jessie mann interview, part 5

part five of Seven Questions for Jessie Mann. the gay part.

Subjectify: Self Possessed definitely tackles ideas of gender and performance, and the subject or muse as a feminine archetype. Do you subvert that dynamic in your role as the conscious subject? The characters you portray in Self Possessed include Mapplethorpe and Warhol. I imagine that their queerness helped them disrupt the traditional barrier between subject and artist in their work. How does that function in your project ? Does Len Prince’s sexuality, or yours, have an impact on your work together to question the role of the subject?

Jessie Mann: This one is my favorite question! I like your use of the word queer—it is my favorite for such discussions, and so I will stick with it. For ease, I will once again break this question down into two broad topics: the first, being the idea of gender and its relationship to the subject in art and culture. The second being the role of sexuality in this collaborative project and others. To start, I do try to subvert a few ideas. One of them being that women in art are silent objects. Another, that women in collaborations were inevitably exploited or in someway manipulated into acts of self exposure. And still another, the idea that it is women who have exclusively populated the role of muse and/or artistic object. By speaking about my role, from my position, I am able to at least assert that one woman was not silent—is not silent, was not exploited, will not be exploited. That it is possible for the muse or the subject to bring artistic action to a collaboration. I try to get people to question the assumptions we make about women in art, and the subject in general. I am often asked why I didn’t “just take self portraits?” But a very important part of this project is to assert that the act of collaborating with the artist is artistic, that what women have been doing for so long, is “enough”—I don’t have to take the pictures myself; I can even pose nude for a man (gasp) and it can still be me making art. Additionally, by portraying Warhol, Dali, Mapplethorpe, and Beuys I am reminding people that the use of the self, the body, and one’s character in art is not something reserved for women, while at the same time giving a nod to the fellows that gave me the precedence to take on this theme.

It seems to me that both queers and women are particularly appreciative of the distinction between self and character. Here I would reference Wilde as a prime example of this self aware posing that is widely practiced by queers and perfected by the all-too-rare brave woman. Why this talent is most frequently, or even exclusively, developed by queers and women, is perhaps another chicken or egg question. Do women and queers feel the social need to separate identity from character, is the external flamboyance assigned to women and adopted by queers a result of social roles/pressures or is a certain amount of flair and show simply a part of the wonderful nature of said human beings? This is maybe another question I don’t really have the answer for, but I do love the discussion.

And though the overlap between queer culture and the cultural identities of women is infinitely interesting to me, I would like to take this opportunity to turn the question around. Why don’t straight men make characters of themselves? Why is it that queers and women share this trait but straight men don’t? Is it that they think of themselves or are seen as the fallback position—no need to define yourself when you are vanilla—everyone else has to add flavor, or is the straight male identity lacking in character? A notable exception to the rule that ‘the straight man’ doesn’t make a character of himself are writers. Hemmingway, Hunter S. Thompson, and Phillip Roth with his alter ego Zimmerman, all made characters of themselves as much as they wrote new ones into existence. Perhaps, something of it has to do with the position of the observer. From that stance, the outside, the viewer develops a sense of the play of it all. Or, maybe, the artistic spirit can, in fact, be channeled into ‘character making’ as a medium, and ‘outsiders’ simply tend to make good artists.

Finally, on the point of sexuality—I think it is relevant to this project that Len and Jason Paulson, who did a majority of the make up and styling on these photographs, are partners. I think that is a cog in the dynamics of this project that people are not generally aware of when they are introduced to this work. One blogger, reviewing the work, wrote that it was just another example of the dirty old man looking at the young girl posing. Just more of the male gaze. I found this hilarious. Definitely not for the first time, but maybe for the first time since people have been allowed to be open about their sexuality, we have been openly documenting an archetypal love—the queen for the queer and vice versa. I wonder how many collaborations of this kind have gone down to history in silence. The sexual dynamics of our team also allows the character I make of myself freedom from just that male gaze. In might be that the absence of a sexualized air, a familial environment (if you will) allows me to fully integrate my character as a woman—self possessed—sexual yet not objectified—a character—yet one who writes her own dialog. When I asked Len about this question, he said that gay men get this work better; they are looking for the nuances of meaning in a dialog that uses their language, in short, they are not distracted by the tits. I don’t know if that is really true, but there is so much of this work that speaks to queer identity and the many suits (of armor perhaps) that women wear. Someone once said that Monroe flirted with the camera, Len and I might just be pulling a ‘deadpan camp’ right back at the camera— itself known for its pregnant silences and contrived blankness.

jessie mann interview, part 4

part four of Seven Questions for Jessie Mann...

Subjectify: In "Self Possessed," I get the feeling that some of the roles you take on are role-models for you in the type of self conscious subject you want to be, but some of the characters are ones that you want to liberate or give some agency to. . .i.e. reach back and hand them the cable release for once… Are there other muses out there that you feel are kin to what you are doing with subjectivity? Who inspires you?

