Posted by Mr. Robot | January 4th, 2017 | No responses
So there is a story behind this. Trust me, I am not some guy going around asking for women to pose with pancakes and bottles of beer. I mean I would if models were willing, but no, there was a serious agenda here that needed to be fulfilled. I was going to be a part of this art show called Pancakes and Booze, and while I had heard about it from certain circles, I didn’t know much about it. My work was going to be showcased, and I also was going to have one of those active photo booths with some sort of theme ( I can’t remember what theme ). The art show does its thing when they promote the event, but artists are encouraged to promote themselves on their own, and while I have some experience in marketing, I took initiative to make use of my photography talents.
My goal was to promote myself as an artist and a photographer. Part of doing that for me is to bring attention to myself using some form of image campaign. So as luck would have it, a meet up group in Arlington, Texas had a traveling model doing some nude work. Something about being in a room full of dudes with one naked girl just seems kind of weird to me, but in this case, I had the bright idea to cook up some pancakes and buy some beers for my campaign.
I feel like an asshole because I dont remember the model’s name, but I was able to email her the day before asking her about the pancakes and the beer for the photoshoot. To which she had no trepidation to it. I think she was a lover of pancakes, and most of all, the beer. What an unusual request, but she went for it, and off I went to the studio to get myself some nudey photos to begin my personal self promotion.
I want to say that despite the room full of men wondering why I had a bunch of pancakes with me, the shots turned out as I expected. I mean, yeah, these guys mostly wanted this model to just pose all naked so they could go back to the editing room and gawk at the curves via photoshop at 100% zoom, but not me! I had a mission here. I finished the shots, departed from the studio as the other photographers looked at me in disbelief. Then I went home to begin making my selections for the web poster campaigns I was going to make.
It took me a few hours and I ended up creating a poster for the event with the headline, Pancakes and Booze featuring the Art of Izumi Helling. I published this poster all over social media, and the strangest thing happened. The local artists who were also going to attend this show as participants emailed me in droves. I must have had hundreds of direct messages asking to be put on the web flyer campaign. This was my promotion for me, not anyone else, but I had time on my hands, so I started to add the names of the artists to the flyer as well. Each time I thought I was finished, more and more artists would email me, and then ask me to place their names in the flyer. I mean it was fucking ridiculous, and the damn flyer ceased to be for me, and started looking like some bitch ass rave flyer. I wasn’t complaining, I had fun putting it together, but each time I thought I was finished, these flyers would be published online by the artists, and more artists instead of asking, they would start complaining on why they weren’t on the flyer. It was weird. There were artists complaining about the context of the flyer too, and they didn’t want to be associated with the images what so ever. It caused some sort of social media distortion that the actual promoters for the show started to see some blowback.
Remember when I thought this was just self promotion, and every artist was responsible for their own campaigns? Well it turns out that some of these guys were piggy backing off of my campaign, which was fine, but others began to complain about the “disgusting nature” of the official promotion for the event. Now wait a minute! Official promotion? There was no official promotion by the event, this was mine! My own little pancake and booze idea with some model who I dont remember her name, and the effort I put in on making these damn pancakes, shooting the pictures, editing them, and adding the list of fucktards who wanted to be on the flyer which was meant for me and nobody else!
Why do I sound upset? It is a naked girl using the pancakes and booze to catch attention and that was the point. I meant no harm, and I didn’t want the negative attention, or so I didn’t expect this kind of negative attention. It didn’t take long for the promoters to contact me and ask me to pull my campaign down on the account that it garnered more attention than the promotion they were doing, and people were upset, so they could not have that. Of course this led me to just dropping from the show altogether because I felt that I was dealing with a bunch of cry babies, so I took my pancakes and went home. Funny enough that I come across these photos, and I am reminded of why I dont do these types of shows anymore. I mean sure, I would like to, they seem like fun. I have done a show or two in the past before, but art has turned into a party full of pussies who need safe places in order to not feel offended. Maybe I am wrong, and it is nothing like that now, but I was pretty upset at that moment when asked to pull down my promotion.
That was the past, and every morning when I have my pancakes for breakfast, I can’t help but be reminded of this moment in my life. I mean what kind of a weird fucker takes pictures of a naked woman with pancakes and beer?
Hello friend.
