Jem Raid
http://www.jemraid.co.uk/
Fifty years of photography and tired of the single image led me to making
digital art montages. This in turn to finding the CSS code to make cross
fading before and after images. From there another step to using video
creation software to put together many images cross fading into each other.
Some of my videos are made with the intention of creating work that is
androgynous, anonymous and cuts across the erroneously perceived divides
that many feel separate us.
In 1998 I came across the work of Catherine McIntyre whose digital montages
changed my life. For the next thirteen year I prevaricated and did anything
other than tackle what I considered to be a mountain of expertise I could
never attain.
At the end of 2011 I became so angry at my failure that I put aside
everything else photographic and concentrated on making montages teaching
myself as I went along . I was educated in a school for factory fodder
despised the education system but had the good fortune to have one teacher
who taught me how to learn.
Making these videos is the most rewarding thing I have ever done, it brings
together the two sides of my life on one side artistic interpretation and on
the other the technical know how, I am also my own model and therefore
always available. This gives me total control of the processes from
inception to presentation.
Work / video
title
Emerging joyfully, 2016, 6 minutes 39 seconds
One of the problems facing women even now in the 21st century is male chauvinism.
I experience this myself but in a different way to women.
I pose in a feminine way and make short videos.
I often get comments from males who think that the only women should pose for images in this way.
I try to help males appreciate the fact they they don’t need to be macho
They can be beautiful as well.
Emergence
After hiding in the corners of our own minds
Work
Where we pretended we were not
Often torn away
By the call of the easily understood
Joyfully
Reclaiming the mindscape
Seeking
Understanding from everyman
I am an elderly male posing in a feminine way and I throw back at macho males their own image and challenge them to pose for self images.
To feel the freedom of doing it, to know that they could very well be creating art with their own bodies.
In the same way women have done for centuries.