Jessie Mann: You are right that nearly all of the subjects (who were once or are actually real people) are people that I admire in some way—a few of the characters I ‘do’ made work themselves that I depend on theoretically with this work, the giants on whose shoulders I stand, such as Kahlo, Warhol, Beuys, and Sherman. And again, you are correct in that I very often want to go back and bring some information or awareness to the scene; to augment the collective understanding of a character—fictional or real. Often it’s too late to give it to the character themselves—but I can honor them and in a way, as you say, liberate them. I can use the freedom of speech, which I am granted as a postmodern character, to give their freestanding abstract a new agency.

There are so many inspiring characters out there which we have yet to do—and I am very excited about what’s on the list. Len and I have taken about 9 months off, so the list is overflowing right now, though on the bright side I have been able to grow my hair out. Recently, I have been interested in Jonathan Meese as a contemporary artist who is making part of his artistic practice the act of turning himself into a character. Also Francesca Woodman, whom I have shied away from, because of the tragedy in it—for a long time I only wanted to do characters that seemed self possessed as opposed to tragic—but I am coming to reconsider her work and whether or not it—the work itself, is tragic, or if it wasn’t more of a repository for her faith and hope in the power of the image and the life of the mirror self. We last did Dali and I got a real kick out of it, I have been wanting to do him for such a long time—he made such a fabulous character of himself—he was so outlandish—I really wanted to try that suit on, and there were so many fun gender issues to address.

Are there muses out there that I think took to their role as subject self-consciously?—tons. Are there muses out there that have examined the subjectivity unique to the perspective of their abstracted character and the ways in which that subjectivity challenges the normal understanding of self? Not that many. I think, to pick up the Woodman point, had she lived, she might have gotten to a point wherein she expressly autonomized the mirror self she was creating (Perhaps that was what she was attempting with the suicide?). Also, Sherman’s clown pictures I think very much reference the specific experience of mask wearing—there is a tragedy to them or at least something unsettling—as if she is pointing out there is something behind it all which we are still not seeing—the sadness under the painted smile. Though, to contrast, the mask is not speaking for itself of itself, just as her abstracted girls did not address the camera, but were captured in action. So, perhaps the prostheses works are the most in sync with this discussion, as they addressed directly the creation of a near separate self which the viewer then imbued with character and a certain autonomy.

jessie mann interview, part 3

part three of Seven Questions for Jessie Mann. photos above: The Damaged Child (1984) by Sally Mann and Untitled Plate 88 (2005) by Len Prince.

Subjectify: Many people have been famous for being subjects or muses. Some have brought vulnerability, allure, oddity, tragedy, etc. to the role. But you are one of relatively few people who have taken the reins of your subjecthood, and really approached it critically and consciously, again and again. Why do you think that is? (Even in pictures of you as a very small child, you project a very feisty sense of autonomy. Are those qualities part of what makes you poke at the classic role of the subject?)

Jessie Mann: I would like to break this question down into two parts—why I have approached my subjecthood critically and self consciously and why said self consciousness and autonomy has been a consistent part of my projected self even since childhood. I think the answers to these questions lie in my intellectual passion for the position I have found myself in and in my intrinsic character, which does seem to have a ‘feisty autonomy’; in short it breaks down into nurture and nature. Once I started working with Len and embraced this action as art, I began to think more deeply about the role of the subject in art and the nature of the self created therein. I began to think about my subjecthood, not just in terms of the issues of exploitation and the other facets of the social response to the subject—which had gotten me to the subject matter in the first place, but also in terms of the ontological nature of the abstracted character or subject. I began to research these ideas and as I honed in on writings about the anima in modern art I found myself returning to Jung. In his writings on the anima and the collective unconscious I found a scientific(!) inquiry into the spirit which moves through art—a discussion of the ways in which the unconscious informs us of our true nature through abstraction and creation. In my studies I went from Jung to Beuys, to Heidegger’s metaphysics, to Steiner, and Kandinsky. From there to Ken Wilber, Tarkovsky and quantum theory and back to Jung again— I was looking for some proof, I guess, that there was more to this action of giving to the camera than just the theoretical rebuke I was trying to make, or even the pleasure I derived from the action. I wanted to isolate that moment of spiritual exposure in art, and dissect it. It was this intellectual fascination with the quasi scientific function of the photograph on consciousness, self and identity which brought me to look so closely at the nature of the abstracted character. As such what I want the viewer to see in my expression is not someone looking into a lens but someone looking deeply past themselves.

When I read in Jung “there are present in every psyche forms which are unconscious but nonetheless active—living dispositions, ideas in the Platonic sense, that perform and continually influence our thoughts and feelings and actions” I understood it as the definition of that spirit which I knew could be exposed when I let myself function as a symbol itself. This is what is behind that anima, so often referenced, but so rarely explicated or specifically considered, in modern art. Rather than a negation of the self in art, or the assertion of self, I attempt to make the self, through abstraction, ubiquitous, in order to expose that selfless current which flows behind all artistic expression. As my research continued I studied the artists who also used themselves as a medium to create this effect, I studied those artists who, to again quote Barthes, used art and the abstract character to dissociate consciousness from identity. I would bring these folders of notes to shoots with Len, I was seriously like a Jehovah’s witness during this period. He would just roll his eyes at my youthful artistic zealotry and he would put aside the folder, and insist that we just make art for a little while (Being older and wiser he knew that being an artist is making art, not just understanding it). You know how college kids are. Nevertheless, this intellectual examination of subjecthood was played out in the photographs as my relationship with the camera deepened and my connection with the part I was playing became more informed. I think my quest to understand what it is I did and who I was, in its many stages and varying levels of abstraction, allowed me to bring self awareness and thereby self possession to the characters I manifested, not to mention passion.

