The brilliant Ellen Von Unwerth shot an extensive pictorial of Lady Gaga in vampire drag for Out. The exclusive Out feature is called The Lady is a Vamp. The shoot styling is credited to someone named Nicola Formichetti who is seriously talented and who Bing informs me is the creative director of Dazed and Confused and is responsible for some of the fashion in Vogue Hommes Japan, V, Arena Homme, and others, as well as of course out. Always fun to discover the work of creative people I have not come across before.

Out calls Lady Gaga “Pop’s newest — and gayest — superstar”. One of the things I like about Lady Gaga is that I feel she is someone post-orientation in her approach to sexuality. She has stated often in interviews that she is attracted to women physically but only has romantic relationships with men. I’m not sure if that makes her super-gay, but maybe I am just feeling cantankerous today about people being so bent on labeling sexuality. I do not feel that an individual’s sexuality generally belongs in a tidy little box with a label stickered on it.

Then again, from an editorial perspective, I’m pleased that Out indentifies Lady Gaga as gay, however she defines herself. Because this gave Out reason to publish a beautiful portfolio of images of Lady Gaga shot by Ellen Von Unwerth. They did a ton of different set-ups and have both black and white and color and a whole spectrum of spooky themes. Lots of vampire and gothic tropes photographed appealingly. Smoky dark eyes, coffin, sunglasses at night, blood, nudity (probably sfw nudity) fangs, and cute skeleton in combat boots. Definitely worth checking out.

AltPorn.net interviewer Beda Hoydenish writes:

“Everyone knows Amelia G runs the Blue Blood empire and also does some of the photography and writing for it. Here on APN, we’ve featured photographs she has shot for Blue Blood many times and we’ve mentioned her writing once or twice. (You can also see the interview we did with Amelia G five years ago — Ed.) I write for APN and I have all the old Blue Blood print magazines from the 90’s in plastic bags with cardboard backing, so I thought I was pretty aware and I still found a lot on Amelia G’s new AmeliaG.com site to both inform and entertain me. In addition to running the business end of Blue Blood and working as an editor for many projects, Amelia G has had hundreds of photo sets published and thousands of articles. Amelia G has done writing and/or photography for all the major adult publishing houses including Playboy, Penthouse, Flynt, Crescent, Magna, and AVN, plus niche magazines including Marquis, On Our Backs, Skin Two, Tattoo Teasers, Fetish, Extreme Fetish, $pread, and of course Blue Blood. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Erotica, Best S/M Erotica, and Best Women’s Erotica and dozens more books. But she still took time out of her busy schedule to give APN this exclusive interview.

APN: Blue Blood magazine in print was really ground zero for jump-starting the whole altporn genre and you’ve managed to maintain a top ranking for Blue Blood for more than sixteen years. To what do you credit your remarkable success and longevity?

AG: Thanks. I always hope the universe will smile on me for hard work and doing the right thing, and sometimes it does. A big advantage Blue Blood had in coming to the web is that the magazine was always subscription-driven and we had free sites for the community for years before we launched our first membership site. We actually had paid members before we had even actually launched the first pay site because we tested out a banner rotation for a few minutes and people saw it. I really appreciate the support we’ve gotten over the years and try to really put a lot back into the scene and into having . . .

Cool promo pic of yours truly by Forrest Black. Read the whole interview by Beda Hoydenish on AltPorn.net.

So I registered the domain for my name a while back, when the internet still had a bit of that new web smell. I’d been doing work more and more in the digital space for a few years then and I would end up having to pay off a cybersquatter for the BlueBlood.com domain, so it seemed sensible to register everything near and dear to me. Then nine more years went by. Some of my favorite sites have grown out of Forrest Black registering domains while drinking beer and then me feeling that, once it was registered, the domain had to have a site on it. For a long time, I just had a link to a hosted journal on AmeliaG.com, but now seemed like the time to actually put a proper site on there. Today it officially goes live.

The site has the Amelia G bio with just the broad strokes. There is a more detailed sidebar with just 2009 news about press appearances and where my writing and photography has appeared this year. I considered including a page with a gigantic lists of places I’ve been published, but, after doing thousands of pages of editorial, not to mention radio and television stuff, it just seemed like it would be a bit of a laundry list. Plus, oddly enough, when I was doing research for the site, I discovered that some of my work had been reprinted without me even knowing it. I’ve moved less as an adult than I did as a kid, but sometimes it is still possible to lose track of compatriots with moves and all on everyone’s part.

