Dear Friend,
Those of you who have been subscribed to print club will also recognize that I made some new changes to print club! Most things have evolved, including the packaging, the logo, the culture card which includes both a film recommendation and playlist as well as a Cyanotype print ! I hope you enjoy and if you’re not signed up for print club yet you can upgrade your membership here!!
It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so I’m posting some photographs from my Paris Portfolio. This is Etienne, who is a friend of a friend that I photographed while visiting the city. Here are some pictures from September of that year where I created a sunflower still life to photograph with.
I wanted to take this month’s letter to tell you about some changes I’ve made since starting Pan’s Peony a few months ago. Recently, I created a separate Instagram account for my gay nude photographs, something I always resisted because I felt it was an admission of gay shame. But lately I’ve been seeing it differently. I think in many ways, the separation of my cutesy flower content from my gay nudes content has given me more space to express myself. Gay sexual life is its own universe and deserves to be treated with care, respect, and privacy. While I give myself the space to explore this form of horny gay self-expression I wanted to tell you about an experience I had with a viral video.
In the month of July I had my first truly VIRAL (absolutely diseased) video on social media. It was a short 10 second video of me casually eating an apple under a tree.
The on screen text reads,
“learn AI or get left behind”
Me getting left Behind
The video, which I made casually one afternoon, while at a residency in California called Salmon Creek Farm, has been viewed over 1 million times – enough to secure a spot on the Ellen Degeneres show if this were 2005. But it is not 2005 and the world has changed….thank god.
For anyone unfamiliar, an artist residency is a place where artists are invited to live and work for a period of time. Originally a commune in the 1970s, when communal living was all the rage in Northern California, Salmon Creek Farm is situated on 33 acres of property just three hours north of San Francisco, 20 minutes from the Mendocino coast. There, among the redwood trees, is a communal living property with individual structures for the residents.
In my last week of residency — I was there for two months — I walked the property creating videos of things I wanted to remember: Ray playing the violin to the canyon, drawing in the garden, taking a bath in an outdoor bathtub, Misa’s blue fingers, stained from indigo dye, and eating apples off the trees at sunset. I walked along the small walking paths and visited every structure on the property. Each one small, and simple but with huge personalities, constructed to suit individual needs and tastes. One called “River,” constructed with two floors and a small balcony. Another called “Moonlight” with big windows to watch the moon, which seemed to float on top of the hill. There was also “Dawn,” the main cabin where we gathered for Saturday movie nights, a series I curated, pieces of which I share with you every month.
Everything at Salmon Creek was handmade, unique, personal. It wasn’t always the highest quality — some of the structures had fallen apart — but the value of the personal touch within every detail, from the homemade plates to the piecemeal shelves made from reclaimed wood for food storage, was dripping with a kind of self-referential humanity which not only warmed but nourished any soul who happened to inhabit its small and cozy spaces.
The reaction to my silly little video, so strong it powered my little account to 1 million views, has surprised and overwhelmed me. But after 2 months at Salmon Creek, I’ve come to realize that personalized, handmade things are a necessity of life. They are imbued with the magic of personhood, like a childhood drawing which maintains a talismanic power so strong, parents have it framed or placed proudly on the refrigerator. And it is this soul-nourishing necessity of life which artificial intelligence struggles to possess and yet threatens to eradicate, the way greeting cards replaced handwritten notes.
This, to me, is what was always so exciting about the expression of sexuality. Each person’s sexual expression and tastes are different, and I’ve always found the gay community a welcoming place for self expression – if you know where to look. At least for me, as a long-time photographer of gay sexual life, I believe that protecting the space of sexual expression, leaving it free and open for people to explore, comes with the territory.
Pan’s Peony for me, is a place where I can express myself every month, and I hope, more than anything else, it will inspire you to do the same. Whether that’s going somewhere you can be naked in public, photographing your sexy friend jerking off, drawing a picture, writing your new lover a handwritten note, or simply taking a walk among the apple trees at sunset.
Whatever it is, it will, I am sure, bring you joy.
Have a sexy week,
x
Matthew