Outside it is spring, and I could spring right out the window, that's how painful I find this long, not-being-allowed-to-move-one's-limbs.
- Robert Walser, The Tanners
Expired film and a day with a friend from "someplace I've never heard of" who will only call me Balthazar by mistake. The beginning of saying goodbye to this place. We've made the best of it, my friend.
As some of you know, we are leaving our home in Madison, WI to move to Brooklyn in August. While we will miss our Midwest home, we are excited for a new coastal adventure. The landlocked Midwest is just no place for the sea obsessed.
While we're still here, I wanted to offer the lovely folks of the Midwest one last chance to book a shoot with me. If you live in the Madison - Milwaukee - Chicago area, this is for you. There aren't a lot of opportunities left so if you've considered it, you should get in touch so we can make this happen.
In early March I sneaked off to Los Angeles to shoot a woman who has inspired me for some time. She makes some of the most beautiful lingerie you will ever find under the label Le Sang Bleu. She is a treasure of femininity and a queen of sexuality.
Here are a few photos from my time with her that I hope make you feel the same things. Thank you so very much, Lauren.
The winter. This time of feeling like everything's stuck in place, like the clothes will never come off, like I have nothing good to say or write, like the time for moving will never come.
It's not quite over, yet, but I can hear the first quiet chords of what is to come now.
The ice came, but it did not last.
It's hard not to be charmed by the oh so lovely Bianca Stone. It took the most tremendous luck for this shoot to happen. I'm still charmed these few months later. She's a special human being with a lot of love. Thanks, Bianca.
“She slipped in through the side door lookin’ like a queen without a crown.”
Dear friends,
Before I send each letter and polaroid out I scan them. It's a way of hanging on while I let go. Occasionally I revisit them to remember what I wrote to someone, to blush at what I said, to revisit the feelings I was having as I wrote it. But I never share those letters here. I don't think I ever will. They feel like secrets that I want to cherish for now.
What I am sharing here are the smallest peeks, the tiniest whispers. You can see the envelope, but not the letter. You can see the polaroid and the title I've given it, but have no idea why it's called that or why I sent it to this particular person. That's all a secret.
Yours,
Balthazar
8 November 2012
27 December 2012
Think about What Dirty Secrets Are Hidden in These Memories
13 February 2013
Each Touch Holds Such Possibility
23 February 2013
The One Adjacent
It's been a while, I know. There is so much to post. Soon. Promise.
If you want to hear from me in a more personal way, let me write you a letter and send you a polaroid just for you...
May I write you a letter? A dirty letter (my favorite), a love letter, a letter full of advice, a letter filled with nonsense. Any letter you desire. Please let me write it. I will write it on the softest paper with my own unsteady hand. Along with your letter, you will also receive a carefully curated polaroid I've taken. This will be your very own, completely original Balthazar polaroid, signed and dated (see some of the polaroids I have sent in letters here). I ask just a small fee to help pay for the polaroid film, which is quite pricey. Curious about what to expect? Check out some responses to my project here.
I was called this once, a tender pervert, by a friend of mine. I see it as a calling, an aspiration. Tender pervert. Perhaps it's one for you, too (it should be).
Another friend of mine once told me, in reference to my work, that "it's like each pair of tits you see is the first you've ever seen." Again, an aspiration.
Thank you to each of you who have given me the opportunity to see you this way and to each of you who have appreciated my way of seeing. I feel quite blessed on this feast of St. Valentine.
"To the pure, all things are pure."
Subscribers will receive two beautiful photos per month through the mail. These will be prints of photos I have taken (but have kept secret!), and I will choose which ones to send you so that it will always be a surprise (I ask for your preferences so I can select the photos that will please you the most). Who doesn’t enjoy a naughty surprise? These prints will be approximately 5” x 7” and printed on professional quality archival paper, not any cheap stuff, so you can proudly display your prints if you choose (or just class up your underwear drawer).
"And then the girl appeared on the balcony
standing over the afternoon that was as much hers as her room with its unmade bed
where every man believed he had loved her once
before forgetfulness had set in."
-From "A Girl on the Balcony" by Juan Gelman
I knew who you were though I didn't know your name. I was leaning against a purple Mustang in a SoCal parking lot, and you were laughing with this "whoop-whoop" that went from mere aural landscape to precious in an instant. A Valley Bird call. I didn't know your friends or even why I was there. But these sorts of things happen to me in real life, these... events. I've hopped in any number of strange cars just because of a funny laugh or a song I liked, so I didn't think too much of it. I followed alongside your little pack of sweat and grapefruit-scented wolves, waiting to see what would happen. We entered a stadium and from the looks and sounds of things arena football or minor league baseball or maybe a demo derby. The particulars were muddy. It was warm and loud and I had that good California feeling: where everything is too nice to be real so nothing real can hurt me. You nodded toward the steps to the bleachers and we made our way up. I was embarrassed I didn't know your name. You made me very nervous all of a sudden, because I didn't seem to have the right punchlines to your jokes and grew red with your ribbing. I was so out of sorts, I went for broke and asked if you were hitting on me, figuring that I had a getaway at least. You looked exasperated and said, "yeah, I am!" I died from surprise and pleasure and shock and melted into your chocolate and peanut butter hair. You returned a gale-force intensity lighting up all the circuits inside me. I wanted to surf on the gold speck in your iris so far into you, to the very heart of your whoop-whoop. The primeval first sound. A mating call my DNA knew before I.
Text by SM Simões
"The kings of Tarshish and the Isles shall offer gifts, the kings of Arabia and Seba shall bring tribute."
The person standing apart in the corner of the room dances with all the dancers. He sees everything and because he sees, he experiences everything. When it comes down to it, it is just another feeling, and seeing or even remembering someone’s body is just as good as any actual contact. Thus when I see others dance, I dance too.
- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“...et contra diáboli insídias pugnatúros,
passiónis et resurrectiónis Fílii tui virtúte
ab originális culpæ labe nunc erípas...”
“Múniat te virtus Christi Salvatóris,
in cuius signum te óleo linímus salútis...”
“Deus, qui invisíbili poténtia
per sacramentórum signa mirábilem operáris efféctum...”
“ego te baptízo”
“Magnificat ánima mea Dóminum.
Et exsultávit spíritus meus:
in Deo, salutári meo.”
“Jesus please be my aeroplane
Fly me to heaven and ever again”
I shot some very expired Polaroid film yesterday. It's a roll of the dice. There's no controlling the results.
Random rules.
"All the great writers are like that: the beauty of their sentences, like the beauty of a woman one has not yet met, is unforeseeable [...] The real thing smacks of that fullness of genuine and unexpected ingredients, of the branch crammed with blue flowers dangling unexpectedly from the springtime hedge, which already looked unable to bear more blossom; whereas the purely formal replica of the real thing (one could say the same of every other feature of style) is full of vacancy and sameness, full of, that is, of what least resembles the real thing and, in the hands of an imitator, can pass for the real thing only in the minds of those who have never seen it in the words of the master."Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
My dear friend has set off to make a new home with her husband. I'm going to miss shooting her so damn much. I imagine that you'll miss seeing her. Here are some photos of her to keep you company until we can visit her.
