Category: Original Photographs : Hiser, Cherie :
The Odyssey of the Invisible
Letters to Pepper- Is a 12 year study of individuals who have been tattooed by my colleague and friend, Don Nolan of St. Paul, Minnesota. My theme was to create a document for Don’s son Pepper, born in 1981. I used my journal and audio taped interviews of the clients, Nolan’s family, friends and fellow tattoo artists, to investigate this amazing diaspora, this invisible tribe. I photograph the people, as they appear in the world, and as they appear in their own world.
Re:Visions-is a work in progress. I am creating a re-photographic survey of photographs of myself, and friends, which I originally made during my early years in photography. Here I am again…..watching my aging process…watching us all…..watching me.
The Queens of Santa Fe-was one of the first segments on the odyssey. In the early 1970’s, I lived in new Mexico with a self contained community of young homosexual men who had to obfuscate their sexual orientation from friends, family and the community in order to survive. I witnessed the repressiveness, alienation and difficulty they had because they were involved in this lifestyle. I witnessed violence, massacre and death in this demimonde. I tried to make sense of it with my cameras, my journal, audio tapes, my compassion, and my own growth.
I Want to go Home- is a collection of portraits of hospitalized mental patients taken over a three year period when I was working at a Portland hospital as a therapist. The photographic documents of this population I had seen were usually depicting the people as “crazy looking-backward-chronic-schizophrenics”, over-medicated and stupefied- poor souls trapped in a corner. The reality of the seventies and eighties was, mental health was becoming more accessible, less stigmatized and more effective. I noticed that the patients usually looked like my best friend, my nephew, my housekeeper, my dad and my mailman.
I made those portraits to show how optimistic I wanted for us all to be-----OK to be sick, to be gay, to be tattooed, to be old.
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