Brett Bell Reprise

Brett Bell's Birthday
Brooklyn, NY
August 2008

I confess, I have a little crush on Brett Bell. Or maybe he is like the baby brother I always wanted but never had. Brett turned twenty six last night, which means when I was twelve, he was three years old.

Brett's mom, Linda, is in town from Missouri for Brett's birthday and his MFA Thesis Show which opens tonight at Parsons. Linda made the super sweet pink birthday cake pictured above and said that she is responsible for taking Brett to flea-markets where he developed his collections of old photographs, icons and kitschy American stuff. And it's definitely no mystery where Brett's good looks and sweetness come from.

Thank god for moms who love and nurture their gay artist sons.

Other participating artists in tonight's MFA Photography Thesis Exhibition include: Mark William Fernandes, Nathaniel Harger, Meghan McInnis, Kyung Mi Park, Haley Samuelson, Sean Simpson, Kirsten Springer-delgado, Meng-Hsun Wu, Tingting Xu and Grace Yang.

MFA Photography Thesis Exhibition
Parsons The New School for Design
66 Fifth Avenue
Thru September 12th

Nymphoto

An interview with me that was conducted this summer by photographer and blogger, Nina Corvallo, was recently posted on the Nymphoto blog and can be found here: Nymphoto Conversation with Tema Stauffer. Nymphoto is a collective of women photographers which functions both as a website to promote the work of women photographers and as a blog to feature news and encourage dialogue about women in the art world.

My relationship with Nymphoto originated nearly six years ago while I was still living in Minnesota. During a trip to New York in the summer of 2002, one of my oldest and closest friends in the arts, Zoe Edmonds, mentioned the newly emerging collective to me and suggested I contact her friend, Nina, to get involved. Some of my work was added to the Nymphoto website in the fall, and I made another trip to New York in December to participate in the Nymphoto's first exhibition, Nymphoto Presents.

This exhibition in a crowded loft on Warren Street stands out as one of the most memorable and significant experiences in my history as an artist. Not only was it a reunion of sorts for me with a lot of old friends from Oberlin College, some of whom I hadn't seen since we graduated, but I also formed new relationships with Nymphoto artists and met a dynamic woman named Jen Bekman standing in front of one of the pieces I was exhibiting (Bird Feeder, 2001).

Shortly thereafter, Jen and I struck up an email correspondence which lead to me return to New York in March 2003 to participate in the inaugural exhibition at her new gallery on Spring Street, which also included work by Mara Bodis-Wollner and Dana Miller. That was the beginning of a relationship with Jen Bekman Gallery which resulted in seven groups shows and a solo show in 2004, as well as my current involvement in her 20x200 project.

Probably everyone at the Nymphoto exhibition on December 5, 2002 has their own version of what that night meant to them and how it effected their individual lives and their relationships with photography, but what is perhaps undeniable is that this event had a profound and lasting impact on the futures of a number of women in the arts. Nymphoto's goal, to provide exposure to work by women photographers and to generate opportunities for their careers, was realized in a myriad of important ways. And nearly six years later, Nymphoto continues to devote itself to discussing work by women artists and addressing the issues and challenges that they face.

Brett Bell

Bugle Boy
2005
copyright Brett Bell


Shawn D & Nick in Bed
copyright Brett Bell


Essman Dunn Road
Sullivan, MO
2007
copyright Brett Bell

This morning, I had the honor and pleasure of participating in the MFA review committee at Parsons for a graduate student in the photography program, Brett Bell. I met Brett in January 2007 when I gave an artist talk to the photo students in the MFA program at Parsons. I was utterly nervous beforehand and slightly traumatized afterwards, and this sweet boy with a soft southern-sounding voice came up to me later to introduce himself.

Brett and I stayed in touch, and I gradually got to know him better as a person and as an artist. That Brett and I would come to recognize an affinity towards one another's backgrounds and experiences in photography was inevitable.

Brett grew up in Sullivan, Missouri, where he said this morning, there weren't any visible gay people. His early and untitled series of photographs shot in 2005 and 2006 in Missouri consists of portraits Brett constructed using his friends as raw material to create fictitious characters based on his own memories, longings and fantasies. With careful and sometimes campy staging and evocative uses of light and a sense of place, Brett creates a group of adolescent outcasts such a transgender teenager lounging on a bed in a pink room, a lonely overgrown tomboy with a tough and vulnerable scowl, and a number of sultry young men whose appeal is unmistakably homoerotic. Brett's cast of characters is simultaneously autobiographical and iconic of freak kids in small towns everywhere. His images look almost like film stills for a film that doesn't actually exist, but might be something like The Outsiders meets Mysterious Skin meets Hairspray.

Brett turns both towards and away from his appreciation of camp in later work. His campiest work is perhaps his series of images shot from television screens of male figures in soap operas who, when reframed by Brett, become objects of male desire. The title of this series, Sometimes Love is Like a Storm that Blows through and Destroys Everything in its Path, might be one of my all-time favorite titles for a body of work. Why? Because it is true and it is funny, and only a certain romantic type like Brett would come up with something like that, and I love those romantic types.

