I’ve been contemplating a new piece recently. A new way of working, really, something that breaks from what I currently do as a photographer or writer. Big changes are always scary, and this is certainly true for changes to one’s artistic process. The future is an uncharted territory, and it’s always unclear what you will find if you head down a new path. Perhaps it will be a new vista, perhaps ruin.

Speaking of “ruin” in the context of an art project smacks of hyperbole, of course—it may feel like disaster is lurking but, realistically, artistic failure means only the loss of time and, perhaps, money. Still, I can’t help thinking about the ways that the creation of art can affect one’s life, a sort of quantum effect where the observation intrudes upon the observed. And this brings to mind Robert Rauschenberg.

One of Rauschenberg’s most famous and controversial pieces is “Erased de Kooning Drawing.” De Kooning, of course, was one of the most celebrated Abstract Expressionists, and Rauschenberg was a particular fan of his. As the story goes, Rauschenberg was interested in finding ways to make art that didn’t involve traditional mark-making and had hit upon the idea of erasure as a technique. But he was unsatisfied with erasing his own works. In this interview on Artforum, he says:

I was trying to figure out a way to bring drawing into the all-whites. I kept making drawings myself and erasing them, and that just looked like an erased Rauschenberg. It was nothing. So I figured out that it had to begin as art. So I thought “It’s got to be a de Kooning.”

“Erased de Kooning Drawing” has gone on to become a significant work in itself, and people have praised it for how it pushes the boundary of the medium, decried it for removing what would have been an important de Kooning piece from the world. I’ve always seen the art of it as being in the act of its creation, which is to say: the act of destroying the original de Kooning piece. The object that’s left, which hangs today at SFMOMA, is really a pointer to something more like a performance. In erasing de Kooning’s drawing, Rauschenberg was destroying something that he valued in order to make something else.

The thing that marvels me most right now is the same apprehension I’m having with my own work: the unknown future. Some art—and Rauschenberg’s is a prime example—changes the world irrecoverably just in the act of creating it. And though “Erased de Kooning Drawing” ended up being a success, there’s no way that Rauschenberg could have known that before he started. Even leaving aside whatever the financial outcome of the piece may have been, or whether it was eventually accepted into the canon of “great art,” it would have been possible for Rauschenberg to know before he started scraping away at the paper that he would be satisfied with the result when he finished. And if he hadn’t produced something that at least he felt was worthwhile, then the act of destruction would have been meaningless. It would, in fact, have taken something valuable out of the world and given nothing back.

To be able to take that leap, to be assured enough of the validity of your ideas to be able to do something like that: is that confidence? Arrogance? How does a person come by it? Was it something cultivated, something nurtured, or is it something you have to be born with? Is this something I could find for myself? And should I? Am I prepared to deal with the consequences if I should fail?

Of course, I find myself rushing to point out that I have no thoughts to destroy something like a de Kooning—what I stand to lose is merely personal. Though, at that, if the damage would be limited to my own emotional state, this doesn’t make it so terribly less daunting to me.

Too, I know that I have taken risks before. So much of my work is about family, about my relationship to the people in my life, and by taking private moments and making them public, I am inevitably and irrevocably altering the moment itself, our memories of the moment, and my relationship with the people in the images. I have always known this, and yet the necessity of showing my story has trumped my responsibility to the other people who populate that story.

I know I’m being cagey here. I’m not ready to go public with this new idea yet. Maybe something will come of it, or maybe I will decide that it’s not worth the risk. I may even decide against it for other reasons—I never have difficulty coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t do something. Still, I can’t help thinking about Rauschenberg. Is the making of art inherently arrogant and narcissistic? Or is this question merely my own anxiety rearing its head again?

I wish I had some answers for you. I’ll be thinking about it. Good luck, everybody. I hope the coming week is fruitful for you.

Twitter brought me a Jezebel article this afternoon called “Damn, You’re Not Reading Any Books by White Men This Year? That’s So Freakin Brave and Cool”, by Jia Tolentino. The gist of it is that reading more diversely is good, even necessary, but that writing thinkpieces about doing so is just another way of othering underrepresented writers and making diversity about yourself. It’s an interesting perspective, and based on who I saw retweeting the link it’s certainly one that seems to resonate with a lot of minority writers. Still, it doesn’t really sit right with me.

Now, I imagine that the easiest, quickest negative response would be something along the lines of “Can’t win for trying.” And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t briefly go there myself, especially given the goals I recently set myself. The thing is, though, in her larger point about majority engagement with capital-D diversity, I agree with Tolentino. “If only it were possible to do something good and rewarding without publicly prioritizing what effect that act has on you,” she says. Moreover, like so often seems to happen with corporate diversity initiatives, there’s a real danger of people assuming that simply having some sort of diversity policy is the same as solving the actual problem. It reduces normalizing diversity in literature to something like a fad—here today, forgotten tomorrow.

Still, as much as I agree with Tolentino on one level, I’m much more ambivalent on another. The problem for me, I think, is summed up in the last few lines of the piece:

If you were a queer writer, or a woman of color writer, would you want someone to read you because they thought they were doing something dutiful about power structures? Or because they gravitated to you, not out of any sense that you would teach them something about diversity that they could then write about in a year-end essay—but that they just read you because you were good?

