Diagnosing Darkness
This series is still in early developmental stages. I've shot a little bit, thought a little bit, and am preparing to shoot a little more. Thematically I'm working with medical fetishism as a container for explorations of black history and intracultural black relationships. I'm defining "black" very loosely for the purposes of making this work. If you're visibly of colour and identify as connected to black communities, you're in.
Our history, (like everyone's) is often about relations with other groups, but my interest with this project is in looking at power dynamics among black folks. I'm drawing on my own experiences of ongoing medical misadventure, on media, history texts, pop culture and modern myth to make nightmare/wet dream images that will probably become more perverse, more layered and more disturbing as the project picks up speed. Loans and donations of medical paraphernalia, costumes, tools and locations are very much welcome, as are models of all genders, (adult) ages and body types.
This is a porn project, NOT a documentary about black peoples' difficulties with doctors, hospitals, etc.. Medical fetishism as opposed to medical activism, and that's the visual organizing principle, not the topic. Does a porn project need a topic? Maybe not, but I'm curious about how well it might work. As the series evolves it becomes creepier. There may come a time when the creepy quotient overwhelms the hotness, or that point may have been reached for some of my audience already. We'll see. Some pics from this project are far more about kink than content, some are more bent toward theme than toward showing skin. It varies.
The actual topic is how we as black people treat each other, particularly how we sometimes mistreat each other in situations where there are significant power imbalances. I know one can never discount the surrounding pressures of historic and present-day oppression on our decisions. I know everything has a context. Everyone in that context still bears personal responsibility for their actions, and I'm focusing on us in this work to foreground personal choice as a core element of compassionate behavior in black communities. How's that for an overambitious mandate to drive pictures of nekkid people?
I plan to direct profits from online sales of work from this series to a health-related charitable organization. If you're affiliated with a not-for-profit health group that doesn't mind dirty money, I'd love to hear from you.