But perhaps Brett arrived at his strongest series of work, Life is Meant to be Shared, when he set aside his affection for artifice and exaggeration for a more straightforward and lyrical approach to making images. He combines photographs of young men that are more like sophisticated snapshots in contrast to his earlier staged images with beautiful and melancholic photographs of landscapes and interiors in his hometown. The connection to his subjects seems even more intimate, and his nostalgia for Missouri is heartfelt and moving.

Brett will be showing some of this work at two exhibitions later this month. Five of his images will be included in a show which opens at Agora Gallery on August 21rst, and more will be shown in his MFA Thesis Exhibition which opens at Parsons on August 27th.

Melinda Fries

Melinda
Avenue A
New York, NY
July 2008

If you are like me (and you are probably just a little like me if you are reading this), than you might have a number of relationships with people which exist as much as or even more than they do on the internet as in "real life," whatever that is. I, for one, have developed what feels like a deep and soulful friendship with a photographer and English teacher who lives in Virginia, Mark Burnette, based on reading one another's blogs and on our email correspondence. I have never actually met Mark and I don't even know what he looks like.

Pictured above is an old friend from Chicago, Melinda Fries, with whom I've had an active internet relationship for several years, though fortunately, we also do get to spend some time together once in a while. Melinda contributed to the cyber art world both as an artist and as the curator of ausgang, a collective website that evolves each season as artists and writers respond to old and new topics. In a class I have taught twice at the ICP called "Photographing the Everyday," I have asked students to consider ausgang topics in order to generate ideas for small projects and to potentially have the opportunity to participate in a creative community on the Web. Some ausgang topics include: Found Photos, Things in the Road, True Crime, Desire, Obsessions and $$$$$.

Last night was one of those times I got to see a flesh and blood Melinda, who is visiting the city with her new husband, Larry. I took the photo of Melinda outside a karaoke bar in the East Village, where we - or I should say, they - sang some tunes, as I am more of a behind the scenes type. As soft-spoken as he is, Larry sings a mean "Desparado," and we were all glad Melinda married someone so sweet.

Monday Morning

I am settled back into my Brooklyn apartment after the journey home with Paris. Thank you to everyone who sent messages, comments and even a postcard ... your compassionate words meant a great deal to me. I am happy to report that Paris adjusted incredibly well to my parents' house and seeing him come back to life in a kinder place after his struggles in New York brought an enormous sense of relief to me. Despite how much I will miss having him with me, I feel absolutely certain that it was the best decision for him and that he will live a longer and more peaceful life in Kalamazoo.

As for our road trip together, we made it to Niagra Falls and spent a night at The Sunrise Inn on Niagra Falls Boulevard. It wasn't quite the romantic experience I had hope for, as the driving and dislocation left Paris up all night crying and stumbling around the room in the dark, and me curled up on the bed, exhausted and heartbroken. But I am sure we weren't the first or last pair to spent a rough night together on the boulevard.

Now I am starting the next phase of my life, loving my dog from afar, getting ready for jury duty tomorrow, looking ahead at the rest of the summer and hoping I can finally take some photos again soon.

Paris

Paris
Chicago, IL
1999
photo by S.M.

Tomorrow morning, I am leaving for Michigan with my dog, Paris. Paris is ten and a half years old, born on Christmas Eve in 1997, and I turn thirty-five on Sunday.

My ex-girlfriend and I got Paris in the winter of 1998. We had just returned to Chicago from a trip to Paris, the city, and seeing the dogs there was the last straw for me. There was nothing more important or urgent in my life than finding a dog for myself.

We found Paris in a family's home in the suburbs when he was two months old and so small we could fit him in a purse and take him out to eat with us at restaurants. He used to climb on my shoulders in the car and wrap himself around my neck like a scarf. He slept in the same spot in the crook of my neck and he chewed his way through most of my apartment - a mattress, pillows, shoes, a couple pairs of my glasses. We took him to puppy training school and he nearly flunked out, especially when it came to not eating the hot dogs in the obstacle course. But the teachers, like just about everyone else, were charmed by his irresistible sweetness and gentleness. We tried to crate train him for a while, but he protested by banging on the crate like someone in the kitchen throwing pots and pans. Whenever we took him to my parents' house in Michigan, he got especially wild and excited and raced in circles around their furniture.

When I was a kid, I told my mom when I grew up, I wanted to marry a dog. In many ways, I've felt like that is almost how things turned out for me. In the ten and a half years that I have spent with Paris, I've lived in three cities, nine apartments and have been in and out of a number of relationships. Paris has been the one constant presence - my rock, a child, a soulmate - whatever else it is that I can't put into words. Certainly, my most profound experience of unconditional love.

At night, we sleep wrapped around one another's warm bodies which fit together like they were made for each other. When I come home, giving Paris a hug and a kiss comes first, before past girlfriends and even the internet.

Our transition to New York in the summer of 2005 was hard on Paris. The concrete and stairs took a toll on his knees, and he eventually had an operation which helped a lot. His face grew more and more gray, but he continued to be the most handsome and beautiful thing in the world as far as I was concerned.

