"Porn Hurts Everyone"

Driving 6000 miles in three weeks isn’t an incredibly easy trip, even when planned two years in advance. We slept in tents and spent 70% of the time in the cab of the oversized truck we borrowed from fellow traveler Ed Pecis (James’s Dad, who resides in Weed, California). Regardless, we were always smiling and had one of the best adventures of our lives. I guess this project was a selfish exploration and introduction to a continent I love so dearly but didn’t really know. Before leaving I knew I wanted to find something to concentrate on and document – Christianity was one and the other was the bonding father and son, Ed and James, were taking on after the death of Ed’s father a year previously. Subtly touching on both, by way of it being there all the time, the photos took a course of their own due to the organic approach we took to the adventure.
The trip is about freedom in an isolated America. The idea of summer breaks, drinking beers, diving off rocks by small towns was everything I had hoped for. I got to meet a lot of different kids at campsites, riverbanks and in fairs from California to Idaho. Without using any form of itinerary other than a rough direction and what Ed recommended, anything discovered along the way seemed to be a bonus and intrigued me even more. The feeling of luck when meeting an interesting group of kids or random preacher who just happened to be there at the same time was second to none. Serendipity was a word thrown around a lot. The Christian element isn’t obvious in the work but it was constantly there, not always visual. In a way everything reverted to the fear of God and almost everything was labeled Christian, from all the bands in the Boise state fair to the 'Porn Hurts Everyone' sign in the yard opposite an adult store in Newport, California. Completely observational and not at all critical, I realised the importance of belief and opinion in small towns and rural America. There are some influenced opinions in USA for sure, but the people I came across were inspiring and craved to know about us and from where we had come. Their lust for information outside of the United States was intense, I just hope they get to do what they dream of. We just did.

Article for AnOther Magazine online. If you can be arsed to read it again the link is....
http://www.anothermag.com/current/view/988/Porn_Hurts_Everyone
Follow it, innit, on McQ's Tumblr
http://www.m-c-q.com/

"Porn Hurts Everyone" exhibition to be confirmed...

Ryann Bosetti -You get it.

There was a night, near the end, when I had plucked one last wilted beer from the leaking old ice chest, and wandered over to a lone picnic table.  It was in the Eastern Oregon desert and we had decided to spend the night sleeping under the fiery starlight, in a field that felt like an ancient ritual ground, if you overlooked the RV park that had tastefully settled on it’s perimeter.

The sky was lavender and silver, all streaked out to-gether, those two, and O this ungodly warm wind was blowing the sun away, wrapping itself all over our road-seasoned skin, it felt holy in the strangest sense.  I felt like my soul was going to shrapnel itself out of it’s shell, so I left the boys at the fire and made my way through the brown grass to this Table.  It looked exactly like an altar, to me.  I laid down on it and let the previous two weeks fill up my casing, really let them flood the space, and as I did this I looked up and there was the moon, hanging a few inches from my nose, had appeared as though summoned.  It was the most benevolent moon I’d ever lain under, it felt like all the strong and true parts of life in one moonrise.  It shepherded me through my processing of topics like being in love with all 3 of my motley-crew camping troupe members, reflecting on the baby coyote voice that was pealing in and out in the smoky air, wondering if I ever actually needed to put on a clean pair of jeans again, these smelled liked campfire and gas station coffee and boys and the ocean, and teenage hearts at the river in Nampa.  This, along with the warm stout I had half-finished, inspired a song (undoubtedly a feat of composition) which I decided to perform for my all-loving moon.  She did not judge, as to be expected, and I swung my heels happily the whole time.  That night I dreamed of a world-sized water park, where each of us had our own tidal wave and the wave never broke.

We finished our expedition the next day and it fractured each of our hearts, just a few cracks each, nothing deadly but we felt it like kittens when the milk runs out.  For a few weeks we were buoyant souls, free to point on a map and just GO, no rules except never run out of whiskey and maybe have something in mind for dinner before you get there.  Beautiful kids making out in parking lots and wandering on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere became our answer to everything, our living examples of perfection, a league of adolescent Buddhas, and we followed them for hours with our eyes and feet, feeling grateful and like we wanted to learn everything we could from them before they went home to their invisible parents.

This was the Niall O’Brien-led road expedition into the great small-town American young-wonderlands.  Alexander McQueen had hired Niall to shoot their collection as he saw fit, in this setting, (my job was to communicate with the teenagers) and so we rode in this pickup truck for days and days and we found ourselves falling into a very beautiful crevice in which time stops, all light is gold-hued and bees buzz extra loud.  The picnic table was my resting place so many times, and thank god somehow this characteristically strange truth worked it’s way into the photo-tale.

Niall leaves melted minds and hearts in his wake, his reverence for his subject is unrivaled, his hands and heart are blessed and gilded and we’ll only see more and more of his blessing, in our collective human future, and for this we can rest gratefully.


By Ryann Bosetti

Youre So Cool (True Romance)

 http://www.ryannbosetti.com/

Alexander McQueen - McQ - by Niall O'Brien

McQ - Alexander McQueen

First installment of the campaign I shot during the summer for McQ SS/11. Bag of film, a full tank of gas and a small group of good friends.

http://www.m-c-q.com/