Corn

Riverside, Calif. 2024

Corn was really shot as a joke for a friend. Despite how I felt for the years leading up to summer 2024, it turns out social media among friends can be pretty fun. At some point we shifted (especially on Instagram) from being authentically ourselves, to having a niche and something to say about it. Something started happening in 2024. We started really re-evaluating our relationships with each other and also with social media.

Anyway, all of that is to say that reconnecting with old friends for me has meant taking a corn based joke stemming from some instagram posts to the point of shooting a very dramatic still life of some corn, in order to continue the joke.

It turns out people really like Corn, and in some cases some folks found meaning that I didn’t necessarily intend while I was making the image. This is one of the things that I have used as a wall to shut myself out from my art. If I didn’t intend it when I set out to make it, it doesn’t count. A lie. That just not how art works, and it’s certainly not how my creativity works. Its cliche to say this, but I really believe that much of the time I am channeling some unknown, and subconcious entity that helps me make some decisions about how to go about making an image. Then I often need to decipher the metaphor. Another way to put it is that my creativity speaks in metaphor and its up to my conscious self to figure it out.

Therein lies the beauty. Everyone has a chance to let it speak to them and determine their own interpretation. I didn’t intend for this to be commentary on Americans celebrating Fourth of July on native people’s homeland, but by choosing to shoot and share this image on July 4th, many folks enjoyed seeing it in their feeds amongst the endless posts showing off American “patriotism” and felt that it was some small way to honor their memory and culture.

“Horny Corny”

One thing that came up a lot as this image began to get some traction on social media: Some felt the image was inherently sexual. Maybe its the phallic nature of corn, maybe it’s the dramatic renaissance style lighting sometimes used on paintings depicting nude women. Whatever it is, I get it. I see it too. It can be both, right?

Concept

As I mentioned above, this started as a joke. I honestly can’t remember the details of the original instagram post, or the joking around that followed, but it resulted in me picking up ears of corn that we had just bought and saying to my wife Alesia “I should take these in the studio and shoot them in a really dramatic way and send it to Caitlin” to which Alesia replied “You should!” And so the morning of July 4th, 2024, I did that.

Originally the plan was to have the ears of corn in baskets, for sort of a corn*ucopia vibe. Then as I was adjusted the corn to change out the surface I was using, I leaned one ear up and was struck by how intense it looked. I peeled back some of the pericarp (did you know it was called paricarp? I just looked it up). I realized the corn was not inanimate for this scene, and should be composed in a more stylistic way. It didn’t take long for it to come together after this moment. I think I was shooting for less than an hour.

above: some images from early in the process

Reponse

Here’s a collection of responses from users on Reddit that I thought were either very nice or very funny.

How to support my work

You can support my work by purchasing a fine art print of Corn right here