Profile | Adrian Buckmaster

Photo: Amber Ray, The Peacock, New York, 2006 by Adrian Buckmaster, © 2015, published by Glitterati Incorporated

Adrian Buckmaster’s studio is tucked away in Brooklyn. A quiet space, a zone where men and women are transform into creatures of myth as they present themselves to Buckmaster’s camera. Since 2000, he has been documenting the alternative scene, populated by performers and personalities who are so sartorially resplendent that they are just as sumptuous in the nude.

Three hundred of his works have been selected for An Embarrassment of Riches (Glitterati Incorporated), Buckmaster’s first book. The photographs recall the work of great portrait artists of times long ago, of equal parts John Singer Sargent and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, revealing a painterly mastery of the medium. At the same time we see the world in which we live, where Victorian ruffles cover beautifully tattooed skin, providing a physically and psychologically intimate look at the underground New York burlesque scene. Adrian Buckmaster spoke with CraveOnline about An Embarrassment of Riches.

What was the inspiration for An Embarrassment of Riches?

Inspiration is everywhere, look down up and around you—it’s contained in everything and everyone. There is nothing richer than an ordinary person’s life’s story.

For An Embarrassment of Riches the inspiration was the people I was fortunate to find myself surrounded by. In late 2000 I found myself, focusing more intently on the people around me, often out of the mainstream, lovely fellow misfits, poorly represented, often vilified by the mainstream due to fear and prejudice and ignorance.

I have spent much of my life living under a sense of disapproval, with little encouragement to search for my identity. The casual criticism and scorn with which lay persons view creatives can sting and stunt any move forward, but I was resolved to overcome those very real roadblocks, even though it felt, and often still feels, as though I am swimming through lead. I had no choice.

Please speak about the portraiture on two levels: first as a means for the subject to compose their visual identity through elements of costume, adornment, and posing; and second as a means for you, as the photographer, to capture this sense of self in the print/on the page?

When people, friends or stranger walk into our studio, they are walking into my life, by conscious design. The studio I share with my consort, Irene, is very much an ideal space for this, one we created together. It’s our life they are entering, and, judging by their words, it is calming and safe. So the potential to create is there from the start, we have cultivated an energy that fosters openness, and a nonjudgmental environment.

Most times, the performer or subject and I will have communicated beforehand, and based on that conversation they bring various items of dress, things that mean something to them. Most of the time it works out, but often, it can be quite a challenge, and I must turn on a dime and tactfully make it work.

Often, due to budget issues, I am limited as to what can be created, and as such, I have learned to whittle each sitting to a very bare bones set (pun intended), one where superficial artifice has to be stripped away, and all that is left is that person and I. It can be terrifying at times, but less so these days, and in almost every shoot, I am staggered by what I see in front of me. It’s a reward that surpasses all others.

Your work is profoundly intimate, and deeply engaging. Can you speak about what your photographic sessions are like?

Everybody has something they love, an aspiration, or even the darker side, regrets, sadness, it’s up to me to find that “thing” that beauty, (which is what it really is) as soon as they walk into my studio. And that happens most of the time. I’m not sure why or how this has come about. Sometimes we butt heads, and at times, people don’t want to see themselves laid bare, so I walk a fine line, one that is becoming more defined, as I work towards seeing. People seem to trust me more, come prepared to trust, so it’s an honor and a treat, one I try to handle with care. People have a presence, one that is who they are, yet one that the camera can easily bypass, often with both wonderful and also brutal results.

Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.