Narcissus Gazed

A print of this image is available to purchase here:

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/narcissus-gazed-tom-clark.html

Steve Sandvoss photographed by Tom Clark in Desert Hot Springs, California

Copyrighted Image - All Rights Reserved

This image was shot with a Nikkor 105 1.8 on Ilford FP4 and scanned from the original neg. The only manipulation was a slight adjustment of levels. Other than that this is what I got when I tripped the shutter.

In the early aughts a couple of actors named Steve Sandvoss and Wes Ramsey starred in an indie film called Latter Days. I saw the film at its premier in Hollywood and was moved - rarely had a gay-themed film hit so close to home and with such great storytelling. I drove home after the premier, sat down at my laptop and wrote a note to Steve telling him how much I enjoyed his work in the film and that I'd love to photograph him. (I wasn't able to find a way to contact Wes right away but eventually I did.)

I never expected to hear back but the next day I got a note from Steve saying that he'd looked at my website, liked what he saw and that he'd be up for a shoot. A few weeks later we were at the beach in Laguna doing the first of what would be many shoots over the next few years.

Steve had a way of being present in the process of taking pictures and yet he often drifted away in his thoughts into his own very private world, allowing for a feeling of detachment from the camera and me. This thing that Steve did repeated itself over and over in all of our shoots, creating a context in the detachment that I liked and learned to work with. You can see how that gets expressed in this image of him that I've called Narcissus Gazed. He's there physically but in some part of his consciousness he's far far away. Boy do I love that.