This whole morning has given me a lot to think about and I think in the next few weeks, I will be removing (to the best of my ability) my fashion photography works from the Internet. I have minted four NFTs that will remain as my fashion work in order to preserve them on the blockchain but other than those images, I will remove my fashion work as best I can from the Internet: Tumblr, website, social media, etc. This action is something that I have been pondering for a long time - but this morning has just excellerated my decision.
Photography and creating photographs is my passion, my absolute reason for being. For over ten years I worked in the fashion space making images that I was proud of. I love to create surreal images that make people feel something - that when they look at them, they look at them for 3 seconds longer than the last image they consumed. As time marched on, however, it became apparent to me that the work and my lifestyle were not aligning. I've been searching and lost; looking for my next, non-fashion aesthetic for some time now. I want to keep creating images, but I do not want to get sued and I don't want to hurt people. I do not want to disgust people, give people eating disorders through my images, or make people resent themselves - these are all feelings that I've been told my work creates in certain people. So who wants to do that to another person? Not me. I think I will photograph landscapes because they can't be sexualized and as far as I know you can't hurt their feelings (but they can still be surreal).
I have basically 0 signed model releases for most of the work in my book. As such (and among other reasons), I'm deleting it. From my hard drive to the Internet, I'll work to erase those photos. See, I thought that those were my photos - but today I learned that they just might not be. It's a serious heartache to have put in that much work to create that much art, just to delete it. If I can't have it though, then the world can't have it either. It was a big mistake to not ask for a model releases but still, even if I had, it doesn't really matter. I don't want to give people bad feelings and make them uncomfortable. I just want the viewers of my work to find it unique and surreal. To get there, I'll admit that the images were slightly sexualized at times, but not for the sake of sexualization - I really hope that that was clear and that the work reflected that. From where I stand now, I'm not sure if it did.
It's your likeness, but I still believe that they are my photos (at least the copies that have lived on my hard drives for years). How do I know that they are mine in fact mine? Because I have every right and capacity to destroy them. Now I will burn them and nobody can stop me.
The NFTs will be the only fragments that remain.
I hope you accept this as some form of an apology. Goodbye.
