March 30, 2010
NYC
Elevation 80m
There are a few thoughts that are rattling around in my head this morning and all the thoughts are in relation to the issue of public vs private. Recently there was a New York Times piece about couples who fight on Facebook. Both parties use the social networking medium to air their grievances, tell their sides of the story and occasionally be passive aggressive towards each other via Facebook. Now and then, I confess a bit of my personal life here in this blog, I’ve even wrote a post about the act of a Facebook divorce early last year. Yet I feel that although you get to learn quiet a bit of my life via this medium, I don’t tend to over share (you are free to disagree). There is never any gory details of my personal life here in this blog or on my Facebook. The blood and guts are left behind closed doors.
Yet I recently submitted a image, a snap shot that was private, that was never meant to be “ART” to a juried competition titled BED. Based on the kind of work that were selected and exhibited last year with the same theme, I thought that in addition to the images from the current series of “Fetal Position and Drool” that this particular image is something the jury would like. The image that was submitted was taken on the last night I shared with a man I loved down in Bogota and it was a spur of the moment snap shot, a reflection of what is seen in the mirror. There is nothing revealing or controversial about the image other than that it was a private moment shared between two people.
As artists we all put a lot of ourselves into our work. Whether our work is confessional in nature in the foot steps of Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski and Tracey Emin, we do bare our souls in one degree or another for all to see. I only know how to make work that is a reflection and abstractions of my experiences and I am happy continue to make art in this manner, but I can’t help but ask how much is too much and how far is too far?
I was in a wedding this weekend of a dear friend and naturally all the images I shot from the wedding has since been posted on Facebook to be shared with all of our friends. I did pause for a second and wonder if my friend would want her special day to be posted all over Facebook for the world to see, yet it seems like this very act of sharing is part of the main function of the social medium. Then I come to the issue of privacy and copy right of all the content that we put out there on the web for the world to view. I own the copyright to every image that is posted to each photo albums but in the relaxed environment of social networking, I don’t often find respect extended to my copyright. When images are taken off of my website, I am usually credited. However, I have found more than one instance where images of mine have been re-posted to another Facebook user’s page without thought or consideration to the creator. I know an obvious answer would be that I should not post anything on Facebook and only on my website. Yet as Facebook rapidly becomes an important marketing / networking tool for artists, not posting our work on FB seems to be cutting off a limb from our arsenal.
Finally, I wonder about the question of choice on what we share and don’t share. I am of the generation that is fortunate enough to not find technology intimating but could also remember the days of the rotary phone (yes I grew up with one) and life before the internet. However, as I type, a friend’s wife is in labor and there is minute by minute update of her progress on the internet. This child’s life will be documented and shared with the entire world from minute one. I am glad to be able to take a part of my friends lives from many thousands of miles away yet I wonder if the baby one day would wonder about the choice that he didn’t get to make. I may wonder as an artist and a thinking person about the what we choose to put out there but at the end of the day, I get to MAKE that choice. The children of today don’t get to have a choice and may never understand that there could be a different private alternative.
Where do you draw the line on how much of your life you put into your art?
Do you think children should get a chance at a private childhood?
*I am purposely not illustrating today’s post with an image.
