Teenage Freak

Photography art from my teens

I was going through old files and folders and came across a bunch of mixed medium / photography-based artwork from my teens and cleaned them up a bit to share.

Before my work became more centered on erotic, male-focused imagery, I was deeply into horror, macabre, and dark gothic beauty. The gothic influence is still there now, but in my teens it leaned much heavier into decay, discomfort, and unease.

I had been painting and illustrating my entire childhood, but in my early teens I discovered photography and became completely obsessed with it. I was constantly dragging friends into impromptu photo shoots, experimenting without any real plan, just following whatever felt visually interesting.

Around that time, my grandparents showed me the scanner they had just bought for their computer, and my brain immediately started exploding with ideas. I began collecting old paper, flowers, leaves, fabrics, and random bits of garbage, then running over to their house to scan everything. I eventually figured out that if I scratched up empty CD cases and scanned them in the dark with the lid open, I could create my own digital textures to layer with my photography.

My grandpa was an artist, photographer, and oil painter, and he loved experimenting with new technology. Growing up without much money, I did not have access to that kind of equipment at home, so any time I was not at school or doing chaotic photo shoots with friends, I was usually at my grandparents’ house scanning drawings, photos, and whatever else I could find, then mixing, layering, warping, and painting it all on the computer.

That was really the beginning of my interest in digital and mixed media work.

I have always been drawn to dark, gothic, and horror imagery. By the time I was a teenager, I was already painting my face and randomly shaving off my eyebrows, so my grandparents were pretty chill about me coming over and disappearing into the computer room for hours or days while I obsessively made art.