Accetto volentieri l'invito del fotografo Dan Skinner a parlarvi della sua nuova fatica letteraria: Memorizing You!
I romanzi young adult sono ormai un fenomeno letterario che sta faticosamente risollevando i destini (e le casse) degli editori, vediamo se anche il genere young gay adult avrà lo stesso successo.
Su Youtube trovate il trailer del libro:
E su DeviantArt le motivazioni che hanno spinto il fotografo a cimentarsi nella scrittura:
I'd already been in the photography business for a number of years shooting covers for "regular" hetero romance covers when I had my epiphany (ten years ago now) to shoot gay book covers and make them as acceptable and mainstream as the others. It was a big risk and I was told by many people, especially people who advised me financially, that it might not be a profitable thing to do, and could quite possibly, ruin my reputation. But I was tired of seeing the proliferation of covers featuring a man and woman, the cologne and perfume ads featuring a man and a woman... every ad under the sun - only featuring a man and a woman, and knowing that only one side of life was being spoon fed to us by the media as the acceptable aspiration and ideal. In fact, it made me angry and crazy, and determined to do something about it. We were here... didn't anyone see us?!!
I had several things working against me. The m/m genre was a fledgling and coming into its own, but television and the entertainment industry were slowly allowing us into their vision as folks who existed right along with them, and I knew the flux and flow of our literature was going to eventually change. Will and Grace helped that. Brokeback Mountain helped that. So I had hope and crossed my fingers that I made a good choice as well as a conscientious one. Along with that, I had to find guys daring enough to pose with each other in photos mimicking the same love and adoration as was seen in every Harlequin cover since time immemorial.. They had to embrace and kiss and portray romance.. between two people of the same gender. So finding the guys was going to be a chore... and finding guys in the Bible belt of the country, the Midwest, was going to be even tougher. But I did.
I began shooting and squeaking out a living on the book covers. But the books were still a spattering few, and not highlighted anywhere with reviews or coverage that got a lot of notice. So I began cautiously posting the photos in galleries at Deviantart.. where artists had a bit more liberal minds. There, the European magazines found me and I got a lot of playtime in fashion mags catering to gay lifestyles. And I became one of the first artists at Deviantart to break the same sex photo feature of the day. That, in my estimation, was historical. But with the attention, also, came the haters. I had to deal with that everyday. But once that barrier was broken more and more artists felt inclined to post their artwork and photos of homosexual love. We were making strides toward that artistic acceptability. Or, the mainstream world...
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