Living alone in this city, working long hours to support myself, making trips to develop my work ... all of that has lead to a great deal of guilt and stress surrounding my relationship with Paris. In recent months, as his health has rapidly declined, these feelings have consumed vast amounts of my emotional energy.

When I got back from my last trip out west in April, I discovered that Paris was losing his vision. I took him to the vet, but there wasn't much that could be done to improve his condition, and very soon thereafter, he became completely blind.

For the past couple of months, I have been trying to help him navigate the apartment and the streets and the stairs, which are the hardest obstacle for him. Recently, I have been carrying his eighty-five pound body down two flights of stairs twice a day because it is too painful and devastating to watch him struggle fearfully with the steps.

We have spent a great deal of the past couple of weeks holed up in my apartment - him crying and me crying. Sometimes he stands in the corners of the kitchen like he has no idea where he is, or suddenly falls off the bed, and is almost entirely losing his life-long enthusiasm for food. Whenever I move from room to room, he can't be too far away from me for any length of time without more crying.

After grappling with our situation and our future, I finally asked my parents if they would be willing to care for Paris in their home in Michigan and they generously agreed to help us. I simply could not wrap my head around the thought of him passing away in this city - taking him from one challenging environment, my building and the city streets, to a vet's office one day to be put to sleep.

My parents have a wonderful house with a grassy backyard and a lot less stairs. As much as this impending separation breaks my heart, I felt like it was the right thing to do for Paris to spend the conclusion of his life in a kinder place which has always been his second home.

We are planning to drive the northern route back to the Midwest, dropping down into Michigan through Canada. I hope we will spend Friday night in a motel in Niagra Falls, so Paris will have the opportunity to experience some fresh air and primal forces of nature that are hard to come by in Brooklyn.

It will be perhaps our last of many road trips together. For the rest of this month, I plan to tune off of the internet and work obligations as much as I can and give all of my love and attention to my dog.

Friday Night

Some shots of the installation of 8 photography on a hot and sultry night at Randall Scott Gallery following the opening reception ...


Ryoko Suzuki (detail)


Jessica Dimmock (from The Ninth Floor)


Alexandra Catiere (from Behind the Glass) and Tema Stauffer (Gas Station, Tampa, FL)


Deinstall and Reinstall


Randall Scott


Tema Stauffer (White Horse and Car Skeletons)


Randall's assistant, Mary


Kyoko Hamada


Kitchen


Shen Wei (portraits from Almost Naked) and Ryoko Suzuki

8 photography at Randall Scott Gallery

I've been knocked out for three long days with a summer cold, trying to pull it together to get on a bus tomorrow to DC for the opening of 8 photography at Randall Scott Gallery. Keep your fingers crossed or me that I make it on that 11:45 am bus at Penn Station.

I am very excited to be showing with seven other artists: Kyoko Hamada, Jessica Dimmock, Peter Van Agtmael, Alexandra Catiere, Shen Wei, Alison Brady and Ryoko Suzuki. The opening night will include work by all artists followed by four two-week two-person exhibitions throughout the rest of the summer.

Six of my prints, including both older and more recent images, will be shown along with Kyoko Hamada's portaits from July 12 - 26th.

Thank you to Randall Scott for noticing my work during his internet prowls and inviting me to participate in this exhibition.

Thank you also to a few people who have been especially supportive of my art endeavors in recent months: Bill Mondale, Charles Baxter, Mark Burnette, Matt Olson and Nina Corvallo. Your presence is felt in a major way.

8 photography
July 11 - Sept. 5th

Randall Scott Gallery
1326 14th Street NW
Washington, DC

Gary and Nicole

Field of Sad Trees
Spanish Fork, UT
April 2008

One Sunday while she was digging away in her garden, Gary carved their names on the apple tree. He did it with a pocket knife, real nice, real neat: GARY LOVES NICOLE. Nobody had ever done that before.

Next day she had a lot of things to do, and kept wanting to get back. When she finally reached home, she cleaned out his car first, then climbed up the tree to a place above where he had done it, and carved out: NICOLE LOVES GARY. Then she went into the house just in time to meet him.

He came out into the backyard with a beer and she told him to look at the apple tree. He didn't see anything and she finally had to point it out to him. Then he was happy as a kid, and said she had done hers better than his. Told her it was a beautiful heart she had carved around the names.

excerpt from The House in Spanish Fork
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

What were the odds of driving around Spanish Fork and finding the apple tree where Gary and Nicole had declared their love for one another thirty two years ago? Pretty slim, I thought. Like finding love itself. And making it work.

Spanish Fork, where Gary briefly stayed with Nicole, was drearier and poorer and tawdrier than Provo. Dark clouds hung over the town and seemed perfectly right for my impossible mission and my own disillusionment.

Does the fact that these dark clouds got me excited make me some kind of truly gloomy person or just practical-minded when it comes to telling a story?

