To have a muse is to appreciate the ebb and flow of energy that exists between the artist and the world. The muse is the one that inspires the creation of something new through the challenging of ideas, feelings, and vibes. The artist is the one that connects to this energy in search of something within themselves, some external manifestation of questions without answers, a fusion of that which has been torn asunder. When the two combine, they achieve harmony of and with the universe, finding the balance between yin and yang in the space between us.
The muse can speak to the artist’s passion on all levels, allowing them to explore their ideas and emotions, fantasies and realities, in visual form. And so it happens that photographer Nick Haymes found Gabe Nevins, and Nevins found Haymes and together they created a collection of images at once stark and lush, beautiful and repellant, powerful and sad.
Haymes has just released GABEtm(Damiani), a collection of images that draw us in to the dark and unfettered world of this late adolescent male. Haymes pictures allow Gabe to show himself as he is, struggling to find comfort in his own fragile yet elastic skin. Haymes allows Gabe to run wild and free, and it appears Gabe is barely, if at all aware, that a camera is upon him in so many ways. The cumulative result of these images is a sense of a person whom we may never know, a person struggling with pain and pleasure, trying to find himself before he expires.
As Gus Van Sant writes in the book’s introduction, “When I was casting a young skateboarders for my movie Paranoid Park I looked out the floor high window of our casting office one afternoon and I saw Gabe Nevins skate into view…. He has a vaguely Native American look, also looked like something was really disturbing him, which was also true about the character in the story we were going to shoot—and he was quite adult looking for just 14 and had a funny sense of humor. He was also comfortable in front of a camera and could improv easily thinking it was fun. And more importantly my advisor promised me he would break out hearts. So Gabe got the part.”
And indeed, it is those words “break our hearts” that ring true in looking at Haymes’ photographs, but become even more real when reading Gabe’s words. The book has the odd snatch of Facebook chatter and emails to Haymes and Harmony Korine, giving us but a glimpse into the mind of a troubled character. Gabe expresses his alienation, trying to make sense of his life’s experience through a combination of pseudo-intellectualization and adolescent angst. The result is touching, when considered alongside these images, the mind inside the face and body that Haymes shows us. Gabe writes, “Fuck relationships! Loves a myth. A chemical reaction that feels good for a minute but after a while leads to heartbreak, agitation, and aggravation. Yuck”.
Haymes also includes an email that Gabe sent to him, one that feels as much a poem as it does a cry for help:
Is there anywayu can send me any money
I have been on the streets of sanfrancisco
for a week
doing drugs
i tried meth with a meth head the other day
ive been doing dates for moneu
i am really about to fucking snap
i cant handle it
As the correspondence goes on, we gain little understanding into what makes a boy so desperate and lost, though we understand Gabe’s desire to connect, to make sense, to find guidance and direction. His appeals via email reveal a desperate kind of pain. And so it sometimes is that the muse acts out something of and for the artist in their search for self, becoming at once the sacred and the profane, the innocent and the tarnished, the whole that has broken apart and is seeking fusion—both through the artist’s eyes and that of the world.