How similar does that sound to some of the arguments against affirmative action, ones I especially tend to hear from more privileged minority groups? “I don’t want to feel like I got a job just because someone was trying to fill a quota.” But just as with the affirmative action, it presents a bit of a false dilemma. The choice here isn’t necessarily between being read because of your talent and being read because of your gender or color or sexuality. In the real world, the choice can often be between being read because of a diversity mission and not being read at all.

In a perfect world, women writers, writers of color, queer writers would rise to the top and gain a following on the strength of their writing in much the same way that we imagine straight white men do. But we are just not at that point yet. If diverse writers are seeing any uptick in readership and stature in the industry, if there is any push right now toward a more inclusive mainstream, it’s only because the need to actively seek out diverse books is being called out so loudly, and that that call is being repeated widely enough to gain momentum.

Of course it would be great for underrepresented writers and artists to be sought out solely on the basis of their talent. But at this point, without an active effort to bring those writers more attention (and therefore more sales, the only signal with any meaning to the publishers and retailers who determine what actually gets onto shelves) then it’s difficult to imagine the status quo ever changing.

I’ve been a little obsessed with Jenny Lewis lately.

I should back up a bit. A while ago I was out for one of my morning runs, listening to one of the one of the “workout” stations on Spotify. Most of the songs that came on were fairly terrible, but the rhythms were all propulsive enough to keep me chugging along. Some awful pop nonsense faded out, leaving nothing but the sound of my footfalls and labored breathing for a moment. Then a few chiming guitar notes rang out of the silence, a quick tempo drum beat kicked in, and there was Jenny Lewis singing about how she’s bad news.

I don’t know if it’s a great song. But there’s something about the way she sings it that makes me believe. “C’mere!” she shouts to her lover, her voice forceful but wild, maybe desperate. The guitar growls in answer and the drums stutter in syncopation like someone tripping over their own feet. I’m drawn in, and I can’t help but wonder: did you do this? Did this happen?

A few months after that morning run, a Facebook friend recommended her solo album, The Voyager. “I can’t stop listening to it,” my friend said. I promptly added the album to my “To Investigate” playlist and forgot about it until last month, and now I can’t stop listening to it either. Throughout the ten songs, Lewis seems to be struggling with regret and disillusionment, the pain of seeing what your life is as you head into middle age, and how it’s different from what you might have thought.

She sings:

There’s only one difference between you and me
When I look at myself, all I can see:
I’m just another lady without a baby.

And:

I used to think you could save me,
I’ve been wandering lately
Heard she’s having your baby,
And everything’s so amazing

And:

How could I resist her,
I had longed for a big sister
And I wanted to kiss her,
But I hadn’t done that

And, again, I want to know: When you wrote this, were you remembering or imagining? Are you singing in your voice, or someone else’s?

But why? Why do I care? Do the emotions mean more if they are drawn from her own life? And, if so, how does that work?

Almost all of my own work—and certainly the work that has resonated the most with viewers—is about myself. I try to reach for something other people can relate to, but I do this by showing things that are particular to me. And, thinking over my favorite work from other photographers, much of it is drawn from highly personal experiences. Judith Fox’s I Still Do. Andi Schreiber’s Pretty, Please. Duane Michals’s The House I Once Called Home. Rebecca Norris Webb’s My Dakota.

And yet, as much as I seem to value “honesty” and “authenticity” in music and photography, the same isn’t true for, say, books or movies. Of course there are autobiographical examples of each that I love, but I don’t love them more than my favorite works of fiction. Michael Ende never literally visited Fantastica, and yet that doesn’t diminish my feeling of wonder when I read The Neverending Story. Rick Blaine never had a club in Morocco, but the end of Casablanca still puts a lump in my throat. In fact, one of the things I have always said I most admire about novelists is their ability to bring things into being that never existed before, through the sheer force of their imaginations. If they can get me to feel something, that’s real, whether or not the events of their stories actually happened.

Why doesn’t this hold for songs or pictures, then? Mind you, there are fictions in lyrics and images that I enjoy, but the ones that stick with me the most, that I keep coming back to over and over, all of them come from life. Photographs need not be straight or documentary, and lyrics need not be literal, but the driving impulses behind my favorites of each are nearly always emotions and experiences that the artist really lived.

Is it a question of immediacy? A movie is populated with people you know are actors, and words on a page need you to interpret them, to picture them in your head. But when a singer says “I,” it’s hard to hear a persona in that, at least the first few times you hear it. And when you look at a photograph, it’s hard to get past the notion that what’s in the image was really in front of the camera, that the photographer was really there in the room. In either case, there’s room for fiction and lies, and interesting work can and has been made that plays on the audience’s ingenuousness, their expectation of honesty. But then the experience becomes intellectual instead of visceral. There’s value in that, too, but it’s never what I return to more than once or twice.

So then, where does that leave me with Jenny Lewis and her songs? I don’t know if she made them up or not. If I were to find out one way or another, would I care about them more or less? I’m not sure. Authenticity and honesty in art certainly don’t require literal truth. I’m reminded of a bit of advice that photographer James Luckett gave his students about writing an artist statement:

You have no duty to the facts. Your loyalty is to the honesty of your ideas, emotions, dreams, desires and needs; what Werner Herzog calls the ecstatic truth. That is your goal.