I made a sincere effort to look for the most romantic and/or saddest tree I could find with no idea what it would look like when I found it. I found these trees in a field that separated the town from a National Guard unit on its outskirts, and they looked sad enough for me to stop the car and set up my camera.

I simply didn't have the patience to stay in Spanish Fork for ever and ever looking for a tree I'd never find. Some things are just made to stay in your mind like a fantasy or an ideal. I imagined Gary and Nicole walking through the field to carve their names on one of these trees instead. Maybe it was a sunnier day if it is ever sunny in Spanish Fork which was hard to picture at that moment, though I had often imagined the two of them under a hot sun, sweating.

Sean

Sean
City Center Motel
Provo, UT
April 2008

Before I left the City Center Motel in the morning, I had to take a picture of the clerk - if only for myself. The clerk, Sang, seemed peaceful and kind and tolerant, both towards me as a photographer and towards his long-term dwellers and their various dramas.

While I was waiting for Sang to return to the counter, I found Sean in the lobby of the City Center Motel reading The Book of Mormon Made Easier. I was immediately captivated by his strong and vulnerable face as well as his remoteness and his earnestness. I asked if I could photograph him outside the lobby in better light, and he was quietly compliant - no questions asked.

I photographed him with his book, but perhaps that one looked too contrived.

Cleo

Cleo
City Center Motel
Provo, UT
April 2008

Wolfman

Wolfman Smoking
City Center Motel
Provo, UT
April 2008

Just before dusk, I found Wolfman pacing in the parking lot of the City Center Motel chain smoking cigarettes. I told him he looked intense smoking cigarettes, and he said he was intense about everything he did. I said I could relate to that, about cigarettes and everything else.

Throughout the night and even the next morning, Wolfman was still pacing and smoking in the parking lot. His girlfriend was arguing with him from her doorway on the balcony of the second floor of the motel, and it was like a play, except it was real. The argument kept Wolfman in orbit around the girlfriend. He couldn't leave the parking lot and yet he couldn't return to their room upstairs. I thought about how often I had been in his shoes, lighting more cigarettes because what else was there to do.

He seemed to welcome the camera as a distraction - a validation of his plight.

Reflect

copyright Carl Wooley
Light Pole on Island
2008

Friday night's opening of Reflect: Full-time Student Exhibition at the ICP was packed with people and energy. I felt just a little like a proud mom to see excellent work by two of my former students, Carl Wooley and Phillip Gutman, both of whom took my Photographing at Night course this past winter.

Carl's piece, Light Pole on Island, belongs to a series of photographs he has been making at night in the city and on the fringes of Long Island. Using a 4x5 camera and long exposures up to thirty minutes, Carl has been producing beautiful and mesmerizing meditations on light and color and empty, anonymous space. His subjects are places like parking lots and woods where leaves and grass are brightly lit by artificial light, giving them an almost alien glow, and other areas of the image fall into a deep darkness. Throughout the course, we picked Carl's brain for his technical expertise and experimentation and were moved by these dream-like and hypnotic images.

Phillip Gutman brought together his interests in classical portraiture, fashion, gender identity and performance in a black & white collage titled Observation, Provocation and Identity. Phillip, whose fierce physical presence calls to mind a Shakespearean actor with a head of thick and curly hair, casts himself as both photographer and subject. His images portray himself photographing his models, who appear to be drag performers of another era, which he combines with images depicting himself engaged in intimate homoerotic scenarios. The narrative he creates leaves us with perhaps some curiosity about a mysterious world he inhabits with lovers and cohorts.

City Center Motel

Green Curtains
City Center Motel
Provo, UT
April 2008


Window
City Center Motel
Provo, UT
April 2008

On the flight to Phoenix, I began reading The Executioner's Song for the second time. The first time was in Chicago in the winter of 1997. My girlfriend and I were sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a poorly heated apartment and shared one copy and passed in back and forth and argued over who got to read it on a given night.

This second time around, I got as far Gary getting out of prison in Utah, Gary and Nicole falling in love, Gary getting drunk and high on Fiornal, Gary and Nicole fighting over sex, Nicole breaking it off with Gary, Gary shooting a clerk in a Sinclair Station, Gary trying to have sex with Nicole's stoned sister in a Holiday Inn, Gary shooting a clerk in the lobby of the City Center Motel, Gary getting captured and put in jail, Gary writing love letters - letters full of sexual longing and jealousy and pain - to Nicole, who falls back in love with Gary and tries to take her own life.

Gary's refusal to fight his death sentence, which the book later describes, created a media sensation in 1976 and drew Lawrence Schiller and Norman Mailer and eventually his own brother, Mikail, to tell Gary's story and the story of his family and a story about Utah. A juvenile delinquent with a Mormon mother and a violent father who was perhaps the son of Harry Houdini, Gary spent most of his life behind bars. Handsome in a rough way and intensely masculine with streaks of charisma and creativity, Gary, whose hero was Johnny Cash, had the makings of a dark and tragic American icon. His crimes made history and his character fascinated even Matthew Barney and the art world.

