|
|
|  |
 |
The Eye of a Clown: Slipknot Percussionist Shawn Crahan’s Surreal, Beautiful and Terrifying Views of the World
Posted By: BlackGoat
Date: 24 Oct 2008 |
|
Clown has signed on to do a weekly column with Headbanger's Blog where
he will show some of the photographs he's taken through the years and
give a description of them. The first of the columns is up now and you
can see it here
"We
couldn’t be more thrilled to launch our new weekly feature from
Slipknot percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan during our celebration of
the 20th anniversary of “Headbangers Ball.” As you may know, in
addition to beating on stuff for the Knot and playing drums for Dirty
Little Rabbits, Crahan is also a serious photographer.
When he’s
not writing or creating music, he’s frequently manipulating high-tech
cameras, Polaroid film, scanners and Photoshop to create images that
are both haunting and beautiful. Whether shooting portraits, candids,
still-lifes, landscapes or something else entirely, Crahan imbues his
shots with his own fears, frustrations and fascinations with sex, death
and dreams. Click “more” to view the first picture in our weekly series
from Crahan and read his fascinating, bizarre and sometimes disturbing
commentary.
It’s basically a self-portrait of an Iowa mask that I wore.
Self-portraits, for me, are one of the most fundamental and important
aspects of experimenting with my own art. I’ve never really liked the
way I look, so I’m always exploring myself. I’ve pretty much analyzed
my entire body through photography as a way of cutting myself open and
letting a lot things of my fears about myself out. It’s an experiment
that I’m doing to get a little bit healthier about the way I feel about
who I am.
myself.
This is one of my favorite self-portraits
because it was in a very dark place in my life. I had this black mask
made and I quite literally only wore it onstage twice for approximately
30 seconds. It just didn’t work. I don’t know if it was the latex or
the other materials in it or just the way it felt, but it just wasn’t
happening. I explored myself a lot with this particular mask during the
Iowa cycle in my basement.
To me, this is basically a really
good example of experimenting with oneself through a medium of choice �
this choice being photography. So, this is me confronting my fears and
it’s pretty heavy for me because it’s always in the mask, or it could
be outside of the mask. They really are the same thing.
As far
as the image goes, this is a digital photo. I manipulate cameras. I
more or less deconstruct them. For example, there’s a film plane in the
back of film cameras, and there are all kinds of mechanisms that keep
the film down. Well, I’ll take those out so the film’s floating and
nothing’s even. This particular picture was done with a lot of glass
and layers of things in front. But it’s all liquid and colors. And then
basically what I do with a lot of my art is I’ll pull it together after
the photo’s done.
There’s always a problem with the depth of
reality in photography, especially if you’re going to bring it out into
a touchable reality because you want to use inks and paper and they
make this vision on the screen look much different. So, I’ll pull these
images into something like Photoshop and make the blacks black and the
white white. And that’s how you get the reds to pop a little more.
After you take the photos, you touch them up. It’s revision. And
revision is something that’s well needed.
In fact, I’ve had this
photo since 2001 and I’ve revised it a dozen times. I even messed with
the brightness and contrast just a little bit yesterday before I sent
it just because I’m on a new laptop and the picture has been sitting in
a hard drive for a long time, and it’s got a mind of its own. When it
showed up yesterday, it had some things to say.Source: Slipknot-Metal.com
 2 |
| by sorrow @ 24 Oct 2008 11:07 am |
who would have thought shawn likes to take pictures of
things. |
10/28/2008 - Added "Dead Memories" to the video page.
09/24/2008 - Added "All Hope Is Gone" lyrics (sorry for the delay).
|
Re: whos ur favoritee slipknot member??
|
Today at 05:41:49 AM
|
|
Re: Slipknot, gone soft?
|
Today at 05:32:48 AM
|
|
Re: SlipKnot First
|
November 17, 2009, 05:13:18 AM
|
|
Re: whos ur favoritee slipknot member??
|
November 17, 2009, 05:03:00 AM
|
|
Re: Who's still a fan?
|
November 17, 2009, 05:01:41 AM
|
|
Re: Next music video
|
November 17, 2009, 05:00:04 AM
|
|
Re: SlipKnot First
|
November 09, 2009, 09:41:51 PM
|
|
Re: whos ur favoritee slipknot member??
|
November 09, 2009, 09:36:05 PM
|
|
|
|