If what you’ve felt is real and you’ve put that into your work, then the work is honest, whether or not it depicts actual events. I like that idea, and I certainly can’t argue against it as advice for an artist. As part of the audience, though, I still haven’t made up my mind. But I suppose if the beat is propulsive enough, I’ll keep running.

"A photograph should be more interesting than the subject and transcend its obviousness."

That's a quotation from photographer Jeffrey Ladd which has been making the rounds in photoland, due in part to the fact that Jörg Colberg highlighted it in a blog post a few weeks ago. It's also something that a reviewer repeated to me (somewhat exasperatedly) during my session with him at the Medium Festival of Photography this past weekend.

I met with twelve people during the portfolio reviews, ranging from museum curators to creative agents to bloggers to gallery owners. I also got the chance to show my photographs to a few dozen others via the open portfolio walk and the Open Show presentations (the latter of which my friend Jonas was kind enough to invite me to take part in). The responses I got ranged from tepid to breathless. Some people found my pictures cute; others found them poignant. One reviewer complimented me on the quietness of the images; another said I needed to give him a reason to care. Several told me that I needed to make the work more universal, while others talked about how relatable the emotions and experiences were that I was trying to convey. One told me that I should study more; another said that I don't need to keep aspiring to the level of the photographers I admire, because I'm already there.

I admit, that last one was (and is) a bit difficult for me to swallow. I don't think of myself as a "real" artist, nor do I think of my work as anything special. Getting back to the quotation I led with, it's always been difficult for me to judge whether or not the pictures I make (or the things I write, or anything I do or think) are obvious, because everything I do is obvious to me. In general, I'm always surprised when anyone wants to talk to me or cares what I say or do. I almost never feel like I belong, or that I or the things I do will be important to anyone besides me.

(I can feel my in-laws rushing to say something nice about me here. I appreciate the sentiment, but I just want to make it clear that I'm not fishing for compliments. How I feel about myself and my work is almost entirely a product of my own insecurities, and is not at all rational. As proof: I crave validation, but receiving it makes me profoundly uncomfortable.)

During the second half of the festival I got to see some amazing lectures from a diverse group of photographers, all of them working in profoundly different ways toward different goals and exploring different themes and subjects. Chris Engman and Soo Kim are doing utterly brilliant work exploring the very nature of photography. Matt Black, Virginia Beahan, and Jess T. Dugan are engaging with important social and political issues in deeply humanist ways. And on the one hand I was genuinely excited to see their work, both as an audience member and in taking away new perspectives as an aspiring artist. But, me being me, it's hard not to look at what they do and be overwhelmed; by comparison, my own photographs and the themes I'm dealing with feel small and obvious and trifling. These are people who are dealing with complex questions about art and the medium of photography, or exploring critical real-world issues like gender, sexuality, the representation of marginalized communities, environmental sustainability, water use, poverty, economic inequality, and international migration. The only things I'm looking at are my relatively comfortable life and the inside of my own mind.

And yet.

Not everyone who saw my photographs connected with what they saw, but some did, and did so very strongly. I tend to concentrate more on my failures than my successes, and so the fact that some people find my pictures boring or perhaps even self-indulgent makes me question what I'm doing. But the truth is that I'm aiming at a very specific set of emotions and experiences with my photographs, and even if those emotions and experiences might be recognizable, they're not ones that are going to matter to everybody. And that's OK, because I'm not really talking to those people. Moreover, I don't have to be talking to them. I always recognize the legitimacy of specificity in other people's work; I should be willing to do the same with mine.

When people ask me about my motivations in creating my work—as many people did over the course of the four-day festival—I always say that the artists who have most moved me are the ones in whose work I have seen something of myself. Something that I can relate to, that lets me know that someone else is going through the same things I'm going through, and thinking about the same things that I'm thinking about. That those artists, through their work, make me feel a connection to something bigger than myself, and help me feel a little less alone, a little less afraid. I say that this is what I want to do with my own photographs and writing. I think it's time to really live up to that statement, to own it. And that means accepting that I have a right to my own voice, and to believe in what I'm saying.

I still have a lot to learn—I always will—and it will always be important to me to maintain a sense of humility. I don't think I will ever stop being nervous or self-conscious about my work. But I'm coming around to the idea that this stuff of mine has its place in the world, and I'm cautiously optimistic about the future.

The other day I had an utterly fascinating—to me, anyway—conversation with one of my co-workers. A group of us were talking about our childhood music lessons, and how basically all of us quit relatively quickly. I mentioned how I really wish I'd stuck with it, and that if I had more time I'd love to take piano lessons. I found it interesting that I was the only one who had those regrets to any degree, but I was particularly struck by one guy's attitude. "Who cares?" he said. "I mean, whatever—music, art, who really gives a shit? All that stuff just seems like a way to kill time." Later in the same conversation he said he'd like to learn a new language but it turned out that it was mainly due to how that could expand his career possibilities. Indeed, everything that he expressed interest in had to do with new ways to make money or otherwise materially improve his lifestyle, and being presented with a viewpoint so totally different from mine was, if nothing else, something that made me pause. Intellectually, I've known that there are people out there who think like this guy, but most of the people I know personally are like me in that they take it for granted that at least some aspects of culture and the arts have value—it's a little jarring to see the opposite opinion up close.

