“Let the photograph be one you remember; not for it’s technique but for it’s soul”. This quote from the great music photographer Jim Marshall hangs above my computer, reinforcing every day that a photograph is not simply a photograph; that within the image there is a world that speaks to us in a language that is neither words nor sounds but feelings. You look at a photograph and you feel it. Within seconds of laying eyes upon it, a thousand things have run through your brain and you have a mental divination of what is before you on a wall or in a book. A photograph can change the way you look at your life, at the way you view the world, at the mere way you may handle a situation.
But to others, it is only a capture of a moment in time: children at a birthday party, your dog, your sister, your vacation to Florida. It is simply there to help you remember what was and no greater thought is given to it. Oftentimes, it is stashed in an old shoebox and stuck in an attic. Sometimes they are thrown away because someone’s eyes were closed. Most times they are pasted into a scrapbook for future generations to know who and what you actually were.
Every once in awhile, you come across someone who knows exactly what Jim Marshall was talking about and becomes inspired by his images to pick up a camera and seek out the soul. You wouldn’t think that person would be a tattooed former smack-addicted rock star, who still commands the stage with loud music and tales of past belly-of-the-beast adventures. But for awhile now, Motley Crue bassist and primary songwriter Nikki Sixx has taken his photography very seriously. To the point that he always has a camera in hand and that whilst visiting new cities instead of hanging out with the wild crowd by the bus, he seeks out the wild crowd in an alley of junkies in Vancouver or a whorehouse in Germany. He is looking for truth in the eyes of the not-so-ordinary, those that have actually found the sadness and humiliation from a world who believes Giselle Bundchen to be the epitome of beautiful.
This is Gonna Hurt is an achingly honest book to read and view. Nikki’s brutal revelations in his observations are felt in your chest as he describes his longing for the truth about his never-seen sister and the way a homeless man has more dignity and clarity than the average joe who walks past him without nary a glance in his direction. With his photographs accompanying his stories, Nikki waxes poetic about his life as a man who has always believed that what we see as strange and deformed is actually the beautiful and we are the ugly.
What I was expecting when I opened this book was not an album full of fun backstage photographs of rock stars and groupies. I had been forewarned that this was an actual true photography book whose images may not be appealing to the naked eye. So I was almost prepared for what lay ahead. What I wasn’t totally expecting was the depth and seriousness and power of the portraits that Nikki had captured.
“I’ve always had an eye for the oddities in life”, writes Nikki. “Even as a kid I saw the world in my own way and thought most things that were different were beautiful and magical. Even things that other people thought were horrifying and disgusting and weird”.
There is a portrait of what some would call a dead rose, all brown and decaying, dropping off the earth in a swan song of once a beauty-queen now a lifeless shell. It is symbolic of the human spirit. Once the sunlight has danced upon our skin and given us vivaciousness, it has in time turned against us and hollowed out our inner oxygen and we have grown old and limp from the depravation that that sunlight once gave us. But yet, if you look a little bit closer, there is still a pulse in death that gives hope that the soul will always be there to fertilize others. It is what I see in the photograph on page 32. You may see it differently. Either analogy is correct. When you feel it, it all becomes real and each person has their own story to tell.
Nikki’s just happens to have been one of fame and fortune and extravagance, although he didn’t start out that way. Born to a mother who wandered and moved regularly, he himself has inherited a gypsy spirit. Looking from a page showing a young boy with a twinkle in his eye to another image a few pages over of a dilapidated doll that has been blindfolded, tells more about the youth of Nikki Sixx than any autobiographical words can conjure. The photograph entitled “Father” is another example of heartbreaking honesty.
He talks about Motley Crue and Sixx:AM and Kat Von D. But it is his photographs and stories of the downtrodden that capture who this man actually is more clearly than his rock & roll world buddies. A brainless rock star he is not. And probably never has been. The costumes and eyeliner and “Dr Feelgood” just led you to believe the only thing streaming across his inner sanctum was “Girls Girls Girls”.
It is often sad to read about his models, as he calls them. Their stories and Nikki’s stories of finding them tug at the strings and make you humbly look back at your own life wondering how many people you have ignored or chastised or berated because they were not like you or me or John down the street with the nice house and perky family. It makes you sigh in that way that you wish you had not been so critical to others who share this wonderful Earth with you. But then your spirit uplifts because tomorrow is another chance to see with open eyes.
All this from just a couple of photographs. Funny how things work that way. You want to read a book for one reason and find yourself enthralled with it for a completely different reason. Nikki Sixx has achieved with this book exactly what he wanted to: “For those who feel different, estranged and like the misfits of society, may this book show the world that we’re all the same”.