I hope people enjoy the Photography Portfolio section of Forrest Black’s and my work. People always ask to see my online portfolio and I always was reluctant to put one together before. When I say “reluctant”, I mean that the notion of editing together only forty of my favorite images, out of everything we’ve ever shot, made me effing hyperventilate. I forced my brain through its discomfort and editing a selection of images from over such a long time period turned out to be really fun, once I got into kind of the right headspace, because I got to look at all sorts of contact sheets with positive associations and beautiful unseen images. Because of the ephemeral nature of human life, there is always something intrinsically bittersweet about any good photograph, I think, but it still felt mostly good to go through everything.

Given the fiscal realities of shooting on film, there are all sorts of awesome images Forrest Black and I shot which nobody has ever seen because it cost so much to make prints, so we tended to just print whatever a magazine wanted to publish for a lot of shoots. So the photo portfolio I edited together on AmeliaG.com has quite a few exclusive images the world has never seen, along with some favorites you will probably recognize.

It was also really fun putting together the section with the Amelia G Personal Pics because I got to dig through hard drives of tons of random uncategorized galleries of digital nightlife snapshots and recall all sorts of enjoyable adventures. My mom looked at the pics and said it looked like I must go out every night. Really I’m a workaholic, so I just like to only venture out for really cool stuff and I try to make a night out count. I hope you all also enjoy my goofy snapshots of going to parties, conventions, and gallery shows, clubbing, travel, and just hanging out with pals.

The background photo is a promo shot Forrest Black was kind enough to do for me last week. I really like how it turned out. If you are interested in hairstyle matters, my haircut is by Thierry, blowout is by Youne Lee, and color is old skool punk rock style where my bathroom is purple now too.

Putting the Amelia G site together made me nervous as anything, but I’m really happy it is complete and I think it turned out good. I hope you all like it too.

People keep asking me why I haven’t mentioned that Forrest Black and I have some of our photography of American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert in the current issues of Star Magazine and Rolling Stone, so I suppose I’ll mention it now. The internet has been abuzz for weeks now that Adam Lambert was going to “come out” in Rolling Stone issue 1081. So many publications were reporting that Rolling Stone was going to report that Adam Lambert says he is gay that Rolling Stone had to rush to put the digital image of the cover, lensed by brilliant top photographer Matthew Rolston, online well before the issue hit newsstands. Which seems very meta-something.

For some reason, a number of folks desperately wanted to be the primary source for settling speculation on Adam Lambert’s sexual orientation. Forrest Black and I photographed Adam Lambert kissing Brad “Cheeks” Bell. In point of fact, all of the supposedly scandalous images of Adam Lambert kissing a male were of him kissing the same guy, Brad “Cheeks” Bell. However, as many fans seems to find boy/boy smooching inconclusive and seemed to perhaps care about orientation, I didn’t want any part of anything which might hurt Adam Lambert’s chances of winning American Idol. I heart Alex Burton, my editor at Star Magazine, because the deal he and I made for the first round of images he ran was that there would be no outing of Adam Lambert in the issue and Alex Burton, my man of the Led Zeppelin tattoo, kept his word and kept the article classy and positive. Word is that Star Magazine offered Brad “Cheeks” Bell $2,000 to tell all and Cheeks declined, saying that he’d turned down higher dollar offers than that and he would only ever do a positive interview about Adam Lambert.

Unsubstantiated rumor is that Rolling Stone ponied up $50,000 for Adam Lambert to tell them his sexual preference first. Rolling Stone contributing editor Vanessa Grigoriadis, my fellow Wesleyan University alum, did a great job presenting Adam Lambert as a whole interesting person with visceral prose and probing but respectful questions. In the interview, Adam Lambert tells Vanessa Grigoriadis that he waited to come out in Rolling Stone because he felt he could express himself in context there. Some of the context, however, is that he didn’t lose his virginity (presumably to a man) until he was twenty-one and that he’d made out with girls while drunk at nightclubs and was now somewhat bi-curious about what it would be like to have sex with a woman.

Rolling Stone has always had some of the best, most incisive and most intriguing interviews of any magazine (and of course Wesleyan grads tend to be terrific writers), so it is no surprise this is a good one. But I’m left uncomfortable that the issue of a sexual label was such a big deal. I feel like we don’t have enough words to describe sexual orientation for the terms gay and straight to have much meaning.