Now, at this point it would be easy for me to go on a tirade about how awful it is that people think art is a waste of time, or how our societal values or educational system are out of whack, or bemoan the direction in which we're headed as a civilization. But I think that it would be a mistake to draw too large a conclusion from one oddball co-worker, aside from which, I'm sure that people like this have always existed.

And, you know, I can't even really fault this guy too much for valuing things he can get paid for. After all, he enjoys what he does for a living, and thinks that it's important. I believe in hard work and being part of a team, and so I give my best effort to be good at what I do and to get the job done, but when you come right down to it, the only thing I get out of my career is money. So, really, who's the more mercenary between the two of us?

No, the thing that I keep coming back to as I think about this conversation is that I can't really disagree fundamentally that it's all just a way to kill time.

Don't get me wrong, I love art. I love creating it and I love being part of the audience. There aren't many things I value more highly or would rather spend my life doing. But when you come down to it, isn't everything we do just a way of passing the time, distracting ourselves from the fact that we're going to die some day? Perhaps we like to think we are creating a legacy, or doing some great work, but consider Shelley's Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" the king proclaimed, intending his statue to last forever. And yet, "Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away."

We talk about art in terms of expression and communication, of evoked emotions and shared experience. But what is any of that if not a way of making the time we have here a little more bearable? And, in the end, isn't that really the value of things like art and culture and entertainment? We have only a short time in the world, and for so many of us that time is full of injustice and hardship, loneliness, sadness, toil, or, if nothing else, at least inanity. If by making something and putting it out there for people to see, we can help someone feel a little less alone, make their time seem a little more fulfilling or even just fun, it's hard to for me to see what else could be a better use of your time.

(In case it's not clear from the title, I'm going to talk about pornography and sex work in this post. As such, it may not be appropriate for all readers or all reading environments.)

Recently, a friend of mine from high school posted a link to his Facebook feed to an essay from a Duke University freshman talking about her experience as a pornographic actress, and the negative reaction she received when her classmates found out about it. I bring this up because in the piece, the woman defends her sex work on feminist grounds, and this touches on some issues I've been struggling with for the past few years.

Now, before I say anything else, I just want to make it clear that it is not my intention here to say that women should or shouldn't do porn, that porn should or shouldn't exist, or, in general, that my thoughts on the matter ought to be important to anyone but myself. I recognize that while being a man does not disqualify me from holding opinions about feminist issues, it is not my place to say what feminism ought to mean to a woman—nor to anyone else, for that matter. All I'm trying to do here is ask some questions, to try to help me identify my own biases and figure out my own beliefs.

In the course of her article, the Duke student in question expressed a number of opinions, but the passage that has stuck in my mind is this one:

One of the facts Internet commenters have gotten very wrong is accusing me of participating in "rape fantasy porn." This is a horrifying accusation, but I absolutely understand where people are coming from. The site in question that I shot for is a rough sex website. That is how I perceived it at the time. I was not coerced or harmed in any way during the filming of the scene. Everything I did was consensual. I also stand by and defend the right of adult performers to engage in rough sex porn.

Everyone has their kinks and we should not shame anyone for enjoying something that is perfectly legal and consensual for all parties involved.

Again, just to be clear, it's not my intention to criticize this woman for either her sex work or the thoughts she expressed in her writing. This passage just happens to highlight a particular dichotomy within feminist thinking that I've been trying to reconcile, and that is basically the dichotomy between radical feminism and sex-positive feminism and how the two camps view pornography—and, by extension, many other aspects of female sexuality and the female image.

Broadly speaking—and this is likely broad to the point of inutility—radical feminism tends to see pornography as exploitative and oppressive to women, whereas sex-positive feminism tends to see it as potentially empowering, and to see attempts to stigmatize or criminalize pornography and sex work as being oppressive to women. The problem for me in trying to reconcile these two schools of thought is that both offer convincing arguments. Radical feminists argue that by explicitly depicting women as sex objects, pornography and sex work marginalize women, and reinforce and encourage patriarchal attitudes. Sex-positive feminists argue that stigmatizing pornography and sex work reinforces Victorian double-standards about female vs. male sexuality, and that women should be allowed to make their own choices about their sexuality and careers. And both of those arguments make sense to me.

It seems to me that ultimately the difference between the two camps boils down to the degree to which a person ought to be responsible for how his or her actions are perceived by other people.

In passage I quoted above, the woman talks about "rough sex porn." For those of you who are unclear what that might mean, "rough sex" pornography typically depicts sex between a physically aggressive man and a passive or submissive woman. The world of pornography is wide and varied, so there are, of course, plenty of other configurations, but by and large, this is what we're talking about. It's distinct from "rape fantasy porn" in that it's usually clear that the acts depicted are mutually consensual—though in some cases it's more vague—but nevertheless the woman takes a lot of what might otherwise be called abuse: she might be slapped, choked, gagged, spit on, physically restrained, or verbally abused, among other things. Little to no attention is paid to the woman's sexual satisfaction; she is typically only there to be used by the man for his own satisfaction.

