Ryan James Caruthers: Tryouts

Yes. I know. I've been quiet. No words since December!

Oops.

Ryan James Caruthers: From the Tryouts series

It's June 13th, and as much as I would like to talk about what happened yesterday - I can't. The shooting in Orlando has left me speechless, unable to articulate what I am really thinking, my fears, my anger, my sadness. It's a weirdly numbing mass of thoughts racing through my head, and thus I guess it will be some time until I will hopefully be able to share something on here.

But: It's Monday! And in the past few months I really got into Youtube and the wonderful perkiness of the people on there, and if I learned anything from them, it's to be cheerful, somehow. Let's be cheerful today, yeah? And I've got a thing to be cheerful about: For the first time in a while I am genuinely, genuinely excited about a photography project.

This is quite a big thing, you guys. Because another thing that happened over the last few months is that I decided not to pursue a career in photography, or at least 'not in photography alone'. And one of the reasons for that (and for the awful quietude on here) is that I got increasingly uninterested in, and to some point disgusted by the photography around.

And then this happened. (Of all places, I found it on Buzzfeed! Ssshhhh.) This is Ryan James Caruthers' project Tryouts, and it's eff-ing beautiful. The colours, the angles have a tranquility to them, lending the project a quality both ethereal and very, very real. The projects cuts right down to the bones and tendons of a young man not quite fitting in, a story we've heard and seen so often, and which yet attracts the eye to wander over the hapless, exposed body. It's sweaty and dirty without leaving a mess.

There's a sense of Paolo Ventura's haunting, staged scenes in Caruthers' images, in the red cheeks, the pale skin, the body floating in the swimming pool. But Tryouts doesn't share Ventura's twisted nostalgia, it feels very recent, very now. It is another argument in the discussion of masculinity, gender, sexuality and athletics (the connection of these is scarily demonstrated by everything going on around the Euro 2016 football tournament), and it's an argument which is just, honestly, very nice to look at.

Ryan James Caruthers: from the Tryouts series

So yay! Photography! Exciting! That's my thought for Monday. What a weird thing to come back to this blog with. Sorry for rambling on, and throwing all my thoughts at you pretty much unfiltered. But I just really wanted to share this with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as you do.

The Photograph: Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Nureyev in La Bayadère, Palais Garnier 1974.
Image by André Chino.

The image shows Rudolf Nureyev, the dancer, the lover, the bon viveur: A lone bright figure on a dark Paris stage, his costume as radiant as his face. The performance that night is La Bayadère, Marius Petipa's romantic and exotic classic. 

Having only recently discovered the vast and omnifarious world of ballet for myself - don't worry, I'd rather watch than try the steps myself - I am drawn into the tales behind the perfect little pliés. And, oh my, is the name Rudolf Nureyev rich with stories. Take this image: It's one of those blissful moments in which life imitates (or should I say: is preceded by) art.

Nureyev certainly was the shining figure he presents in the picture. In his androgyny and intensity he quickly became a blazing star once he had escaped the bonds of the Soviet Union. Julie Kavanagh and Joan Acocella describe in detail how he, in his love for tights and self-presentation, set new standards for male ballet dancing.

But there's more to this image than, well, a pretty confident guy in dazzling white tights on a black stage. I was thrilled to learn that the scene depicted is La Bayadère's The Kingdom of the Shades, an opium-driven, hypnotic hallucination of a ballet. Arlene Croce of The New Yorker once outlined its substance beautifully:

"The subject of the Kingdom of the Shades is not really death, although everyone in it except for the hero is dead. It's Elysian bliss, and its subject is eternity ... [it is] a poem about dancing and memory and time."

The scene's theme echoes hauntingly in Nureyevs life. If his life, his world weren't created by hallucinatory drugs, they certainly were shaped by excess, by numerous lovers hidden in the shadows, by a relentless pursuit of fame. And in retrospect one can feel time pressing upon Nureyev - he must have felt it himself, dancing up into his 40s, unwilling to leave the limelight, half-joking about his "old galoshes". The stage, the dancing kept him alive as long as they could, as if to Nureyev death never really mattered - only the eternity in which his name, his work would be remembered. In 1992, shortly before his AIDS death, he, sick and struggling, staged his last ballet on a Paris stage: La Bayadère. 

This is the third installment of 'The Photograph', a series of pictures that I love, find remarkable or important, and which I will present on this blog on a non-regular basis.