Brian: A Nine-Year Photographic Diary [Hardcover]

Reed Massengill (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2000

 In a unique photographic diary that spans nine years and several cities, photographer Reed Massengill has chronicled the coming of age of his model and friend Brian Hess, a very handsome and charismatic young man. Massengill began photographing Brian in 1992 in Knoxville, Tennessee, shortly after Brian's high school graduation. During the intervening years, as the photographer and model became friends, Massengill's portraits of Brian documented his radical physical transformation. His hair was bleached, shaved and re-grown several times. Tattoos, piercings and scarifications further adorned his body and dramatically altered his appearance from year to year. Massengill's portraits have ranged from pensive and introspective to playful and wildly erotic.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The portraits by Reed Massengill of Brian Hess are marvelous and intense. This intimately erotic book is a seductive object of rarefied art.

Massengill explains it best in his Introduction:

In the fall of 1992, when I was living in Knoxville and working on my first non-fiction book about a 1960s civil rights murder, Portrait of a Racist, a young guy named Brent called and made an appointment to come see me about shooting some photographs for his modeling portfolio.

When he came by my apartment a few days later, he was waifish and effeminate and not really model material, I thought. I looked through the few pictures he had brought with him, and told him that I thought he was too thin; that I never charged for portfolio work and usually did it only in exchange for nudes; and finally, that I wasn't convinced he was even 18 years old. He pulled out his wallet to show me the birth date on his driver's license, and as he flipped through the pictures of his high school friends from the small town of Kingston, Tennessee, one caught my eye. It was senior picture of a mildly smirking boy named Brian, and I was enthralled. I paused and looked at it for a minute. "I'd be happy to shoot your portfolio," I told him. "Just bring me this guy, and I'll shoot whatever you want."

So Brent dragged Brian along with him on the autumn day we had set aside for his portfolio shoot, and the three of us drove around to different locations all day while Brent took frequent cigarette breaks and pondered which outfits to wear. Late in the day, at a quiet spot off Cherokee Boulevard in suburban West Knoxville, Brent wanted to stand in a pile of leaves smoking a cigarette. He rested one elbow daintily in his cupped hand, leaned his head back and let a gush of smoke escape his lips. I'm sure he thought it looked dramatic and sexy, but it was all too Tallulah Bankhead. I pulled the camera down from my face and said, "Do you think you could try to butch it up just a little?" From behind me, where he was watching us shoot, I heard Brian laugh for the first time.

I haven't seen Brent since that day in 1992, when I handed him his rolls of film and sent him on his way. Brian and I have been friends ever since.

Although we don't stay in constant touch, there has never been a time when Brian and I have not gotten along, and we've never not had fun taking photographs. Our lives are now interconnected in innumerable strange ways. Over the years, Brian has introduced me to (and I've photographed) some of his close friends. For awhile, we had a favorite Chinese restaurant buffet, Ping's, where we would spend the better part of whole afternoons, eating and talking about nothing in particular. His former girlfriend gave me my first pair of Doc Martens, which someone had left in the back seat of her car.

I've flown Brian back and forth to New York to visit me on several occasions, and he's the only friend or model I've ever had who came home from wandering around the city with a bag full of those poorly-dubbed kung-fu movies, which we sat up and watched till 3 a.m., laughing hysterically. He's the only model I've ever had come home from an all-day scarification session (the claw marks on his chest, which he had done while visiting me in New York in 1997) to tell me what an intense, spiritual experience it was.

He's let me tie him up with plastic cable television cord, and I've let him smoke in my apartment -- a rarity on both counts. I've also experienced the serene and beautiful sight of Brian while he's asleep; he is a beautiful little boy when his face is pressed against a pillow, mouth half open, his body totally at rest. At different times, I've helped buzz or bleach his hair, and somewhere, I've got a handful of it that I scraped off my bathroom floor. It's stored away in a Ziploc bag, just waiting the day when advances in science make it possible for me to clone a gay version of Brian, using his hair as sample DNA.

Brian also was among the first models I asked to participate in a lark of mine that has since become a full-fledged project. Now, at the end of each session, I shoot a roll of self-portraits with almost everyone I photograph, whether it's someone beautiful I've approached on the street or Quentin Crisp or Joe Dallesandro -- and I could not have chosen anyone better than Brian to experiment with. Not only have I chronicled his own personal transformation through his tattoos and piercings, but I have also been able to chart the subtle changes in our relationship as photographer and model, and as friends.

Those of you who buy this book will do so for a variety of reasons, I suspect. Brian's pictures were included in my first little photo book, Massengill, and a more substantial number of shots were in Massengill Men, which followed a year or so later. He has always been mentioned among the favorites when people write to me. It's easy enough to say he's just a beautiful guy, and that he appeals to all kinds of people on a purely physical level. But truthfully, I think it's more than that. I think these photographs of Brian are more telling, and offer clues about his life and personality that people identify with or find intriguing.