Now, whether or not it is degrading for a woman to want to be spit on or choked during sex is not something I feel comfortable passing judgment on. It's not the sort of thing that I would want to participate in, but all I can really say is that it's none of my business what two consenting adults do in private. And insofar as the actors in a porn film are consenting adults, I agree that they should be able to choose to engage in those activities.

Where it becomes problematic for me is that pornography is not merely an act between the people being filmed, but also a product that will be used by other people, and one that depicts human sexuality and relationships in a particular way. Regardless of what the real relationship between the actors may be, there is a power dynamic being portrayed in the film, and that is going to be seen and understood by the viewers. Verbal abuse, physical violence, and spitting are actions that exist in the context of our society at large. They have existing connotations. All of those things have happened to me in my life (in a non-sexual context) and they were all manifestations of prejudice and exercises of power. I'm not saying that it is impossible for these actions to have other meanings for some people, but I think that it's naive to think that they will not be interpreted as degrading and abusive to most viewers, or, indeed, that a desire to degrade and abuse women is not the primary attraction to this type of pornography. (I have no data to support this assertion, and I recognize that I may simply be projecting my own biases, but I don't believe that's the case.) From the perspective of radical feminism, this type of pornography is bad because it encourages men to objectify and abuse women. In fact, its very existence may work to normalize that behavior—in essence saying, "See? You're not weird for wanting this."

But from the perspective of sex-positive feminism, the radical feminist argument is essentially victim-blaming. It is not a woman's responsibility to act in such a way that men will treat her (and other women) as a person, it is a man's responsibility to treat a woman like a person no matter how she looks, dresses, or expresses her sexuality. By putting that burden on the sex worker, all that's really being accomplished is taking more freedom away from women.

As far as I can tell, neither side is wrong. It is a man's responsibility to treat women like people, no matter what. But from a practical standpoint, that kind of porn does encourage anti-woman behavior.

Further complicating things is the fact that in the passage above, the woman draws a distinction between "rough sex porn," which is legal and consensual, and "rape fantasy porn," which is horrifying. But if we are truly to claim that pornography shouldn't be blamed for the attitudes of the men who watch it, and that everyone has their kinks, then why shouldn't "rape fantasies" be OK? Conversely, if we are to say that it is bad to fantasize about raping a woman, then why should it be acceptable to fantasize about slapping a woman and spitting on her?

It's difficult for me to separate my own biases—and, admittedly, my own squeamishness about the alt sex scene—from legitimate concerns about the objectification of women. I am deeply uncomfortable with pornography in general, and particularly with porn that depicts this sort of treatment, but I also can't deny that the sex-positive argument has some legitimate points, which leaves me with an unreconcilable feeling of ambivalence.

As I said, I'm here to have my assumptions challenged and my biases exposed, so if you find a flaw in my reasoning, please leave a comment and let me know. I can't promise that I will come away agreeing with you completely, but I will do my very best to keep an open mind and weigh your argument without prejudgment.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and one of my favorites is On Taking Pictures. For those of you who don't follow it, On Taking Pictures is a weekly podcast in which hosts Bill Wadman and Jeffery Saddoris—to use their own words—discuss the art, the science, and sometimes the philosophy of making images. They cover photo-related news, there's the occasional bit of gear talk, but what I really love about this podcast is the conversational tone. Listening to these guys talk about photography reminds me of the conversations I used to have back in college with Juliette's theater friends, an experience I miss.

One of the recent episodes included an exchange that got me to thinking a lot about my own struggles with making art, which I've excerpted below. To give a little background, Bill had recently been to an exhibition of photographs by Zoe Leonard, at which he found himself frustrated by what he perceived to be a lack of quality or substance to the photographs, as well as by what he considered to be a very pretentious artist's statement. (A somewhat frequent refrain on the show is Bill's dislike of what he terms "art-school pretense.")

BW: To your average person, this is crap! But to somebody this isn't crap, and I'm sure her pictures are very well regarded, I'm sure Zoe Leonard makes a good amount of money taking the pictures she takes. And more power to you. I don't get it. Now, somebody could say, well you know what? Maybe your work is far too pedestrian and too derivative and too boring and too commercial in a "lower C" sense.

JS: But you're also not waxing poetic about the significance of that.

BW: Exactly. I'm not writing labels that are 250 words long about how my photographs are objects of objects and the objectification…

JS: Yeah. "I'm creating a new movement, pedantic objectivism."

BW: Exactly. You just spent everyone's artistic pretense.

The conversation spoke to some of the frustrations I've had with the art world, both as a member of the audience and as someone who's trying to do something with my own work, and I couldn't help but want to respond. So I ended up writing a somewhat embarrassingly lengthy and rambling email to Bill and Jeffery, which they were very gracious about. But once I had gotten the whole thing written out, I realized that I wanted to broaden the conversation and include the people in my own life. So, with Bill and Jefferey's blessing, I've taken what I wrote to them and adapted it for this blog. I hope you'll bear with me while I meander.

Now, I think it's useful here to distinguish between "art" and "the art world," the latter being a community of gallerists, curators, and critics, and to some extent the artists who are supported by that community—largely the kind of MFA-holding elites that get Bill so hot under the collar. From both my own observations and from what I've read, contemporary art is kind of all over the place, encompassing a huge range of styles and themes and techniques, but the art world has more or less decided on a particular sort of conceptual and intellectual approach to creating and understanding art that it will embrace, and it rejects everything else.