My goal was to find the scenes of his crimes and to discover what exists there now and what psychic energy remains in these places. I had already tracked down the City Center Motel at 150 W. 300 S. in Provo via the internet. I was almost surprised, when I made my first call to the motel, to learn that it still existed, and I asked the clerk on the phone, "Is this where the Gary Gilmore murder took place in 1976?". The clerk sounded uncomfortable and said it was under new management and he didn't know what I was talking about. Later, I made a reservation before I left for my drive to Provo, and it was a good thing I did, since the motel was full when I arrived, and most of its inhabitants seemed to live there for long stretches of time.

I spent the night in a room that smelled like stale cigarettes and felt like any motel room anywhere, really. Dingy, sad, lonely. The most interesting thing to me about the motel was its cast of characters, some of whom I photographed, and whose images will appear soon.

The Sinclair service station in the nearby town of Orem no longer exists as far as I could tell. Norman Mailer describes its location as the intersection of 800 North and 175 East. The closest thing I could find to that address was 800 North and 75 East, where small houses sit at the base of a big sky and snow-capped mountains, and my night pictures of this setting didn't quite make it.

Art Space Interview

Brian Sherwin, senior blog editor, recently interviewed me for an online publication, myartspace.com. Thank you Brian for the great questions and the opportunity to think back a little.

The interview can be found here: Brian and Tema on MYARTSPACE.

Hurricane

Hurricane, UT
April 2008

Smiley

Smiley
Dixie Palms Motel
St. George, UT
April 2008

The morning after my trip to Colorado City and Mountain Meadows and my night in the Dixie Palms Motel, I woke up to find Smiley standing in the parking lot outside my room, and I found his innocence as welcome and reassuring as the new morning itself. After I took some pictures of him, he said, "Isn't it great to have a nice neighbor, if only briefly?," and I felt the exact same way.

He invited me into his room for coffee and told me how he took care of the motel grounds and worked with kids on the weekends. The room was his home, and he showed my some of his belongings and the contents of his icebox. He said that he stocked up on a week's supply of cheeseburgers from McDonald's to save money, and reheated the burgers in his microwave, which I thought was pretty gross, but I kept that to myself.

Everything about Smiley spoke of kindness and gentleness, and I felt lucky to start a new day on this note.

The Temple

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
St. George, UT
April 2008

Television

TV Screens
Dixie Palms Motel
St. George, Utah
April 08

"The FBI," she said, "look in on houses to see if people are committing any crimes. They do it through the TV, you know." She lay back on the bed and the room was spinning. It was like the motel room she had gone to with a rich man. She had felt so alive that night because the plastic was so dead.

April Baker
excerpt from The Motel Room
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

After I left Mountain Meadows, I drove back to St. George and checked into a room at The Dixie Palms Motel. I turned on the TV and found the story about the FBI raid on the polygamist compound in El Dorado, Texas on Larry King Live. The same footage played over and over again with victims telling their lurid stories, newscasters with menacing snarls and women who claimed they liked being one of many wives. I sat on the bed and shot digital photos of the TV screen and thought about how everything felt all at once sleazy: television is sleazy, the FBI is sleazy, polygamists are sleazy, newscasters are sleazy, victims are sleazy, motel rooms are sleazy, Utah is sleazy, Texas is sleazy, America is sleazy, religion is sleazy, cameras are sleazy, even I am sleazy.

Memorial Day

Agnes with Phoenix
Brooklyn, NY
May 08

HIV Law Project Exhibition & Silent Auction

I have donated a print of the image, Teenage Boy, to the HIV Law Project exhibition and silent auction which takes place at Moti Hasson Gallery on Monday, June 2nd, from 6 - 9pm. Work by all of the participating artists can be seen at ARTISTS and tickets to the event can be purchased at TICKETS.

Moti Hasson Gallery
535 W. 25th Street

Mountain Meadows

Mountain Meadows
Southwestern Utah
April 2008

After I left Colorado City, my next destination was Mountains Meadows north of St. George, Utah. I decided to stop in St. George to calm my nerves and take a tour of Brigham Young's winter home. The house was clean and quiet and soothing, and the tour guide seemed almost saintly in contrast to the bulky and intimidating men I'd encountered in Colorado City. I felt a little guilty that my motivation to photograph Brigham Young's home was less than celebratory since the guide was so gracious when I asked if I could take some pictures. He told us that Brigham Young fathered fifty-seven children with multiple wives, and I took some photos of his massive canopy bed, upon which lay a top hat and a cane. I sensed that the images might be useless given the overexposure from the sun pouring in from the window behind the bed, and I was right.

My daylight hours were fast fading so I got back on the highway north towards Mountains Meadows. Mountains Meadows is the site of what historian Geoffrey Ward described as "the most hideous example of the human cost exacted by religious fanaticism in American history until 9/11."

I first learned about Mountain Meadows through Jon Krakauer's book, Under The Banner of Heaven. On September 11, 1857, a militia of Mormons disguised as Indians, along with real Paiute Indians, attacked a wagon train of Arkansas families known as the Fancher party who were traveling to California. The Mormon militia persuaded the families to surrender under the false promise of a truce and a safe passage. And then in a brutal slaughter known as The Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Mormon militia took the lives of approximately 140 men, women and children.

