asp photos – Katlyn Lacoste (2014)

It seems a rite of passage for young artists: an over-enthusiastic, searching response to a query or a giddy, unedited experiment is published bereft of context and so begins the circling of wolves.

Those who limp away learn the necessity of reducing the truth of process–often counter-intuitive and confusing–to simple, easily digested soundbites.

Dismissing the messy trappings of Being for a precisely manicured media-digestible facade has always seemed inherently self-hating to me.

It’s great to make work, to release it into the world. It’s awesome to speak in tongues which disallow all misconstrual. Still what never fails to give me chills are creators who struggle not only to birth work but to shape the conversations and contexts surrounding the work, how the work is approached and understood.

I think Katlyn Lacoste is actually enacting this sort of meta-context shaping in her modeling work. Yes, I am probably biased as a result of this bad ass  missive against assholes who exploit the vulnerability of nude models she penned being my introduction to her work.

Also, her images make me vaguely uncomfortable. Not in any bad way, they just fuck with my notions of where the line between voyeurism, eroticism, sexuality, identity, pornography and art might lie.

It’s as if the image has the effect of someone standing too close to me in a loud over-crowded room whispering: fuck you, fuck your frames and double fuck your preconceived notions: I am perfectly imperfect as I am. This is not for you, about you, concerned with fuck all to do with you or will ever be concerned with fuck all to do about you. See me–really see me–or go right ahead and fuck off and die.