About

In the summer after my sophomore year at UCLA, I began to work in Herb Ritts’ studio as an assistant and, inspired by what I seeing, began to make images of my own. Through a fortuitous combination of circumstances, I landed the Calvin Klein campaign in the middle of my senior year.  Rather suddenly, I was a working commercial photographer. Two other things happened that year that would further shape my artistic trajectory: 1) studying with (and eventually working with) opera director, Peter Sellars; 2) a developing relationship with The Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), a performance collective that is closely tied to the LA’s Skid Row neighborhood. Founded in 1985 by director and activist John Malpede, LAPD members are mostly homeless or formerly homeless people who collaborate with advocates, social service professionals and community members to create performances and multimedia art that highlight connections between their lived experiences and external forces that impact their lives.  Both Peter and John’s respective work would make me question whether I was really cut out for celebrity and fashion photography. I began to consider several alternative paths that I might take. 

Following graduation, I rented a studio space at the corner Santa Monica Blvd and Highland Ave. and productively worked there into early 1993 before deciding that I would move to New York to attend film school. About a month prior to leaving I developed a connection to homeless young man named Scott, who had started sleeping, somewhat regularly, in the shell of an auto body that had been left in the studio parking lot by the previous owner.  It’s a rather long story, but the short of it is this: I invited him to live in the studio for the final month of my lease.  I locked up my belongings and valuable equipment in a single room leaving him with the full run of the studio, which included a kitchen, a loft for sleeping, two bathrooms, and a shower.  After laying down some rules, I entrusted him with a key.  Over the course of the time that he was there, he would occasionally ask if another person or two could share the space. I was obliging so long as there was no trouble.  I gave him my trust and he honored it. 

Scott and I began to imagine a way that we could collaboratively produce some images.  I suggested that we attempt to stage some iconic scenes from the history of painting. Looking through some books we selected a few images as possible candidates, Gericault’s Raft Of The Medusa, and Hans Holbein’s, Dead Christ In The Tomb, among others.  Scott was excited by the challenge I had put before him: cast the characters, find the costumes, scavenge for and/or build the props.

Scott had invited another man, somewhat older than himself named Richard, to stay with him in the studio. Noting Richard’s rough likeness to the dead Christ in Holbein’s painting, Scott asked him if he would open to posing. Richard was amused, but seemed happy to oblige. 

The following day, Scott and Richard arrived at the studio with a pile of scrap wood, some of which had a curious geometric pattern printed on several of the planks.  After a few hours of cutting and nailing, we had built a coffin or “tomb” roughly the dimensions of that which are seen in the painting.  

Several days later, we would shoot the image with the help of a make-up artist friend who came in to create seeming wounds on Richard’s hands, feet, forehead and side. I brought in recently published Los Angeles Times with the headline, “Time For Sacrifice Clinton Says,” which seemed to have an interesting relationship to the overall subject matter.

After angling the opening of the box to a bank of windows with bright southern light, Richard slid himself in. Envisioning an eventual highly detailed life-sized-print, I elected to expose multiple negatives that I hoped could be eventually (somehow) joined. I built a rail that spanned the horizontal length of box and slid my medium format camera across it, clicking every six inches or so to ensure continuity.

Following this image, four others were attempted.  And though I made Scott, Richard and some others 4x5 gift prints of the works we were making - I had never gotten around to actually producing a print of the Holbein inspired image due to the technical challenges at the time of cresting a composite image. 

While Richard mysteriously disappeared several weeks later, Scott remained.  He managed to clean himself up considerably over the course of the month and in the final week of his stay, his mother drove in from San Diego to collect him and bring him back home with her.  It was a reunion that I had worked somewhat hard to facilitate and I believed, or hoped, for it to be the beginning of something positive for Scott or, at least, the end of something else, which seemed a nightmare (this I would save for another story).  

I moved to New York. And In the months following, I tried to stay connected to Scott by calling occasionally. One day his mother picked up the phone and told me that Scott had once again run off. Where to, she did not know.  I called again, and again, but she had no further answers.  I called roughly a year later and she finally had some definitive news: Scott had died from AIDS related complexes. It was hard news and I couldn’t help but feel that if I hadn’t moved away things might have been different.  

Prior to moving to NYC, I had packed up my negatives to be stored at my parent’s home in Huntington Beach, Ca. And for reasons too complex to go into here, several sets of negatives had gone missing and were only recovered about a year ago.   Included among these recently rediscovered negatives were those from the day we shot The Dead Christ In The Tomb.  

Needless to say, it was terribly exciting to finally have the opportunity, after so much time passed, to finally scan the nine medium format negatives that would eventually be knitted together to create that single image. It seems an image from another lifetime and in some ways it is. But in finally bringing it to life, I feel somehow strangely connected to my younger self—and to Scott. And I’m so grateful to be able to say: we made that - together. And I’m very proud of it—proud for the both of us. 

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