“Finally,” says CB Adams, “someone has chosen one of my Maddy Project photographs. I’ve been submitting photographs from this project for more than two years and numerous galleries, jurors and editor have passed on this work, which I find powerful and sometimes unnerving. I suspect that uncomfortableness may have prevented the works from being chosen.”
Adams began the Maddy Project — an idea that had been floating around for years — when he acquired a vintage mannequin that fit his concept. The mannequin came from a yard sale near his home.
“The mannequin was complete, with a stand, and was standing on the porch of a rather rundown home. At first, the homeowner, who said she was 92, wouldn’t sell the mannequin to me because I was a man. I’m not sure why that was an issue, but it somehow imbued the mannequin with a presence that was almost live it was alive. The woman was very suspicious of my motivations for purchasing the mannequin. The vibe I perceived was that she thought I had some sort of deviant sexual intentions toward the mannequin,” Adams says.
The woman wouldn’t sell the mannequin — which was for sale — to Adams, even after he explained his intention to use the mannequin as a model for a photography project. Only after Adams’s wife intervened and assured the woman that the mannequin would be used for proper purpose that the woman agreed to sell it — to Adams’ wife.
“It’s not quite true that no one has accepted the Maddy Project photographs. A couple of galleries have chosen other — visually ‘safer’ — photographs for inclusion in shows. The more overtly political and/or sexual of the photographs haven’t been chosen because of their nature. It would take a special sort of collector to choose this image to hang on their wall,” Adams says.
‘Trigger Warning’ magazine is an online publication. According to the site’s About section, “I have always had a strong, intrinsic urge to put pen to paper. Crafting poetry and prose allows me to channel my creative energy while also providing a framework for processing my innermost thoughts and emotions….Today, in addition to being an outlet for my own work, ‘Trigger Warning’ includes book reviews, writing tips and more. I hope that the site is useful and inspirational to you on your literary journey.”
Adams actively seeks publication opportunities for his photography in addition to gallery showings because these opportunities align with his artistic interests.
“I’m a hyphenated artist,” he says. “I am a writer-photographer. For a long time, I thought of those as separate things but I now recognize that combination as an integrated whole. After I quit thinking of them as separate, and thus somehow diluting my work, I could embrace how my literary and visual works were a whole, a complete approach to the world as I live it.”
Adams named the Maddy Project after a young woman who bullied him in middle school, named Maddy Church. Her verbal aggressiveness — combined with some physical and verbal aggression from male football players — made his middle school experiences often painful, and stayed with him until the present, and the photographs have been a way to process his feelings of inadequacy and not being a “cool kid.” Adams has also realized that his middle school years were not all bad, including meeting his best friend to this day. He’s also heard from schoolmates that Maddy grew into an unremarkable, middle class suburban housewife — or a nun.
“My experiences weren’t atypical, I realize now. They were just my ‘Malcolm In the Middle’ experience that many undergo. As much as I disliked Maddy Church, and as much as she actively shamed me for an entire school year, I now owe her a thanks for inspiring this ongoing project. Whoever the real Maddy Church was, she is now only a notion or a feeling I can deal with photographically. She’s material for me to use, a Maddy-memory, a ghost-Maddy.”
Adams thinks of the mannequin as more than a prop — more like an entity for him to manipulate in a way that he can’t with a live model. And there’s more he wants to accomplish with the mannequin.
“My wife keeps asking me when I’ll get rid of ‘that mannequin’ in the garage, and I keep telling her, ‘Not yet. I’ve still got some work to do with it.’ Maybe, whenever I think the Maddy Project is complete, I’ll see if that old woman is still alive and if she’ll buy it back,” Adams says.