Clayton James Cubitt, also known as Siege is an American photographer and filmmaker, who resides in Brooklyn. He is known for applying an “arrestingly controlled and sleek sense of style” to art, portrait, erotic and fashion photography. He is considered “one of the new breed of photographers who are not content to draw a line between fashion, art and porn.” “
Table of Contents
- 1 Early life
- 2 Career
- 2.1 Blogging for Nerve.com
- 2.2 Fashion Photography
- 2.3 Hurricane Katrina Survivor Portraits
- 2.4 Celebrity Portraiture
- 2.5 Video Art
- 2.6 Veterans for Bernie Sanders
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Early life
Cubitt grew up in New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast. After seeing Nick Knight’s photograph of Susie Smoking, Cubitt was inspired to take up photography. Cubitt also cites Helmut Newton’s photograph “Green Room Murder” as an early inspiration. He moved north after high school, eventually settling in Brooklyn in early 2000.
Career
Blogging for Nerve.com
From 2004 to 2008, Cubitt published a photography/confessional blog titled “The Daily Siege” at sex/culture online magazine Nerve. It was described by Eyemazing Journal as “one of the best sources of intelligent, open sexuality on the web.” In addition to erotic content, including images and podcasts, the blog featured Cubitt’s writing on a variety of topics, including politics and his creative process.
Fashion Photography
In 2005, Cubitt collaborated on a generative art fashion series with creative coder Tom Carden. Cubitt created the images using software that used particles and attractors. Carden wrote the software using the alpha version the Processing Programming Language. The images were published by Metropop Magazine. Cubitt is also well-known for his alternate reality fashion story, “Lagos Calling”, which reimagined skinhead fashion as an emerging movement in late-1960s Lagos Nigeria. The images were presented as a set of resurfaced, damaged, faded anthropological portraits. The series was used as stylistic inspiration for the Gnarls Barkley music video for “Going On”. Websites have mistakenly published the images as historical reference. Cubitt created a series called “Damaged Doll” that featured pornographic actress Justine Joli in a sexual, high-fashion context. Two images from the Playground were published as a boxed collection of fashion artwork. Two different printers refused to print the pieces due to their explicit nature, so the book publishers printed them manually. However, Barney’s New York refused to stock the boxed set due to the inclusion of the two pieces.
Hurricane Katrina Survivor Portraits
In 2005, Cubitt traveled to Pearlington, Mississippi, ground zero for Hurricane Katrina, after hearing that his mother’s home there had been destroyed. Upon arriving, Cubitt began to document the area’s devastation. He set up a photography studio in order to interview and photograph Katrina’s survivors and volunteers in Pearlington’s former school gymnasium, which was serving as a distribution point for aid in the town. Cubitt published their stories and images on a blog he created, titled “Operation Eden.” For a time, the blog became a central hub for volunteers and people seeking to send relief, and citizens who were curious about what the mainstream media wasn’t covering. The blog has been described as “a powerful piece of citizen journalism. “ It was featured on MSNBC, LIFE Magazine, and Rolling Stone. Cubitt returned to the area subsequently to photograph survivors in Mississippi and New Orleans. His Katrina portraits were used by ad agency Grey Worldwide, in conjunction with SAMHSA and the Ad Council, to create a series of PSAs urging Katrina survivors to reach out for help.
Celebrity Portraiture
Cubitt’s celebrity portrait subjects include David Byrne
, Peter Murphy, Xeni Jardin, Levon Helm, Shaun Ross, Big Freedia, Justine Joli, and Molly Crabapple. Cubitt is credited for initially discovering underground South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord, and subsequently shot their portrait and album cover for the band’s debut, $O$.
Video Art
In 2008-2009, Cubitt created a video series of Long Portraits, in which subjects were filmed sitting still for five minutes or more. The Long Portrait format became popular on Vimeo, inspiring many other photographers to create their own versions.
In 2012, Cubitt created a video series entitled Hysterical Literature. Shot clinically in black and white, each film shows a fully dressed woman reading a passage from a book of her choice while brought to orgasm by a vibrator controlled by an unseen assistant under the table. The first installment in the video series featured adult performer Stoya reading Necrophilia Variations by Supervert, and has received over twenty-three million views on YouTube as of May 2018. Subsequent videos feature “friends and industry comrades” like Margaret Cho, Toni Bentley and others reading passages from books including Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Veterans for Bernie Sanders
In 2016, Cubitt became a vocal supporter of senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Cubitt took photographs of war veterans and interviewed them to find out what Sanders’ candidacy means for them. The images were used by the official Bernie Sanders campaign.
Last update 2021-08-06