Simplicity, Erotica, and the Rural South

Photography By Scott Mabe

Photographer Scott Mabe opens up about exploring queerness and religion, gas station obsessions, and marrying analog film with digital media.

New York City, USA

“Malibu” Featuring Torian Lewin, Jere Landerson, and **Mikael Cummings**

How did you begin your journey as a photographer?

When I was sixteen I started picking up disposable cameras with the extra money I had from waiting tables at the local diner. Took photos of my (mostly female) friends, trying to capture some of the hard to pinpoint sexuality I had witnessed in Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” music video. I no longer have those images but I doubt I was successful.

How have you grown in your journey ? What have you learned about yourself and your work?

I went to university for photography and was fortunate to study under some amazing artists, tried my hand at all sorts of cameras, lighting styles etc. but now I just use a Yahica T4 and Photoshop, which feels like a return to when I was a teenager using disposable cameras. I like the simplicity. Photoshop is the medium where I feel most at home, and creating the work I’m doing now, being able to marry analog film with digital media, feels like a space I can make a bed in.

What sort of themes and subject matter do you tend to focus on ? Why is this important to you?

The theme begins with the process. I take 35mm photos of different landscapes, though it tends to be mostly when I’m visiting Texas. I use the digital scan of the negative as a background that I then collage figures into using Photoshop. The figures tend toward the queer and the erotic. Growing up gay while deeply religious in the rural south made me aware of the multiple intersections informing my identity at a young age. In this work my goal is to capture landscape in a tactile form through film and then queer it by digitally manipulating the image with (often) nameless figures I find in the ephemera that is online. This intersection where landscape meets erotic, where analog meets digital bastardization, speaks language in which I am able to find wonder and comfort.

Tell the story behind one of your images

I have a soft spot in my heart for the image “UR MY HEAVY METAL KING”. The landscape is at the back of a truck stop down the road from the farm where I grew up, and I carry a yet unexplained obsession with it. I have a deep love for gas stations in general but this one is my Mecca. I was able to get this photo of several 18 wheelers lined up with this overcast sky above. When online I came across this amazing portrait of this masculine figure with a cigar out of their mouth and I collaged them into the sky above. I changed the colour of their eyes to reflect the blue. I love the story it tells, I see it as a Greek God of the truck-stop, the trucks themselves his angels his, his chorus.

“UR MY HEAVY METAL KING” Featuring **Terentius**

What was your experience like growing up in Texas? How did this experience contribute to your photography?

I think growing up in east Texas has contributed almost everything to the work I make now. The heat, the wide unused spaces juxtaposed with massive parking lots and truck stops. The livestock. The machismo. The religious devotion. I was steeped in all of it but always felt I was largely outside looking in, and I could never figure out why. It was as if upon birth I was denied an invitation. Now I realize that feeling of outsiderness was me being a queer person. Being able to take this strange land that I felt denied from and manipulate it digitally to the homoerotic, to me, is power.

Why did you decide to move to New York City? How has the city challenged you as an artist?

I moved to NYC after college because I knew I needed a big change. To this day it’s the greatest decision I’ve made. The energy not just from the city itself but from the people you find yourself around is unmatched. It also gave me a deep love and appreciation for where I grew up that I did not have before.

Which neighborhood in the city inspires your creativity the most? Why?

While I live in Brooklyn and deeply love my neighbourhood of Crown Heights and Bedstuy, I can’t say that it directly inspires my creativity. I think living here gave me a sense of space and distance that allows me to view and appreciate other places. That being said, Coney Island and Fort Tilden are magical worlds that I believe exist in another dimension of reality. I am fortunate to be only a train ride away from both.

What's next for you?

I just want to keep working! I am looking at new ways to display this work physically, and I hope to perhaps explore what postcards could look like. Location is so important to each piece, I’d love to have a postcard of one of these pieces that invites you to visit “The Shell Gas Station off exit 509!”. I think that would be fun!