Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph T. Caster.
Joseph T., please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I am born and raised in southern Rhode Island, and I knew I always wanted to be an artist. As I got older, wanting to be an artist turned into immature thoughts of wanting to be a “famous” artist, and then soon realizing that I just wanted to be happy making my art. I painted when I was younger but started using photography as the primary conceptual vehicle in my teens, because photography gave me what I needed, that being a duplicate of real life. Painting always frustrated me because I couldn’t paint realistically very well, and photography was realistic, but recently I have been doing both painting and photography in my new series of work.
I am very interested in the people around me, including myself, and the things we do regarding identity, love, desire and daily rituals. I have recently been using myself more in my photographs, realizing that I wanted to be a character in the art, instead of only a witness to it all. I also realized that it wasn’t fair to just be objectifying my family and friends, but to objectify myself as well. These ideas come from the fascination with human nature, and the strange, bizarre roles we all think we play, between women, men, boys and girls and everything in between.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I am a visual artist who primarily uses the medium of photography to convey my ideas. I almost always am photographing close family and friends, to talk about family relationships, male-female relationships, the tropes and archetypes we try to fit into, and the line between what is playful, and what is provocative. I feel as if I am continually searching for a reason for the strange acts we perform, but with every chance at an answer, arises a new question.
Recently, I did a series of work where I wanted to photograph my models, and also have them photograph me, to discuss the relationship of power between the artist and the subject. I plagued myself with the idea that I was manipulating these people, and that the artist had so much dominance over the subject of a photograph, but directly facing these ideas made me realize that it’s our participation in the act of photography, that makes the subject of the photo the most powerful.
Those photographs led me to my most recent work, where I wanted to discuss love and desire, not only love and desire in the romantic sense but the love and desire to be seen in a photograph. What drives us to let someone else pose us and exhibit our image, out of love for art? Is it that we want to be wanted? Or do we want to be validated for our beauty?
What responsibility, if any, do you think artists have to use their art to help alleviate problems faced by others? Has your art been affected by issues you’ve concerned about?
I feel the role of the artist is no longer somebody who looks at things and is passively making, but someone who is involved in every aspect of their art. I can only speak for myself, but I feel that when I became more contemplative and introspective, that allowed me to create more meaningful artwork.
My work is centered around a seemingly small bubble of life, that being things that occur around the home and in private; family relations, love, insecurity about sex and intimacy, and the roles we think we must play, but these things all relate to the grander scheme of the world.
The way we interact with ourselves and those close to us, is very much affected by the media we consume, and the images we see from the rest of the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.josephtcaster.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caster19967/
Image Credit:
All images are my own.
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