HOUSK RANDALL
1984 - 2000
I made sexual portraits. I asked everyone I met to pose for me and was extremely successful in finding models right from the start. Using photographic imagery as a starting point, I would print on my own handmade paper and then augment the results with charcoal and oil paint.
My first wife at the time was moved to remark: "I met and married a long-haired musician and ended up with a bald pornographer!"
"Aww, this isn't scary, it's just like punk!" . . . my reaction to heavy fetish/piercing/tattoo and surgical/sexual transformation. The rubber worlds of Skin 2 and Demask felt like home. The next chapter of my voyage began in earnest.
Driven by a new obsession - how far did unusual erotic practice go - and fuelled by drink and drugs, I became a lynchpin in a world of extremes. I was soon a familiar, trusted face at the strangest parties, clubs and bizarre performances you really can't imagine.
Eventually I reached psychic overload. I realised I was in dangerous waters. There's no end to what humanity will do. It just keeps getting darker. Every transgression makes the next border easier to cross. I was losing perspective. The moral compass I barely held was getting harder and harder to see.
I finally left this intense 'family' I had joined. It was hard. I was an addict. I felt the need to constantly photograph and interview people about their sexuality on a daily basis . . . and my drink/drug habits were out of control and barely acknowledged.
I had an image, status and lifestyle I missed terribly at first but, besides the fact that I was passing out at parties - in the middle of conversations, I also realised I'd become artistically and personally stagnant.
Then I met Pia and everything changed. I returned to playing guitar and composing music. I began to sing again.
I still produced two more books as Housk, then embraced who I originally was and changed my name back to David.
ps: not long after I chose Housk as my new name, I was told by an Icelandic musician, that it was a word in their language. It means: 'Remember!' - in the imperative.
photo/painting from my first exhibition in London.
photo.painting from my first exhibition in London.
Books published:
Radical Desire, 2002
Piercing, 2000
The Customized Body, 1996
Rituals of Love, 1994
Revelations, 1993