Dirty Afterglow...

Well, quite the weekend, I must say. I'll discuss various details over the next few days, but I did want to at least log an initial report about The Dirty Show and such. Hard to know where to begin, so I guess I'll start with my images. These are the two selected to hang in the show -- the top one featuring Nemesis and Rob, the bottom featuring Teddie and her bruised knee. They hung the pieces in opposite corners of the gallery room, and they seemed to be getting some good attention from what I could tell. Neither piece had sold by the time we left Saturday, but the show was also open Sunday, and will be open the 14th and the 17th, so there's still plenty of time. Sold about a dozen of the 30 pieces I'd brought for the museum store when we left, so maybe a few more will move. Not a lot of the pieces in the show had the orange "sold" dots on them, but there were a number of theories floating around about that. Some said the museum store might be taking away from the show sales, others felt that the more serious buyers would probably attend Sunday afternoon, when there wouldn't be the crowd and noise distracting from the work itself. As Brooks Jenson remarks, the last place he will go if he wants to look at art is an exhibit opening party.

Overall, the quality of the work in the show was as good or better than the September Dirty 7.5 event, although there were a couple of things I noticed that I found a bit odd. One was the trend of a LOT of the painted and illustrated pieces having faces depicted in a style similar to the Br@tz dolls, with maybe a bit of the old Keane paintings thrown in. Another, which I was an unwitting part of, was I noticed a number of pieces composed similarly to my Whip photo, with a background subject seen through the legs of a foreground subject. Now, given the "dom/sub" nature of a lot of the images, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, and maybe I was a bit more sensitive to the resemblance than most.

I'm told that the work is a lot more polished than it was when the show started 8 years ago. I wonder if that's a reflection on the show gaining prestige, or more on the "state of the art" and the increasing mainstream acceptance of erotic and fetish art which is permitting more artists to stray into this territory? For photographers, maybe it's a reflection on the improvements in technology, the privacy that digital affords, and the falling cost of good quality equipment.

On to the name-dropping... Had the pleasure of meeting and talking with a number of outstanding photographers, including Johnny Flamethrower, Chip Willis, James M. Graham, and Lochai, as well as having the chance to catch up with folks I've met before. Also caught up with a few models I'd worked with, one or two I hope to work with, and chatted with a few random attendees including a few who were eyeing my pieces from the show. The hall was packed to the point where they were only letting people in when other people left, and they raised the entry price $5 for those without advance tickets. I'd say the folks running the Dirty Show will really clean up this time...