Over the last year, model and artist Stephen Tobias has been apart of some of FH's biggest celebrations. Stephen's images were some of the most popular shots from my Last Gasp of Summer Series, and his 2014 advent calendar helped celebrate Christmas on the site last year. Although Christmas day is over, January 1st seems a great day to look back at the German model and artist's 2015 edition.
'Avent Calendars don't seem to be popular in the US, but in Germany they are. When I was a child I had one which showed Santa Claus with a reindeer sledge riding through a small town, visiting people and doing errands, until arriving in the beautiful Gothic church for Christmas eve on December 24, which is when Germans celebrate Christmas. I loved this calendar and its colorful setting, which was put up on December 1 and disappeared on New Year. It has been lost after I moved away from my parents house, but I still see those little pictures before my inner eye.'
'Nothing we remember is lost entirely. We have the capacity of recreating or reviving almost anything, sometimes better than ever before. But it was more like an ironic comment to a commercially driven advent calendar craze, with plastic calendars filled with little chocolates and the like, that 4 years ago I playfully did a first advent calendar, with nothing but nude pictures of myself taken throughout the year. Any countdown is a progression. Any progression contains a narration. I am not good at storytelling with words, but I can do it with pictures. Seen in a context those series of 24 pictures can tell a story of ideas born, efforts made, battles fought, things achieved and lost, and thoughts deepened. I worked a bit more on this aspect this year, and if I continue maybe this is the direction things will take. Self portrait of the artist as a nude man, narrated in in 24 pictures! Salvation or Nirvana always comes at the end. Who would have thought...'
Open A Tiny Window (2014)