After the massacre, The Mormon Church first tried to lay the blame for the killings on the local Paiute Indians. But when evidence revealed Mormon involvement, the church then tried to shift sole responsibility onto John D. Lee, a Mormon zealot and the adopted son of Brigham Young. Lee was executed for his crimes by a firing squad in 1877, and controversy exists to this day about the involvement of other church members in The Mountain Meadows Massacre.

According to an article by Sally Denton in The New York Times in 2003, the current church president, Gordon B. Hinckley, agreed to restore a landmark in 1999 where at least some of the bodies were buried, a concession which drew controversy when a contractor's backhoe unearthed the bones of 29 victims. Denton wrote, "After a debate between Utah state officials and church leaders - what has been called Utah's "unique church-state tango" - about state laws requiring unearthed bones to be forensically examined for cause of death, the church had the remains quickly reburied without any extensive examination that might have drawn new attention to the brutality of the murders."

She further wrote, "At a time when religions around the world are acknowledging and atoning for past sins, the massacre has left the Mormon Church in a quandary. Roman Catholics have apologized for their silence during the Holocaust, United Methodists for their massacre of American Indians during the Civil War, Southern Baptists for their support of slavery, and Lutherans for Martin Luther's anti-Jewish remarks. But unlike the leaders of other religions, who are believed to be guided by the hand of God, Mormon prophets are considered extensions of him ... To acknowledge complicity on the part of church leaders runs the risk of calling into question Brigham Young's divinity and the Mormon belief that they are God's chosen people."

Well, as I drove closer to Mountains Meadows, I wondered just how eerie it was going to be, and man, was it eerie right off the bat. Dusk was just beginning to approach an overcast afternoon, and the feeling of death and evil was nearly as pervasive and palpable as what I recall from a visit to the site of the World Trade Center two months after the attack on 9/11. I took deep breaths as I drove down the dirt road to the memorial site where an American flag was erected to acknowledge the loss of American lives.

I got out of the jeep with my camera and tri-pod, praying that I wouldn't be die alone here, subsumed by ghosts or startled by an attacker looming in the meadow. Shortly after I set up my first few shots, a truck came barreling down the dirt road and two men climbed out with a pit bull. I ran back to the jeep and stood at the door and asked them, "Are you guys spooky?" They assured me that they weren't spooky, but we agreed that this place sure was spooky. They left quickly, and I resumed taking pictures until a large bull walked out of the meadow gazing in my direction, and that was it for me at the memorial site. I drove up to the top of a hill to take in the full view of the meadow and hurriedly took three shots and got back on the road.

Colorado City

Cherry Tree
Colorado City, AZ
April 2008


House
Colorado City, AZ
April 2008

When I was a student in junior high school, I remember reading a short story by Shirley Jackson called The Lottery, and the impact that this story had on me. The story is about a farming village which holds a lottery each year and selects one member of its community for a ritualistic sacrifice. A family name is first drawn from a black box, followed by the name of one member of that family, who is then stoned to death in the town square by his or her family and friends.

The story is so chilling, I recall a quiet and profound sense of shock and sadness that settled into me as I finished its final words, an experience that stands out in my mind as one of the events that marked a transition from my own childhood into a darker and more complicated adolescence.

I don't know that anything I subsequently read gave me a feeling like this until, in the summer of 2005, I read Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. This work of non-fiction describes the murder of a woman and her child committed by her husband's brothers, Ron and Don Lafferty, in American Fork, Utah in 1984. The Lafferty Brothers, who were members of a fundamentalist sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, claimed that they received a divine commandment from God to commit this horrific crime and later expressed no remorse for causing these violent deaths.

What is further disturbing about Under the Banner of Heaven is the dense history of violence it illustrates surrounding the Mormon religion, and particularly the violence and misogyny associated with Mormon Fundamentalists who to this day practice polygamy in communities in America. Before I read this book, I had no idea grown men were marrying and abusing teenage brides and beating wayward women in "re-education camps" outside of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah.

What I read in this book stayed with me for years, and it became apparent this winter that I could finally make a trip to this part of the country. I didn't form much of a plan other than to simply make the drive across the desert north of the Grand Canyon to see Colorado City and Hildale for myself and to photograph whatever I might find there.

The day before I left for Colorado City, I talked to my mom on the phone, and she told me about the FBI raid on the polygamist compound in West Texas, which I hadn't yet seen in the news. She was concerned since she knew I was planning to drive from Arizona to Utah that week and she figured tensions would be heightened in the area. I didn't mention to her that I was actually planning to drive to Colorado City the next day since that is not the kind of thing you tell your mother, even when you are thirty-four years old.

The drive from Kayenta to Colorado City took several hours passing first through the stark and beautiful Kaibab Plateau and then up into a snowy forest region in the mountains. My sense of fear began to settle in as I reached Fredonia, a small farming town whose name had appeared in the book in relation to the polygamists, and then it grew as I made the last stretch of the drive through a desolate landscape north into Colorado City.