But onto the second part of the question—even before I had heard the word postmodern I interacted with the camera self-awarely. When I began to examine who I am and what I do—personally in addition to theoretically, as we all must, I had to consider this strange feeling of connection which I have with the camera, which I have felt for as long as I can remember. I think it is this deep connection, built from years and years of consideration and practice, which has led me on such an intense pursuit of knowledge regarding the process of being in art and engaging the mythic. This connection itself is not intellectual—it seems to be rooted in some child like belief in the magic of make believe which makes this work and my discussions of it anything but dispassionately ironic. In the end I don’t know (I am not in a position to determine it) whether I developed an intense relationship with art and the camera because of my exposure to them. For the sake of total honesty I should admit that I did graduate preschool with an honorary degree in dress up. Whatever it is, all I know is that when I am working in front of the camera I feel like I am closest to truth; like I am looking past myself to the abstract (and potentially creatively generative) idea that I will become. As a child I think I knew, what I briefly forgot during my rebellion, that to spark the imagination is to make the world more rich with possibility.

jessie mann interview: part 2

here's part two of Seven Questions for Jessie Mann. the photo above is of Jessie at 18, by Katy Grannan, scanned from the February 2000 issue of Harper's Bazaar.

Subjectify: I was so interested to find out that in addition to posing for your mother (and before the work you’re now doing with Len Prince in “Self Possessed”), you also modeled for photographers Justine Kurland and Katy Grannan. Did you always know that you would continue modeling and musehood? Did you ever rebel against it?

Jessie Mann: Even while I was working with Justine, and after I had posed for Katy—I still didn’t recognize that what I was doing was an artistic or creative action. It was just something I did, like breathing. I had no real sense of starting it, neither did I think of it as something I could stop. When Katy came to my boarding school for shoots, or when Justine and I would drive around the Virginia countryside talking about images and scouting locations, I did not think of myself as a creating agent. Ironically, it was through regarding the public response to mom’s photographs that I began to consider the role of the muse, not through the action of “musing.” As I digested the manner in which the public automatically dismissed our [my siblings and my] possible collaboration and enjoyment in the creative process which culminated in the Immediate Family series, I started to focus on the sad fact that this is a pervasive response in regard to the subject of art, specifically when that subject matter is a woman. It wasn’t until late in my conversations with Justine about the role of the subject and my frustration with the assumption of exploitation (while working in front of the camera) that it dawned on me that what I doing, was related. Honestly, it came to me very slowly that I could use this thing, this love I had for a connection with the camera, to tell the story about the very position, of being in front of the lens. A story often distorted or overlooked entirely. It is embarrassing how slow it all was when I think about it now. I think I came to understand the importance of the position of the subject while I worked with Katy and Justine but it wasn’t until I was already started on "Self Possessed" that I realized the full artistic agency of the muse. This delayed response was, you are correct in your question, because I did rebel.

Never did I rebel against the act of being a muse or subject. But I did rebel against the idea of ‘the muse’ as it is currently established and I also rebelled against being an artist in general. Of course it is a challenge to be the artist child of a famous artist, but what really put me off admitting to being an artist was that I had this sense that I had to do something concretely good in the world, and I couldn’t see that the only true way to do that, was to do something you love. I thought I had to do something serious and hard.

When I met Len Prince, I blurted out this bundle of ideas about the subject as an active agent in art, about how the story, from Alice’s perspective, has yet to be written, about how it had to be done through the looking glass, how I thought I might have an abstract character capable of symbolic action… and Len said “I need a muse”. Of course, given that I was a self hating muse at this time, I was a little insulted that he thought that was all I had in mind. It was only once we worked together, once we built our first set together, and gathered props like giddy playmates, only once we had made our first image together as collaborators, that I realized what a powerful thing it was—to muse. What a gift it was to have found a partner who defined muse in a way that made me love the word. I realized that I had been practicing an artistic craft all these years. When it finally dawned on me that art could make arguments better than words, when I realized that art could transmit knowledge and awareness, as much as any science—when I saw how elegantly art could code for both subjectivity and consciousness—I was like a convert. At that point, there I was, with my medium right under my nose, and a story to tell, and I reconciled with it all. With my rebellion over and already preliminarily engaged with Len on the zygote of Self Possessed, I found myself a zealot. I began to bring a new determination and purpose with me to the shoot, because I knew then that there was a way to express the ideas about self and subjectivity that I had so long considered, and I was lucky enough to have been granted the experience necessary to know how to do it. And then, there I was with yet another wonderful artist to explore ideas with. It was at that moment, knee deep in doing it, that I knew that this is what I would do forever and it was what I was meant to do.

I console myself that I am not the only one who was a little slow to realize the Aristotelian phrase “You are what you do everyday.”