Yesterday, my photographer friend Clayton Cubitt, aka Nerve blogger Siege, sent me an email. The subject header read: "Any of this sound familiar?" There was a link to the website of Craig Cowling, aka former Nerve blogger Naughty James. The "sound familiar" was directed at Cowling's bio. I began reading it and thought, this does sound familiar. Because it was plagiarized from an introduction I wrote for an interview I did with Cubitt for the photography magazine Eyemazing in 2005 and falsely attributed to one "Tim Clark." Siege emailed James and requested he remove it. For now, it's still online.
Update: The bio has been removed.
Update: Xeni Jardin has posted more on the great douchebag debate in which Cowling claims that he is innocent and fingers "Tim Clark."
[Clayton Cubitt's] work is, more often than not, relentlessly sensual, saturated in deep colours, infused with an explicitness that lays its subject as bare as possible... His indulgences, it seems, are women, fashion, and sex. There is little distinction for him, it appears, between the personal and the professional. As a photographer, he has crossed the proverbial line, including himself--as voyeur and participant--in an on-camera life that utterly obliterates the distinction between object and subject, rendering objectivity an archaic term. With his rock star dalliances, his collaborator and fiancé Katie James, and a desire to marry high-art style and low-brow subjects, Cubitt sits at the photographic edge.--Susannah Breslin, Eyemazing
[Craig Cowling's] work, is more often than not, violently poetic, saturated in deep colours, infused with an explicitness that lays its subject as bare as possible. His indulgences, it seems, are woman, rock and roll, fashion and sex. There is little distinction for him, it appears, between the private and the public. He likes the viewers of his work to “feel like they have just stumbled across a situation they shouldn't have, like catching your parents having sex for example.” As photographer he has crossed the proverbial line, including himself-simultaneously as voyeur and participant-in an on camera life that breaks down the wall between object and subject, ridding of objectivity as quickly as he does his tight underpants. With his rock star lifestyle and a desire to marry high-art style with low-art subjects, Craig Cowling sits at the photographic edge. Take a peek for yourself.--"Naughty James"