I didn't know what to expect. Would it look like a normal town with a settlement on the outskirts that I would have to search for? I felt waves of fear pass through me like the sensation of being on a roller-coaster that is climbing towards a peak, when the impending moment of the plunge is full of uncertainty and suspense.

The one thing I had read about the area outside of Krakauer's book was an article I found on the internet about a restaurant in Hildale called The Merry Wives Cafe, where women in long dresses serve food to curious travelers. I planned to stop at the cafe to eat lunch and to get my bearings.

As I drove into Colorado City, I realized that the settlement was the town itself and consisted of houses and yards set off of the highway at the base of a mountain. I stayed on the highway and passed the border into Utah and pulled into the parking lot of The Merry Wives Cafe, whose glass windows were black from the outside. I walked into the cafe and ordered a turkey sandwich and a rasberry lemonade from a woman in a long dress, but when she brought the food to my table, my mouth was too dry to take more than a few bites.

The article about the cafe described portraits of polygamist families on its walls and a mural depicting several woman harmoniously working together in a field. As I sat at my table, I gazed at the mural and thought about asking if I could take a photograph, and then decided that it wasn't important enough to call attention to myself as a photographer since my real goal was to drive into the residential section of Colorado City.

I left the restaurant and drove back east on the highway and turned onto a road that led into the settlement. When I stopped the jeep on the street in front of the cherry tree, several small children in traditional dresses who were playing under the tree immediately ran and hid when they spotted me, even before I picked up my camera. I quickly got out of the car and took a few shots of the tree and drove further in the neighborhood. I saw a woman in a long dress standing in her backyard leaning against a fence, and my desire to take a photograph was overwhelming and yet impossible to realize.

Part of what made Colorado City seem so surreal, besides the large houses with dark windows, was the amalgam of the new and the old. The streets were lined with brand new trucks and SUV's with black windows, while the children and women, some of whom were driving these vehicles, appeared to belong to another century.

I wished I were invisible, but knew that I wasn't, and was, in fact, more than conspicuous, and however real or imagined, my sense of danger in this settlement alone with a camera was growing. My heart was racing, and I imagined one of these many trucks chasing me down in my jeep, and how unlikely an escape would be in the event of a confrontation. I took a few more photos of these eerie houses and drove back toward the highway. I passed a boy with a brimmed hat seated grandly on a horse that was slowing trotting down the road, and I quickly leaned out of the the car window to shoot his photo. But as soon as the boy saw my camera, he fled.

The was my last sign to leave Colorado City, and I continued northwest on the highway. And while the drama of this excursion was clearly a reflection of my imagination, I still felt lucky to leave a place where so many women are held captive.

Driveways

Driveway
Monument Valley region
Arizona
April 2008

Along the small highways in the deserts of Arizona and Utah, there are long winding driveways leading to clusters of houses and cars. I found myself entranced by their mysteriousness, but more than a little afraid of the unknowns, wondering who lives down there? Do they own guns? Will they shoot me if I drive down their driveway?

Are they natives? Or a cult? Or a religious sect? What are they protecting or hiding?

People hide out in the west for all kinds of reasons. Some of them aren't hiding at all. But how can you know?

At the moment I took this photo, it was as likely that I'd venture down this driveway as I would have climbed into the Egyptian Room with the mummy cases at the public library when I was on a class field trip in grade school. Meaning, I was spooked, and as soon as I took this shot, I jumped back into the jeep and raced down the highway. I told myself that I was saving any possible thread of courage for my next journey and my next post.

Car Skeletons

Car Skeleton
Highway 163
Arizona
April 2008


Car Skeletons at Dusk
Highway 163
Arizona
April 2008

Alexandrea

Alexandrea
Kayenta, AZ
April 2008

Alexandrea was the first person I met in Kayenta. I saw her blonde hair shining in the bright morning sunlight and pulled the jeep into the parking lot where she was walking with a friend.

I always feel clumsy about these encounters and what to say to someone whose picture I want to take. How would I feel if someone jumped out of a car and stopped me on the street and wanted to take my picture?

If it were someone like Alexandrea, I might be flattered and intrigued, and do my best to share my soul with her for a moment in time, though usually, I am like a deer in the headlights when someone tries to photograph me.

On a Navajo reservation, my awkwardness about taking pictures of people was stronger and more complicated. I felt almost sheepish as a photographer from a middle-class Midwestern family living in New York and wandering this new terrain checking out teenagers. In the end, I didn't make many photos of people in Kayenta, and mostly watched from a distance and wondered how to make these kind of connections. But Alexandrea was open, and I loved her face.

Past, Present, Future

Past, Present, Future
Psychic Reader Palm
Route 66
Flagstaff, AZ
April 2008

I flew into Phoenix on the afternoon of April 6th and picked up my friend's second car from the driveway of his uncle's house in a sun-drenched subdivision near the expressway. My plan was to make the drive from Phoenix north to Kayenta near Monument Valley where my friend works for the federal government as a doctor in a clinic on a Navajo reservation and to spend the night at his house.