The art world tends to reject beauty and sentimentality—in fact, art that engages directly with most emotions seems to be something that the art world has difficulty with. Art that deals with or springs from sociopolitical concepts tends to do well, especially if it's shocking or ugly. Especially in photography, work that is exalted tends to be project-based and conceptually driven, rather than "grown" in a more organic way.

All of this has been tough for me, since the focus of my own photography is finding and engaging with the narratives of my own family life and the places I live and have lived. I know what it is that I'm trying to do with my work and although I know I haven't gotten to where I want to go just yet, I think I'm good at what I do, photographically speaking. The stuff I show at portfolio reviews and local crit groups tends to get good reactions, but when it comes to submissions I deal with a lot of rejection. I've had gallerists tell me that my stuff is good but that they probably couldn't sell it. I've had art competitions and photo magazines reject my work with comments that the pictures are well done but aren't really "fine art."

So on the one hand, I often find myself shaking my head at what does get embraced by the art world. I often find myself being able to appreciate contemporary art on an intellectual level—saying to myself, "OK, I see what you were trying to do here"—but a lot of it utterly fails to move me. I think I feel some of the same frustrations that Bill does, in that way.

But when I step back and think about it, I can't really see why intellectualism is necessarily an invalid way of approaching art. It frustrates me that there doesn't seem to be room for other kinds of work in the art world, but, really, what's wrong with this kind of conceptually driven art?

Back in April, a writer acquaintance of mine—Daniel Abraham—posted the following quotation to his blog with the instructions to discuss it: "Inaccessibility in a work of art is either a failure of craft or a statement of contempt." The comment thread produced some interesting conversation, I thought. My response was that that presented a false dichotomy—while inaccessibility could be a mark of failure or contempt, it could also be due to the fact that not everyone is equipped to hear what you are trying to say. From the standpoint of literature, the point of a book is the experience one gets from reading it, and some experiences that are worth having cannot be had if the book is easy to understand. The act of working to understand the book is in itself an integral part of the experience. That doesn't mean that this is the only valuable kind of experience you can or should get from a book, but there's room for lots of different kinds of books and lots of different kinds of experiences, and accessibility is not a virtue unto itself, only a means to an end.

And, of course, the reverse is also true: difficulty and opacity are also not virtues unto themselves, and just because a book is an easy read doesn't mean that it can't be a profoundly valuable experience. And it's also certainly true that some work is simply pretentious or contemptuous and has no substance, and can't provide a worthwhile experience no matter how hard you work at it.

What this says to me is that art need not be universal. That some experiences—valid, even important experiences—are simply not going to be accessible to every potential audience member. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Or rather, if it's bad, it's bad in a way that's tragic for the artist rather than condemnatory of him. But just because some people—or even most people—won't get it, doesn't mean that a work of art is bad or shouldn't have been made, or that the approach used in creating it is invalid, or that the people who do get it are wrong for celebrating it.

Bringing this back to contemporary photography, I think that the problem with the art world is not that "art-school pretense" is a bad thing, or that 250-word artist statements are ruining art. I think it must be the case that some contemporary art is a load of bullshit, but I think it must also be the case that some of it is merely designed to elicit reactions that I either miss or that I don't value, and that has to be OK. The problem isn't with conceptual roots or an intellect-only approach or "pedantic objectivism," or any of those things in and of themselves, but rather the problem is that so many other valid approaches to art are shunned.

What I haven't really settled on for myself is whether the kind of egalitarian, inclusive approach to understanding art that I seem to be in favor of has any limits, and, if so, what those limits are. Am I really saying that anything goes when it comes to art? I don't know, maybe. I don't like the idea of art that's mean or intentionally condescending. I have a lot of trouble with "appropriation art." And I haven't really settled for myself whether art has to be about something, whether it has to be trying to say something. I don't really like the idea of saying that it does, but whenever I run into an artist who claims he's not trying to say anything—I find this happens most often with painters, for some reason—my first reaction is always to wonder why he's bothering to make anything, then.

And, of course, almost all of the art that has really spoken to me, especially recently, has all been about something. Judith Fox's book about her husband's Alzheimer's—which is about Alzheimer's, of course, but is really about aging and loss and enduring love. Elizabeth Fleming, whose take on parenthood has been a big inspiration for me, and whose recent work about family and place and loss I really enjoyed. Deborah Parkin, who makes pictures about memory and childhood and depression. Even Alec Soth, who I've always seen as making work about manhood and loneliness and, in some ways, immaturity.

As always, I'm interested to know what other people think about all of this. Does art have to be about something? I was particularly interested in Bill and Jefferey's thoughts because they both enjoy portraiture a lot—Bill is, in fact, a professional portrait and editorial photographer—and that's a genre I've always had trouble connecting with. I tend to feel about portraiture the same way I feel about ballet—I appreciate the technique, but it rarely moves me. When it does really work for me it tends to be portraiture that's more project-based and conceptual, in which case what it's "about" is more obvious.

The OTP guys were kind enough to respond on the show, so if you're interested you can have a listen. There aren't clean answers to these questions, but in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—it's important, I think, to ask them and think about them. If you have any thoughts on any of it, I'd love to hear them.

