As a teenager, Hally McGehean was the most glamorous person I knew. When I was seventeen I was in love with her. Not a serious love. The kind of love a seventeen-year-old boy has for a woman in her twenties who wears cowboy boots and sundresses that reveal the freckles on the tops of her breasts. Freckle breast love.
Most of the people on the island where we worked were in love with Hally though, in one way or another. Despite our age difference, and the fact that my idea of a good time was drinking piss-warm beer for no particular reason while listening to bad music, Hally would smoke cigarettes with me, listen to my rambling stories, and even put up with my graceless advances (“Hally,” I would say seriously, “I really think we should make out.”)
While her beauty and willingness to put up with me were enough to keep me enthralled, it was the life she lived, so different from my own, that made her glamorous. Hally is a performer. She made her Broadway debut before the age of ten, and would always be off to London or New York between summers to work on her next film project or play. I would return to a place where the only entertainment came in the form of beat-up trucks and old logging roads. Bouncing in the back of a rusted Toyota I’d dream of sundresses and freckles.
It has been years since Hally and I shared a Camel Light on that small piece of land ten miles off the coast of New Hampshire. I recently discovered that, on top of her acting career, she is now selling art online, including a project that was 366 days in the making. I tracked down Hally’s contact info and engaged her in a one word interview: “why?” This is her response.
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Hally McGehean: I’ve been almost famous my whole life, lucky enough at thirty-seven to have had a successful career in show business for thirty years. I’ll credit good parenting for the scant amount of drugs I’ve taken considering I spent nights at Studio 54 when I was nine and had my own police escort. Though emotionally unscarred by my child welfare, 1980 New York City tempered my aesthetic and has left me with an enduring love of all things shiny and decadently seedy. I grew up in dressing rooms full of sequins and false eyelashes and mirrored apartments furnished with satin, Lucite and red shag carpeting. In my formative years everything reflected.
It follows naturally then, in my adoption of the fine art to keep the performing one company, that my materials would be sex, acrylic, and my own image.
On January 1, 2008 I began a 365-Day Self-Portrait Subscription. For one year I took a photograph of myself every day and sent each photograph every day to paying subscribers. Though my primary goal was to pay my rent, my ancillary goals were interesting. I hoped to answer some questions: What story or stories will the pictures tell a stranger? How varied will the subscribers’ assumptions, fantasies, and projections be? How much will those fantasies reflect the viewer and how much the subject? What kind of intimacy will develop between the subject and the anonymous viewer? What is the relationship between the exhibitionist and voyeur? What will it become?
The photographs, though obviously consistent in subject, varied in style. Some were dirty, some were abstract, some were theatrical, some required no title and some were dependent on one. One day I duct-taped my mouth shut, put the newspaper on my lap, tied myself to a chair, and titled the picture “How much is she worth to you?” Another day I made my own tombstone, lay beneath it, and called it “practicing.” I was particularly pleased with a black eye I gave myself using eyeliner and lipstick for a picture entitled, “I know he doesn’t really mean it.”
In May of 2008 I went through some difficult weeks. I was heartbroken and poor (again). I photographed myself in a panic attack. The panic attack picture was followed by a suicidal poet series (head in the oven, stones in my pockets) that led one subscriber to unsubscribe. He sent me a thoughtful email requesting that I let him know if I was healthy enough that my interest in romantic suicide might not be practical. “You create amazing art,” he said, “and like all good art it affects those who view it.” Five months in and I had a compelling answer to some of my questions as well as a great flattery.
I hope to exhibit the collection soon and am working on its accompanying book that will include all 366 photographs (it was a leap year). My subscribers included two writers, an inventor, a venture capitalist, and a photographer who will step out of the shadows to contribute their impressions. I also sent a picture to myself each day and have a complete unopened and postmarked set that is available to the collector for the price of a modest but fully-loaded car.
If that is out of your price range I offer you a free peep here of another private endeavor made public. I wrote a picture book called “Upping My Numbers.” It’s a light and elegant but exhaustive story of my sexual endeavors. With pictures. I’m writing a musical version of it at present. It’s a one-woman show that takes place entirely in bed.
