Hollywood Stud
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Several years ago I bought a handful of postcards from a “nostalgia” store in one of the tourist trap towns
along the Lake Michigan coastline in western Michigan. They were reproductions of the covers of pulp
novels. What I had in mind was to integrate them into a series of pieces I wanted to create, without really
having any idea of the form they would take. Ever since my Lonely Planet Boy series, I had been thinking
about how to integrate text with images. Planet Boy essentially illustrates the text of a poem, “Coming Out of
the Tunnel.” For this new series, Dear Diary, I wanted to write or appropriate words to work with a group of
images I had accumulated. I worked with the words and images at the same time for the most part, including
the “found” texts on the pulp novel covers — titles, blurbs, and so on. My texts illuminate or provide
counterpoint to what’s happening in the narratives that are the books covers, as well as the narratives the
images imply.
The issues I work through in Dear Diary continue to be those operating in my previous work. One narrates
the story that is one’s “story” through the creation and performance of one’s “identity.” The “narratives” that
Dear Diary presents are in part imposed by me, and in part imposed by the spectator. Their origin springs
from the same realm from which the plots of the great “B” movies developed. As with those movies, the
dramatic structure (the mise-en-scene, if you will), creates a nostalgic referent in which any viewer or
audience member can participate — more or less create, or, at least, identify with. Modern myths of gender,
sexuality, and being-in-the-world acquire a resonant post-structural “meaning.” They become a series of
stations on life’s way, as Kierkegaard has it. The performativity of these images lies in the spectator’s
willingness to forgo the modernist notion that art should provide moral guidance, an idea of how things
should or could be. These images deal only with what is.
The images below are only a partial representation of Dear Diary.
along the Lake Michigan coastline in western Michigan. They were reproductions of the covers of pulp
novels. What I had in mind was to integrate them into a series of pieces I wanted to create, without really
having any idea of the form they would take. Ever since my Lonely Planet Boy series, I had been thinking
about how to integrate text with images. Planet Boy essentially illustrates the text of a poem, “Coming Out of
the Tunnel.” For this new series, Dear Diary, I wanted to write or appropriate words to work with a group of
images I had accumulated. I worked with the words and images at the same time for the most part, including
the “found” texts on the pulp novel covers — titles, blurbs, and so on. My texts illuminate or provide
counterpoint to what’s happening in the narratives that are the books covers, as well as the narratives the
images imply.
The issues I work through in Dear Diary continue to be those operating in my previous work. One narrates
the story that is one’s “story” through the creation and performance of one’s “identity.” The “narratives” that
Dear Diary presents are in part imposed by me, and in part imposed by the spectator. Their origin springs
from the same realm from which the plots of the great “B” movies developed. As with those movies, the
dramatic structure (the mise-en-scene, if you will), creates a nostalgic referent in which any viewer or
audience member can participate — more or less create, or, at least, identify with. Modern myths of gender,
sexuality, and being-in-the-world acquire a resonant post-structural “meaning.” They become a series of
stations on life’s way, as Kierkegaard has it. The performativity of these images lies in the spectator’s
willingness to forgo the modernist notion that art should provide moral guidance, an idea of how things
should or could be. These images deal only with what is.
The images below are only a partial representation of Dear Diary.
Dykes on Bikes
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Dykes on Bikes
Sorority Sluts
I Prefer Girls
Gang Girl
Too Hot to Handle
Pit Stop Nympho
Lesbian Jungle
Girls Out of Hell
Hot Rod Sinners
Reform School Girl
Basement Gang
Junkie
13 Ways of Looking
Dear Diary
Dear Diary