Sam Taylor-Wood's "Crying Men"

10.26.04




Another Tear Jerker
Plagiarized from Autumn/Winter 2004 Issue of “Another Magazine: For Men and Women” which I bought for obvious reasons

“It started out with a quote I heard,” Sam Taylor-Wood Explains. “ ‘Women cry, men get angry.’ And from there I wanted to create portraits of guys less in control of their egos than they are normally.” And where can you find more monumental egos than in Hollywood? The artist is renowned for her intimate portrayals of isolation and psychological fragility. Now, with Crying Men, to be featured in a major New York show this autumn and published in a book, she has invited actors to break down for the camera. And it wasn’t always easy, because everyone knows boys don’t cry. No Sliced onions were used and no cruel “your dog just died” tricks.

“None of them knew they had to cry until the day they walked in. Some refused to do it, at other times I had to physically block the door. But my job was to get them to that point, and let them take it from there – I mean they’re actors after all.” Woody Harrelson, Tim Roth, Benicio Del Toro, Jude Law, and William Dafoe among others turned on the waterworks for Taylor-Wood. Each experience was unique – some shook with grief, others quietly wept and Laurence Fishburne couldn’t stop himself crying.

Looking at the portraits, the results are complex and powerful, impossible as it is to unravel what is real from what is false. Actors at the pinnacle of their career are so comfortable, if not more comfortable in front of the camera, as alone. So what is going through their minds as they cry? The viewer is torn between the uneasy position of voyeur of a man’s most private moment, all the while knowing the man in question could just as easily be reciting shopping lists in his head. – Hannah Lack


My boy Benicio ballin’ his little eyes out.



Hayden Christensen


Buy Taylor-Wood's book HERE

-e