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Monday, 16 Oct 2006 Kelley Richardson’s ~the santa cruz tattoo project~

When one receives a press kit, is it a normal reaction to want to frame it?

That’s how I felt when I got Kelley Richardson’s package on her Santa Cruz Tattoo Project.

As one who archives, I love photography not just for the artistic value of the photograph, but also because each picture captures an instant in time so that we don’t lose it. Kelley Richardson, of Strange Angel Studios in Santa Cruz, California, is a member of the Santa Cruz geographical community and also of the Santa Cruz tattooed population.

As a tattooed member of this society, this work is meant to interpret, translate, and document this cryptic language which is communicated through inscriptions in the skin.
– Kelley Richardson, on The Project

Kelley, a scholarship- and award-winning photographer, received her formal education at the The San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned her BFA with an emphasis on photography. She claims that

This education taught me how to “see” with the sensibility of a fine artist and has given me an understanding of the world founded in a classical academic education.

However, it’s obvious that, while the Institute might have “taught her to ’see’,” she was already born with The Sight. Perhaps I should say “insight,” as Kelley has a unique gift for capturing alternative families (”I coined the phrase!”) in such a way that the viewer is not looking at children or at parents or at tattoos, but at people full of joy in her city of Santa Cruz. If one looks within the Couples image gallery, for example, one doesn’t see two naked tattooed people but, rather, a family getting ready to enter its next stage. I don’t know if another photographer could have gotten the same shot out of the same pose because Kelley, as a mother, has a vital energy about her that makes people smile.

…Pretty soon she became a mom, and had kids of her own… and she wanted them to have a chance to become powerful and free… she knew that she would have to teach them something different… so she changed… and she became the woman that she had always wanted to be. Today she is a grown-up woman with three beautiful children. As role models, she prefers athletic, capable women instead of Barbies, and is intrigued by the female form and the ways we view it as a society. (And she decided to be a photographer instead of a horse.)
– Bio of Kelley Richardson from ~strange angel studios~

This couple looks so serene. Or, maybe, you prefer this couple. He’s older than she is. I want to know how long they’ve been together. I want to know what he whispered to her right before the photograph was taken. I bet it was something nice.

The alternative family depicted here isn’t even showing any body modifications. They look like they’re having a party. Their lives are defined by their spirits, and not by their skins.

This is one of my favorite photos in the set. A young man with a Mohawk holds a little girl to his chest. She looks like she’s screaming with sheer delight. Cute kit with a man in a Mohawk - it really doesn’t get much better, does it?

Please take some time to dwell on the galleries, especially if you’re from the Santa Cruz area, as this is your home and your heritage.

Santa Cruz is the quintessential beach town. It was here that Hawaiian royalty first introduced surfing to the mainland–and locals and visitors alike have been riding the waves ever since. Not far from the surf break, calliope music and laughter fills the air at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the West Coast’s last remaining seaside amusement park. A few blocks from the beach is Santa Cruz’s newly renovated downtown. The pedestrian-friendly, tree-lined streets are filled with vibrant shops and galleries, outdoor bistros and sidewalk musicians - all in keeping with Surf City’s offbeat personality.
– About Santa Cruz - official web site

If you’re not from Santa Cruz, these are your neighbors.

(click each thumbnail to go to its gallery)
…If I am an artist in life, what responsibility do I have in the world at large, and personally, in the artwork of my family? I know that I have the capacity to affect the world at large with my art as a member of society, and more readily to create art that has impact om my smaller world in terms of my community and my family. Our world is full of visual imagery, suggesting this or that, encouraging us one way or the other, begging us to think. I am completely enamored with the process of creating imagery that does just that: asks you, the viewer, to think. I create art about life, about process, about identity.
– Kelley Richardson

From Kelley’s studio galleries, I adore the black and white pictures of children. So often, we see children photographed in color, and we see them and their surroundings. These black and whites manage to illustrate the children as separate entities from their environment. It creates an unexpected atmosphere.

From the artists to the art, from the satisfied customer to the alternative families at home… this epitomizes Kelley Richardson’s world.

For a photography web site, ~the santa cruz tattoo project~ web page is surprisingly not photo-intensive. While the text is white on black (not my favorite), the sans serif’d Verdana is clear. The entrance page doesn’t have an annoying portal that has to load (or else which is skipped) - you click, and you’ve crossed the threshold into the plane of Santa Cruz in Kelley’s eyes. The links work. Her text is descriptive without being dull and without being over the heads of her audience. It is profound without being abstruse. As a web page to introduce one to the Santa Cruz Tattoo Project, this site is successful.

The site store’s proceeds help to keep the project going.

T-shirts, at $20 plus shipping, support an artist and her work.

Ultimately The Santa Cruz Tattoo Project will be published as a book. It will include thoughts, interviews, drawings, plans, and other ephemera collected during this photographic journey.