Caffenol Diaries: Vanessa

Last night, Vanessa Cuccia (the prolific musician, actress, and founder of the first crystal sex toys Chakrubs) reawakened something in me I thought long dead. A connection to my inner self, neglected by the daily minutiae of a self-made woman. A tether once robust, now only fraying strands left. How could I have forgotten her? And forgotten her without even realizing it?

I’m not sure if this was Vanessa’s specific intention (because make no mistake, everything she said had intention), but there at the Detroit Foundation Hotel, surrounded by some of the baddest bitches in Detroit (and two quite annoying men), I remembered a former self more guided by symbols and rhythms. A self unafraid of stillness. A curious girl who made time for meditation and was unafraid to be human.

One of the questions her Erotic Iconography lecture poses is, “Why put meaning into the symbols that surround us?” This question sticks in my brain, my throat, and my heart. As an artist constantly digesting the life unfolding before me in movies, podcasts, and personal relationships, it’s easy to pat myself on the back for showing up to my artistic practice every day and assume that all this digestion is coming out in my work. It most certainly is not.

As life moves and the inundation of media pours over me at such a fast clip, it’s hard to reckon with myself, to discern what is a worthy idea to pursue and what is simply a regurgitation of the media I’m devouring from a purely aesthetic place. Does what I’m creating hold meaning for me? And is there something wrong with creating work that has no meaning?

In her presentation, she asks us to think about Psychomagic (a form of therapeutic healing invented by Alejandro Jodorowsky that uses symbolic, artistic “acts” to address psychological and genealogical wounds) and its relationship to eroticism.

I took this to mean: what if I viewed eroticism as a journey, a quest so to speak? Eroticism is not inherently sexual. What is erotic encompasses psychological, emotional, and imaginative dimensions like anticipation, desire, and the experience of life’s vitality, to experience our humanness. How can desire and the pursuit of connection drive me toward higher truths, self-transcendence, or other forms of fulfillment? How can recognizing this desire help me in my search for purpose?

I shot these images of Vanessa about a month or so before her lecture. I took them because I wanted to capture an intelligent, sexy woman who feels out of time as the look of the Caffenol photos also feels out of time. I took them because my obsession with developing film in coffee and vitamin C knows no bounds. I took them because I felt internally called to do so. 

I didn’t realize then that what draws me to developing film in coffee is, itself, an act of eroticism. It’s not that I’m sexually aroused while taking photos, or that developing film turns me on, but the act itself bears all the hallmarks: the anticipation of the film emerging, the emotional and imaginative attachments I have to the lighting, composition, and form. Perhaps even the way I want to please the person I’m photographing.

Perhaps these images represent a turning point in my work. Maybe time will tell. But at the very least, they represent retroactively a refrain in my process.

I’m claiming it.