In either case, this book is really a tribute not just to Brian's physical beauty, but also to his evolution as a person and the evolution of our relationship. I'm proud of these photographs, not because I think they're art, but because they represent the fact that that two very different people, with dramatically diverse lives, have made room for each other. Brian's life and my own are forever linked by these pictures, and I’m mostly proud of this book because it demonstrates what I've always believed about photography: that it can serve as a unifying element, transcending barriers of language or time. Now, evidence of Brian's beauty and our friendship will always exist outside of the drawers of my filing cabinets.

Why has he posed for me so many times, over so many years? I've wondered that myself, but Brian and I have never discussed it. It certainly isn't because of the money. For the first several years we knew each other, I never paid Brian for posing for me. Instead, I gave him rolls of film I'd shot for him, or archival prints. Once, I gave him prints of his girlfriend. The pictures shot in and around his car mark the first real payment he ever received from me, I think. We took an all-day road trip to Chattanooga in 1997 and I bought him a set of wide-whitewall tires for his Plymouth Fury III. After that, I flew him to New York to visit me or began paying him for our sessions in Tennessee, despite the fact that he never asked for payment of any kind. My point, I guess, is that it's clearly never been about the money for Brian.

Reed Massengill New York City, 2000

© 2000, FotoFactory Press

From the Author

Brian has always been an articulate and introspective person, and I believe he genuinely enjoys seeing what I record with my camera. And although this is purely speculation, I think he will someday look back at some of these images and chart the truer changes in himself that only he will remember and recognize -- the inner transformations that aren’t as apparent as his tattoos and piercings.

And just as it isn't about the money for Brian, for me, it isn't just about his body. While I am still captivated by his physical beauty, the man he has become equally fascinates me. I know that I will still want to photograph him even when he's 38 or 42 or 56. Brian will always be beautiful to me, and I love him in the best way a gay photographer can love his favorite straight model: I love him with my camera.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Fotofactory Press; First Edition edition (November 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883923492
• ISBN-13: 978-1883923495
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,249,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Pictures and an Interesting Concept, September 30, 2002

By 

Peter Saenz "Artemisboy" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brian: A Nine-Year Photographic Diary (Hardcover)

I noticed this book the last few times I browsed through several book stores in my area. Each time it stood out as if trying to catch my attention. I finally gave in and went through the book, first looking through the pictures then reading the introduction explaining the concept of the book's meaning. I was amazed to discover that the photographs in the book were of the same person. Due to the extreme differences the model Brian had in appearance, I had assumed that the photographer Reed Massengill had simply decided on making a picture book on various young men all named Brian. This really impressed me as the book started out with a young, relatively clean-cut man who gradually alters his appearance with varying degrees of hair styles and a progression of tattoos and piercings. I think this book is a nice window into the life of a 20 something year old man going through many identity choices in the last decade of the 2000 millennium. Not a traditional coffee table book by any means, I think Brian: A Nine Year Photographic Diary is a nice concept book that should be appreciated for it's lensing of a person living through a specific point in history.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, erotic , BRIAN is a stunning masterpiece!, April 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Brian: A Nine-Year Photographic Diary (Hardcover)

I absolutely love this book. This is one book that I will never get bored of looking at. Reed Massengill has really captured the essence of his model, Brian. As one views the photos, one feels like a voyeur, having glimpsed into the life of a very sexy, charismatic guy. We get a sense of Brian's personality as his body metamorphizes through physical changes from body piercings and tatoos. And, Brian is different and unique from many models because even though his exterior becomes tougher and tougher as years go by through tattoos, his innocence still manages to shine through. Brian has many looks throughout this book and I loved every single one of them. This book is highly erotic and it was a real pleasure to see that Brian seemed more natural and unhibited in front of the camera as the years passed. I sensed a real feeling of trust between the photographer and Brian. This is a mesmerizing, daring piece. It showcases the transformation of a boy reaching manhood. I highly recommend this book to anyone. There is something for everyone in this book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating document of transformation, February 10, 2001

By 

Alan L. Case (Geneseo, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brian: A Nine-Year Photographic Diary (Hardcover)

A moving and challenging book. Reed Massengill witnesses and documents the process through which Brian Hess embellishes (or to some eyes perhaps, disfigures) his own body. At the same time we see a "mildly smirking boy" mature into a man of gravity and great beauty. There is a period documented in the middle of this book during which Brian almost becomes the various tattoos, piercings and scarifications with which he has transformed his body. By the end of the book, however, they have in some way been absorbed, made part of him... in the last photos one hardly notices them: Brian has become much more than the sum of these parts. These photos are indeed highly erotic, but also much more then that. Many, like the last, are intensely moving. I hope that this is the first installment in a journey which will continue for many years.