Mythos Photographic Series Released Online
Conversation and Controversy with Photographer Alan Miller by Alexis Carnegie, New York City, NY. October 2003
(PRWEB) October 17, 2003
New York City (PRWEB)– October 15, 2003 – Alexis Carnegie: Your new online gallery, MYTHOS (http://www. alanworks. net/alanworks_mythos. html (http://www. alanworks. net/alanworks_mythos. html)) captures a unique moment. Are you worried about the press or mass marketeers compressing your work into a sound bite? Since everything is corporate now, do you think that the sheer demand for new information, new music and new art, will place your work in the corporate package for consumption by the masses?
Alan Miller : That is a very good question. MYTHOS, which can be found on the www. alanworks. net website, already has received over 100,000 hits in three days without a word of press. The emails have been overwhelming. The Christian right has already condemned MYTHOS via emails since it's a naked man shot from a very interesting perspective. It's not a Robert Mapplethrope, but it is definitely an ALAN. I just completed the series last week and it's already receiving a great deal of attention.
Alexis Carnegie: This is a very dramatic time for American culture. I am aware of the time you place in the background research for your work. How much of the media do you use for your concepts and production ideas?
Alan Miller : You would be surprised. I do make a valiant attempt to watch the news and read the American press. Yet, there's so much mind-numbing codswollop distracting us, or should I say dividing us from the substance of any given event. I know "If it bleeds it leads" dictates the tenure of today's American reporting, but it seems to be a will-o'-the-wisp spin on everything that moves. This " ignis fatuus" reluctance to report without spin on the part of the American media gels minds and we lose the story of what 's happening behind the scenes. If you look at American media and British media when there's coverage of the same event, you'd think we were reading about two different worlds. Hence, through the internet, to receive a more accurate snap of world events; I click into the BBC.
Alexis Carnegie: Do you find having access to all this Information over the internet overwhelming?
Alan Miller : Oh no. I have always liked to research ideas or to aid factual profiles to the different projects that I'm working on. I get a kick out of looking things up and following l what I call brainwaves. These brainwaves connect on a global scale. So I read an editorial in Spain, or in Iceland which are saying the same things but coloured through the eyes of the writer, but it's the same feeling or conclusion drawn through this collective brainwave. The undercurrent of mankind is strong and can not be fooled by corporate demographical targeting. This is the aspect of the internet that I truly enjoy. As much as American media and government tries to control the flow of information, the sprit of thought can not be dissolved. And believe me, they are trying their best to spin the collective spirit to sleep.
Alexis Carnegie: Taking just a step back from your photographic works, I have read numerous articles about your political views. You seem to ebb and flow almost on a daily thunderbolt when it comes to the political climate here in America. How do you currently see the American political scene?
Alan Miller : First of all, that's a very general question, so I'll give a very general answer. In America, and I hate to paraphrase Bill O'Reilly since Bill paraphrases himself just fine, but he's right about a very definitive culture of hate that percolates just under the surface in American politics. The best example to date was the crap that Grey Davis dished out in California last month. Seven days left to Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign and out of the blue came the dirt. There was Davis in full misanthropic splendor, attacking the person and not the issues and looking innocently into the lens of the camera. Maria Shriver said it best referring to this mentality as "gutter journalism." But the end result challenges anyone who wants to get involved in politics at any level. I've seen the same crap at local and state levels. The American system has de-evolved into a disenfranchised model of whiney morons saying anything they wish, with the hopes that something will stick to discredit their opponent. The body politic of America is stewing in a very dangerous state of terminal inertia.
Alexis Carnegie: But if this is the case, then Americans must react as they always have and take it to the streets or on the airwaves.
Alan Miller : No. Not this time. You see, in the end, it's about control. It's no wonder that Americans are pouring money into their homes, or watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, or HGTV. These are the elements that are now creating real value since they reflect a very... "Real Control." At gallery openings or other public events that I attend the vast majority of people have had it with George W. Bush and his fear spinning. Most people think the Iraqi war was worth it, as I do. But now it's just another Vietnam regardless of how it's spun. So the talk traverses to wall colour, new flower beds and the latest haircut. It's not shallow talk but rather a "conversation of control." People are turning off their television sets to get away from the fear-spin and digging in the backyards and planting flowers. The collective of Americans brandish a grander level of intelligence than what our government may think they do. That's where the real hope for America lies at the moment. Not in medieval religious beliefs with idiots like Pat Robinson who advocated nuking the State Department to Jerry Falwell and his list of immoral persons "ACLU, feminists, gays, lesbians" who he stated was responsible for the 9/11 terrorist acts against America. It's the same medievalist mindset that's being played out in the United States and the middle-east today. An eye for an eye just creates alot of blind people. It's just time to stop the backward directions and embrace the future without the "hell over your shoulder" fear that's being pumped into us by the American media and the bully pulpits of American evangelical corporate christians at GOD Incorporated.
Alexis Carnegie: Has the political process affected the way you photograph?
Alan Miller : Not so much the political process but the cultural reaction to this, I know does. The sands are shifting around us and it's a very odd feeling for someone like me. Our cultural absolutes are in fact disintegrating in real time and real terms. This induced trauma of change I embrace, but this crumpled mess of Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has escalated into a world of disjointed headlines were Britney Spears and Saddam Hussein seem equally important. The process is just so fundamentally overwhelming that most Americans accept whatever they happen to be looking at that evening. And I wonder about the great sense of indifference that seems to be creeping into our culture. Yet I enjoy the questioning and the indifference since it sparks grand change, grand dialogue and deep fissures in the status quo and exposes myth of the American establishment.
Alexis Carnegie: Do you feel that since you are getting older, your age reflects a change of perspective?
Alan Miller : Ask me when I'm 65. I'm not that old, just old in experience. I've seen great changes in my life over the last two years, and yes, it's there I'm sure. Yet the push now is for publishing. I have four books which need to be completed and out the door as quickly as I can. But I have set up a taste of each book in my public galleries on www. alanworks. net. MYTHOS is about the transcendent image of a man. To look and react, and see as to feel, as to touch, as to taste. It about the elements of a man. The dispelling of guilt as to view the natural man. I keep returning to the pagan thought of freedom in expressed passion, in expressed joy of our human forms. To enjoy the sweat, the smells, the very joy of discovery anew. The ancients understood the effluvium of excess and that was one of the reasons that the early Christians so easily annihilated the pagan cultures. The pagans just didn't have the same hatred or weapons that the Christians had, but in all fairness it wasn't hatred but the knowledge that God was on the the side of the Christians according to the books of early Christian history. And whomever was left standing in pagan societies after the wars, died by the hand of diseases delivered by missionaries upon their arrival. This point was driven home whilst living in Hawaii. Suppering with local families and hearing true accounts their immediate descendants had with Europeans through the oral tradition of story telling. The Hawaiians were almost completely eradicated from their islands. It's quiet a story. Currently, there's a very substantial movement by the Hawaiians to bring back their heritage and secede from the United States. With the exception of the island of Oahu, I see that being realized in my lifetime. But getting back to the images of MYTHOS, MYTHOS is a non-political non-religious series of the celebration of the natural man, but at the same time, MYTHOS can not help but make a statement of it's own.
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For more information:
Contact: Alan Miller
Alanworks. net
1133 Broadway: Suite 706
New York, NY 10010
Media Relations 212-696-6583 or
E-mail alan@alanworks. net
For the members of the press, high resolution photographic works by Alan Miller are available for print and can be downloaded from the special photo-press link at: http://www. alanworks. net/presslink. html (http://www. alanworks. net/presslink. html)
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