14 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE September 7, 2001

eveningsout

Rob Colgan's Louisiana childhood infuses his photography

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-Today Americans are desensitized to seeing perfectly chiseled male forms on product packages and larger-than-life billboards. We forget that only a decade ago Bruce Weber's photographs of naked men selling underwear shocked the nation and tickled America's semi-dormant, ever present Puritanical roots. But religion and propriety be damned, there was money to be made and lots of it.

This liberation of the male form, unprecedented since perhaps ancient Greece, has brought a mixed bag of blessings for those who photograph it. Columbus photographer Rob Colgan is keenly aware of this dichotomy where more and more male images are needed for consumption, but at the very same time, it becomes harder and harder to legitimately reclaim the nude male as an art form and not merely as consumer seduction.

Colgan, who turned 40 last year, would never have in his wildest childhood dreams guessed that his profession would involve photographing nude men and that in many ways it would not only be acceptable but culturally needed.

Colgan hails from Elyria, just southwest of Cleveland, although for many of his formative years his family lived in Alexandria, "in the dead center of Louisiana."

During a lively interview in Colgan's spacious studio in the Buggyworks Building, in Columbus' arena district, he talked about how living in Louisiana was “a great influence on [my] formative experiences and this has contributed greatly to [my] work."

Colgan said it was a "spooky, mysterious environment for a kid, with unusual animals

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lurking in the swampy landscape of that part

of the deep South."

Colgan grew up the baby of the family, with two older brothers and one older sister.

“Louisiana was the first place I saw a dead person," Colgan recounted. He and his siblings were exploring a graveyard on “a perfectly overcast, Halloween-like day" when they came upon an open grave, freshly plundered by grave robbers.

"At six, seeing that old man laying there in the casket with a tuxedo stuck with me," Colgan explained.

The theme of decaying objects surrounded by the lush fertility of Mother Nature is a major theme in Colgan's work. That organic nexus of the dying and the living, immutably linked to each other and captured in the same image, make for some of Colgan's most potent works. These works are very reminiscent of the work of Bill Costas, whose images exhibited a tenacious relationship between the power and beauty of youthful men inhabiting decaying and crumbling environ-

ments.

Weekends of Colgan's childhood were spent with his family, "driving around visiting plantations, mostly decaying, in a time when no one had heard of architectural rehabilitation." Colgan would later realize that these exploratory sojourns through plantation-land would hone his love for architecture and the environment. Both feature prominently in Colgan's photography.

Also evident in Colgan's work is a love and deep admiration of the male form, stripped of all its social masks and cultural facades. As a gay man, Colgan knows all too well about masks and facades. For Colgan, who came of age in an era where homosexu-

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From the Jesus Series by Rob Colgan.

ality was definitely for the closets, "coming out was a difficult” and “rather bad experience." Colgan came out to himself in his teens but remained in denial until he went off to college at OSU.

"College was the best thing I ever did," Colgan proclaimed, insisting that it was thanks to his parents that he ended up at a large university as opposed to his preference of a smaller college. Colgan was forced to go against his quieter and shyer nature and forced into meeting diverse people and interacting with different cultures.

"I ate it up," Colgan reminisced about his undergraduate years.

While college exposed Colgan to other gay men, he found few openly gay men with whom he could identify. And thus, the battle to bust open the closet doors continued. Colgan's entire coming out process was-consistently haunted by a "really negative experience with a school teacher," who used power and status to break the boundaries of trust, values and innocence. Colgan is hesitant to talk about this but it seems to influence much of who he is and what he does.

Photography has been for Colgan both passion and therapy. Colgan is known for his nudes but he also does still-lifes, landscapes and series wherein he creates a collection of images united by a central theme, idea or object.

One of these series is a stark and surreal set of photos all involving a large, reclining sculpture of Christ, post-crucifixion. The statue is both poetic and camp, and Colgan seems to relish juxtaposing the 200-pound slab of plaster in environments ranging from an operating room at a hospital to abandoned relics like the now-demolished Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. These images are both profound and profane.

Raised Episcopalian, Colgan developed a deep mistrust of organized religion from a very early age.

“Deep down I have spirituality," Colgan explained, "but hate people who manipulate basic concepts like with televangelism which is religion gone insane." His "Jesus Series," as he calls it, is currently on display at a gallery in New York.

Whatever the image, Colgan says that he is always trying to make some sort of statement, thematically or contextually. Colgan's nudes span an array ranging from the erotic and powerful to the lyrical and earthy. Colgan says that he is deeply interested in dichotomies where the strength and sensuality of his models is set against the tension of decaying buildings or wild, uncontrolled landscapes. Colgan believes that the nude male is a "sym-

bol of the most basic power and simplicity." These bodies, vulnerable and open, stripped of their social trappings, are imbued with meaning by the poses, moods and lighting in which Colgan captures them.

Colgan said that he looks "for models who are unique and who have an unusual look." Ninety percent of Colgan's models are gay, although sometimes "it is easier to work with the straight ones because they bring less baggage to the shoot about sex and sexuality.'

Often Colgan will watch models for a while before he asks them to pose. "I like to see how they carry themselves," because even though photography is a still medium, great photography always suggests and captures motion.

Colgan gets his real rise out of photographers like Duane Michaels, Bruce Weber and Arthur Tress. Colgan's work owes a debt to these artists and it is evident in the wide array of images that he has amassed. Colgan says that he sells his images rather "cheaply because I want everyone to have them in their homes." Colgan's work is picking up and being picked up. For a long time photography played second fiddle to Colgan's day job in the Department of Neurology at the OSU hospitals where he works on brain testing and other such cerebral things.

In Ohio, Colgan's work has been seen in a Millennium calendar in Columbus, which was sold to raise funds for AIDS services in 1999. Colgan's edgier and more erotic works were part of an exhibit titled "Raw" at A Muse Gallery in 2000. Colgan is continuing to work prolifically, and has several major galleries in New York looking at his work.

He has several pieces currently on display at A Muse Gallery. These, the newest in Colgan's astonishingly diverse array of work, are three-dimensional pieces using photography and other found objects.

They are like miniature monuments, layered in imagery and symbolism, each unfolding like a narrative with hidden meanings, mysteries and magic. In each of these photographic sculptures, Colgan incorporates his photos and frames them, literally and metaphorically, in objects. Using his medical background Colgan has created some magical pieces with objects found in a lab.

Colgan is always pushing the style of his work in new directions and his photographs are always interesting to see as they evolve. As his work spreads beyond Ohio, he is definitely an emerging artist to watch in the future, not only for the beauty and power of his images but also for the intelligence behind them. ✓