So have you heard about this #safetytipsforladies hashtag? For those of you who haven't, it's basically a whole bunch of ironic and increasingly absurd "tips" for how not to be raped. For example: "Tell your attacker you're all out of rape and offer him a package of Ramen Noodles instead" and "Most rapes happen inside or outside. Avoid these places". If you haven't already done so, it's worth a bit of your time to go check it out because 1.) they're very funny, and, 2.) they're quite on the nose.

It's profoundly backwards that we spend so much effort in our society telling girls how not to get raped rather than telling boys how not to rape. As writer Zerlina Maxwell told Sean Hannity when she went on his show a few weeks ago:

"I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape."

That the responses to Maxwell's statements included rape threats is telling, if unfortunately not so surprising.

I get why talking about this stuff makes people feel defensive. Most men have never raped anyone, nor will they, and are rightfully horrified by the thought it it. And so it's natural to think of rape as the kind of thing that only crazy, monstrous, aberrant people do. It's easy to look at the boys who were convicted in the Steubenville trial and say "That is not normal behavior. Those boys are terrible people, and it's right that they're going to jail, but they're outliers." But as Maxwell, herself, pointed out in a follow-up piece she wrote: "The young men in Steubenville aren’t monsters.  They did something monstrous and criminal but perhaps we should begin to stop repeating the notion that “criminals” are the ones raping 1 in 5 women."

And the thing is, it's simply not the case that a woman can always prevent her own rape. Because rape happens even to women who are sober, dressed modestly, armed, and in "safe" neighborhoods. Maxwell is absolutely right that stopping rape is something that has to start with teaching boys how to see girls and women as people. Lots of parents already do this, and that's great. If you're such a parent, good on you. Sadly, many aren't.

Now, as you may recall, I'm in the process of investigating my own attitudes and trying to examine if or how I'm sexist. And here's where things become tricky for me. Far be it from me to want to sound like Sean Hannity, but while I don't think that rape is solely the province of obvious monsters and criminals, I do think that no matter how good a job we do at raising our sons and eliminating rape culture, there will always be some rapists, just as there will always be murderers and thieves. And even if at some point in the future we are able to live in a society that doesn't have a pervasive thread of blaming victims and excusing rapists, we don't live in that society now. As a practical matter, it seems like a reasonable thing to both insist that the ultimate responsibility for preventing rape lies with men, while also trying to give my daughter some tools to help recognize and avoid dangerous situations.

Several years ago, when I was on vacation in a foreign country, my rental car was broken into and several bags were stolen, including the ones that held my wife's and my passports. Now, clearly the blame for this crime lay entirely with the criminals who committed it, and that's not mitigated by the fact that we left our bags in the back seat of an unattended car, in full view of anyone who might have walked by. Ever since then, though, I've been careful to only leave things in my car if they are out of sight (in the glove compartment or trunk) or to simply take them with me, and no one has stolen anything out of my car since.

Now, let me be clear: my car getting burglarized is not at all the same thing as rape. It was not even remotely as traumatic, nor did anyone blame me for what happened. And the precautions I now take are both much simpler and far more effective than the kinds of things women are told to do to avoid being raped. It's not the same.

Furthermore, I am doing everything I know how to do to instill in both of my children the values and empathy that would keep them from being thieves or rapists, or any other sort of criminal, for that matter.

I still can't help feeling that it's not enough for me to raise good kids. And that even though preventing rape is not something that ought to be my daughter's responsibility, and that it may not even be possible, and that putting any of that burden on her might be sexist, I can't help but feel like I want to tip the odds as much in her favor as I reasonably can. And if that means telling her not to get falling-down drunk (really, something I would rather neither of my children did, for reasons that have nothing to do with rape), or to keep an eye on her drinks, or not to go out alone at night in sketchy parts of town, I have trouble feeling like that's wrong of me. And, for that matter, I don't know why I wouldn't tell my son the same things.

As a parent, I feel like my job is to teach my children how to be good people, and also to give them the skills to survive in a difficult and dangerous world. Neither is more important than the other, and both are obviously a lot broader than just preventing rape. And I think that it's possible to do these things without being sexist, and without putting the responsibility or blame on victims. But, as always, I may be missing something, so if you can see it, let me know.

A little context, first. Slate ran an article last week about dress codes. Also, a few days ago, a friend of mine reblogged this Tumblr post, which is, as things are usually defined, NSFW. (Whether or not such images ought to be considered safe for the workplace is a topic for another day.) These two items don't directly relate to one another, but both have to do with the concept of enforced modesty.

In case it is not clear from the title of this post, I do not support enforced modesty.

Here are some things that I believe that ought to be fairly non-controversial from a feminist standpoint:

• A woman is entitled to wear whatever she wants. There is some wiggle here with respect to the legality of public nudity, but at the very least, women ought to be allowed to be as clothed or unclothed as men are allowed to be.
  
• Regardless of what a woman is wearing, it is my obligation to be respectful and treat her like a human being in any and all interactions I have with her, not like a sex object.
• Regardless of what a woman is wearing, my actions are my own responsibility. As a man, I am, frankly, offended by the notion that men are incapable of controlling themselves around an unclothed woman.
  
• No one facet of a person's appearance or behavior can give a complete picture about that person, and it is very easy to be wrong when ascribing motivations to other people. Thus, no solid conclusions can be drawn about the amount of self-respect a particular woman has based solely on the way she dresses.