I passed through Flagstaff and was enthralled with the pine trees and retro motels lining Route 66 with names like The Frontier and The Wonderland. And while motels like these are some of my favorite forms of eye candy, something about this fortune teller's shop beckoned me to stop the car. Besides the bright pink and green against the blue sky and the long dark shadows cast by an afternoon sun, I also knew that I was at the beginning of a journey to explore some thoughts about America's past, present and future.

And it was the beginning of spring, which is a time of year when I am especially prone to nostalgia - when the past, present and future seem to reveal themselves in uncanny and interconnected ways - when meeting a new person, for instance, can return you to all kinds of important people and events in your life that came before. The threads that bring people together and bind them to one another seem more vivid and almost fated, and memories unfurl like flowers and insects and colors and sounds.

The Internet

Anthony on Rooftop
Manhattan, NY
April 2008

So, Jon Feinstein of Humble Art Foundation shed some light on the crazy starving dog story and sent me a link to an article which exposes the whole thing as a hoax - a stunt by the artist to cause a big stir, which it did. Over a million people signed this petition, which is at least a little heartwarming even if we are all annoyed for having been manipulated. It got me thinking about what we read on the internet, and how we might confuse truth and fiction, and how much weird stuff arrives in my inbox on a daily basis.

Besides the messages selling Viagra and other dubious drugs, I am regularly bombarded with messages revealing that I am the beneficiary of large sums of foreign currency once I have shared some details of my identity and contact information. But worse still are the inquiries from brides and grooms with sketchy yahoo accounts about the costs of my photography services for an upcoming wedding in NYC, usually opening with "Dear Sir or Madame..." and some words of flattery. Most of these messages are allegedly coming from foreign countries and the awkward use of the English language and the creepy tone sounds uncannily similar each time. Who writes these things, I wonder. Is there one evil mastermind with a million yahoo accounts or is there a sweatshop somewhere with laptops where workers are trained to perfect this particular style of bad English and ridiculously excessive formality?

Hmmm. Well, I just wanted to put something simple on the internet today - the face of someone I love and who I think is beautiful. My friend, Anthony, was in town for a long weekend for his cousin's wedding and spent his nights and mornings at my apartment in Brooklyn. While I have previously photographed Anthony on beaches in Minneapolis or making out with a cute guy on a couch in an apartment in the West Village, this time around, I got a shot of him on the rooftop of a building on 39th Street where the wedding reception was held. Too bad you can't see the awesome view of the city from this rooftop, but you might notice the slight coffee stain emerging from beneath his lovely tie which happened on our walk to the wedding in Central Park - the only blemish to his elegant beauty and sophistication as far as I can tell.

And one last thing ... thank you to Paddy Johnson for featuring my work this week in the masthead of her super smart and cool art blog, Art Fag City. You can find the post here: Tema Stauffer in Art Fag City

Petition to Prevent Death Spectacle

Some of you may have received some devastating photos and a link to sign a petition to save another dog's life from the art world which seems to be racing thru the internet like wildfire, thankfully.

But if you haven't, you might want to read the contents this petition and consider adding your name to the list:

http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

From the limited information one can gather from this link, an artist named Guilliermo Vargas hired five children to capture a stray dog in Managua and then tied him to a rope in an art gallery. The artist and visitors of the exhibition watched while the dog starved to death in the gallery almost as though it were a performance piece. And the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American has invited Vargas to recreate this "installation" in the biennial of 2008.

Does this sound like some totally bizarre parody of what the art world has come to? Am I missing something that would help to make this make more sense?

My friend speculated that this piece was intended to call attention to how we see animals starving on the streets all the time in real life and turn our backs to it, and by tying the animals to a rope in the gallery, the artist is calling attention to this kind of suffering. Except that if we tied a helpless person to a rope in gallery and watched the person starve to death, it doesn't quite add up to meaningful art that most of us could stomach.

I'm perplexed and disturbed, so if anyone has more insight on this story, please let me know. I first saw the photos of this dog and read the petition shortly after returning from my trip out west, where seeing stray dogs roaming in parking lots and streets in Arizona was already heartbreaking enough. And having photographed some dead animals and a dog who was taking it's last breathes on a street in Ship Rock, NM, I hope there is a significant moral distinction between between the act of capturing suffering, violence and death and the act of causing suffering, violence and death in the process of making art.

Back in NYC

I got back last night from an eerie journey through the deserts of Arizona and Utah. I spent some nights at a friend's house on a Navajo reservation in Kayenta, Arizona near Monument Valley, those ancient and spooky red rocks, and made drives through Colorado City, Hildale, St. George, Provo, Orem and Spanish Fork in Utah and across the eastern border to Ship Rock, New Mexico.

My rolls of film are processed already, and I can see reversed fragments of broken cars, motels, gas stations, churches, houses, dead animals, dead trees, streets, skies and a few faces from this strange part of the country with a dark history of violence and religious fervor.

More on that in a few weeks when some of this film is scanned ...