, has created problems. I have no idea if EAST has ever even seen all this, maybe yes, maybe no, I will never know. Honestly, I half expect a letter from a lawyer over it all someday, but who knows. I am not the type to get a release from everyone that I shoot, its just not the kind of person I want to be. If and when a true problem arises, I can only know what to do in a particular situation.
There is one friend I have lost over the journal. There’s a person that is mad about a page she is on that had been one of my best friends for 10 years. Some things happened to both her and I, I wrote about them in my journal, and she freaked out that it was written down and never spoke to me again. The odd part is, she’s never read it. The page is on my site, but is not readable. When I made the decision to put my journals/letters online, it was clear that 99% of the text cannot be read. I did not alter anything, its simply a low resolution. Now the tough part is that everyone I know, including her, know my life is an open book, it gets into really grey areas when a conversation is spoken versus when that conversation is written down and shared. The same can be said for photographs. More so in my opinion. Photography basically is another language, the right photograph displayed and presented alone or with others, can be more of novel then text, you just have to know how to read it.
I regret that I lost this friend over a journal page. I regret that she got so hurt without ever reading it. It’s hard to know what to do or say. In the years since we’ve not spoken, I have also realized that maybe she wasn’t actually that good a friend in the first place. Whose to say? The situation is that it is my life too, is her experience more important or is mine, at what point do you censor your work or your mind or feelings for others? The page is still on my site, it still cannot be read. She’s still never read it. I stand by it.
11. Backgrounds
The backgrounds come about many different ways. The most common is just to get rid of that blank white of the sketchbook. I usually know what at least the first large image will be and go off that. I use ink, paint, markers, stickers, whatever odd paper or material I come across. All the images in all the journals are mine. If the image isn’t, it says so. I use stamps a great deal, usually when I miss someone that is in the image.
12. LM
LM stands for Lora Marie. I met her in January 2002 online. We dated three years. I have only had a few serious relationships in my life, the one with LM was the most loving and caring and mutual one. I photographed her more so than anyone else I have ever known. There is more of us on my site if you go to History, LM in red. I have more work of her than I know what to do with and projects with her I have yet to share. I still love her in a way in a way I am yet to understand.
Most of the text in the last pages is simply location, time, and little things, one of which says “I cannot keep a secret. ” I would need to know a specific page you are after I suppose.
She knew all to well about the journal. Early in our relationship, I once woke up and she was reading it. I let her, as I pretty much do for anyone. There is stuff in there that is hard to read, I dunno if I would have wanted to read hers if she kept one. I am glad she did on a certain level, what better way to understand who I am and what I feel. It made for some hard conversations, but I believe we got closer because of it. She’s never said a bad thing about being in it other than my edit, she of course likes one where she looks “prettier” or whatever, but that again too is all relative, I don’t think I could even make one of her where she isn’t beautiful….