However, I also know that we live in a society that consistently broadcasts the message that the sole or most important qualities a woman has are her appearance and sexuality. You can see this in the kinds of stories we tell in our mass media. You can see it in the way advertising markets to both men and women. You can see it in the way we talk about our celebrities. You can see it in the kinds of articles that fill major women's magazines.

(For whatever reason, the publisher of Self magazine sent us a free copy last month. Flipping through it, it might as well be called "Your Only Purposes In Life Are to Be Pretty and Attract a Man" magazine. That it's actually called "Self" magazine was deeply troubling to me. I asked Juliette if we could please not keep magazines like that around the house when Eva is old enough to read or recognize what's going on in the pictures.)

Given how pervasive and powerful this message is, I think that most women who dress in certain particular styles are doing so in order to attract a certain type of male attention and, further, that the reason they are trying to attract that male attention is because they feel that beauty and sexuality are their most important qualities. This isn't based on any study that I've read. I don't have any numbers to back this up. It is, if we're being generous, an educated guess.

I'm very ambivalent about what this all means, though. In general, I don't treat a woman differently if she is dressed provocatively. I neither ogle nor chide. But I also don't really approve.

Of course, my approval is neither here nor there for most of the women of the world, and furthermore, I'd be way out of line for me to say anything on the matter. When it comes to my daughter, though, I'm not sure.

I wrote a piece last year about the mental struggle I have with this idea, and in responses online and off, I had women of many different sociopolitical viewpoints tell me that I should quit worrying about it, and that it's OK for me to set standards for both of my kids. Nevertheless, I worry both about the morality of telling a girl what she can wear and the practical effects of paying too much attention to her appearance.

What I've settled on—albeit uncomfortably—is that I will continue to tell my daughter that she's cute and pretty, but that I'll also tell her that she's smart, strong, funny, helpful, kind, honest, or any other adjective that applies. And that I can set reasonable standards for her dress that neither require her to wear a burqa but might, for example, require that her skirts cover her entire bottom, at least until she's an adult—once she goes off to college, if she wants to, say, go to a Pimps 'n Hoes Ball (that is actually a thing) then it'll be up to her to figure out what that means to her. And it'll be on me to make her know that she can make her own choices without changing my opinion of her.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable and non-sexist stance to take, to me. But I still can't help feeling like there's something wrong with a man telling a woman or girl how she can dress.

I've been thinking a lot over the past few days about what it means to be a good man, whether that is something I can legitimately call myself, and who gets to decide.

Juliette thinks I'm being ridiculous. "You're so good," she said to me, "and it's crazy that you're letting this get to you so much."

The "this" that she's referring to is that someone told me over the weekend that I'm sexist. It turned out that this person's opinion of me was based in large part (though perhaps not entirely) on a misunderstanding we'd had several years ago, one which was my fault. I apologized and tried to explain better, and as far as I know we've now reconciled and have agreed to let bygones be bygones. Still, it's been eating at me ever since.

A man protesting that he's not sexist after an accusation of such always sounds to me a lot like my son when we tell him that he's acting like he's tired—no matter how strenuous his objections, it's usually not long before he nods off. He's sincere and honest in his objection, but he just doesn't have the perspective to know. I don't believe that I'm sexist, and I do believe that I'm a good man. I don't know how to prove that to someone who claims I'm not, though, and I suspect that the reason it bothers me so much is because I worry that they're right.

I was raised by a single mother, who is one of the strongest and most hard-working people I've ever known, and who is, more than any other single person, responsible for who I am today. I'm the husband of an amazing and intelligent woman who, among other things, has more academic honors and advanced degrees than I'm likely to ever have. I'm the father of a daughter who I want to grow up to be an empowered and confident woman, who I never want to be kept from accomplishing something because of her gender. I'm also the father of a son who I want to grow up to be a respectful and fair-minded man. It's important to me that I live up to my responsibilities to them all.

I think about sexism a lot, both in the context of society at large and my own behaviors and attitudes. There are a lot of things about the treatment of women about which I am outraged and offended. I know for certain that I am not a pig—that if I am sexist, it is not obvious. But it doesn't have to be obvious. I find that I don't always agree with the conclusions of feminist analyses that I read, or that I come away with more questions than answers. I tell myself that being a man doesn't invalidate my perspective, that it's good to be balanced, that I do not believe in intellectual orthodoxy, or in limiting the rights of people to hold opinions or engage in discussions. But maybe I only think that because, as a man, I'm used to a certain privilege. Maybe I am, underneath a veneer of enlightened manhood, actually the kind of asshole that I want not to be.

So I'd like to take the opportunity to use this space to explore some of my attitudes and beliefs about women, feminism, and sexism. Over the next few weeks or months I'm going to take a look at the subtleties and details, the things that aren't obvious. I'll try to explain my point of view, and ask the questions that I can't resolve for myself. You can feel free to join in via the comments—ask your own questions, give your answers to mine, express your support, or tell me how and why I'm wrong. All I ask is that we keep it civil.

This might be a terrible idea, and I'm more than a little nervous about what I might find out about myself. But I think it's important for me to do this, because I want to be a good man, and if I'm not, I need to know.