If Adam Lambert suddenly got a girlfriend, after years of going out with the same sex, would that mean he did not count as gay any more? How about if he just occasionally fooled with really inspiring women who really got him as a person, but only had relationships with men? I realize that I travel in circles which are perhaps a bit ahead of the curve on sexual openness. But I know men who are gay-identified who sleep with women from time to time. I know women who are bi-identified who only have relationships with men but also have sex with women. I know men who are straight-identified who will have sex with men provided there is a sexual configuration of enough people for it to count as an orgy. Everyone can think of the prison example for same sex relationships among people who do not identify as gay or lesbian. Etc. I think that maybe 10% of the population is strongly hardwired to enjoy only the same gender and maybe 10% of the population is strongly hardwired to enjoy only the opposite sex. But most people, in the right situation, are more fluid than that. They might have a preference, even a strong preference, but, in the right situation, the preference won’t dictate their actions.

At any rate, I feel most human sexuality is too complex for a tidy label to be genuinely descriptive. I thought it was cool that Adam Lambert told Vanessa Grigoriadis and Rolling Stone, “I loved it that this season girls went crazy for me . . . As far as I’m concerned, it’s all hot. Just because I’m not sticking it in there doesn’t mean that I don’t find it beautiful.” There is a certain combination of flamboyance and rawness there which is the reason so many of my friends were rooting for Adam Lambert on American Idol.

And it is a flamboyance and rawness which utterly transcends sexual orientation. I think that general America is far more afraid of that rock star counterculture essence than they are of male homosexuality. Senior Blue Blood writer Will Judy made the excellent point that, although Adam Lambert was runner-up to Kris Allen, rather than winner, on American Idol, “Lambert got to live my ultimate superdream from 5th grade though. Fronted Kiss AND Queen in the same night. (And KILLED, of course)” which is a really fine summation.

Singer/songwriter Lady GaGa appears on the cover of the current issue of Rolling Stone. The cover is shot by photographer David LaChapelle. David LaChapelle has shot many Rolling Stone covers, is known for his bright colors and elaborate sets, and started in photography taking naked pictures of club kids. Lady GaGa went to an Upper West Side high school and became a New York club kid. Maybe I am biased because I enjoy Lady GaGa’s work and I enjoy David LaChapelle’s work and I’ve spent a fair amount of time inside edgy nightclubs, but I don’t get what all the fuss is about.

Rolling Stone has certainly run nakeder covers than the Lady GaGa one. Anyone remember the full nude of model Laetitia Casta on a bed of petals? It is not like you’d find artistic nudes likes these on PukingOnPenis.com. Seriously don’t click that, but you get what I mean. Today, in a world where all sorts of depravity is a click away, why does a teensy bit of authentic club culture make so many people hyperventilate?

Although a certain sort of bohemian club culture has existed since time immemorial and that artistic counterculture has always made some people uncomfortable, is it really that big a deal? Or is the problem that we have come to expect pop stars to be the best-looking possible actresses hired by management teams with songwriters and stylists and something which came about more organically now seems wrong? Lady GaGa is widely credited as having written on songs for Akon, Britney Spears, Fergie, Pussycat Dolls, and oddly enough New Kids on the Block. Although I’m not sure how or if Lady GaGa is credited in ASCAP, I’d be happier if I could find her songwriting credits. Still, I tend to believe that she actually writes songs. Even if you don’t find bluffin with one’s muffin as entertaining as I do, surely the combination of artist and performer is still better than solely artist or solely performer. At the very least, it is not worse, is it?

From my point of view, the most controversial thing about the David LaChapelle Rolling Stone cover featuring Lady GaGa is that New York fashionistas credit the whole bubble outfit look to designer Hussein Chalayan. Although neither a bubble dress or bubble corset appear on the web site for Hussein Chalayan’s 2007 collections, I’ve seen credible photos from his runway show stuff for that year. The designer was reportedly disappointed that Lady GaGa knocked off his design, rather than wearing the original.

So, if you’d like to recreate Lady GaGa’s Rolling Stone look, you now know where to commission your own bubble outfit, if you don’t feel crafty enough to make one. Then all you have to do is round up a bunch of your naked and barely-clad friends and get wet and messy. Photos optional.

Rolling Stone #1080 is on newsstands now.

In this video, I interview fab photographer Steve Diet Goedde about his creative process and recent collaboration with composer Robert Waechter. The GoeddeConcerto CD features twenty-one concertos by Robert Waechter, each inspired by a specific image by Steve Diet Goedde. The photographs are included in an accompanying booklet designed by Steve Diet Goedde. Special thanks to Stockroom for the shooting location.

You can get signed copies of GoeddeConcerto now at SteveDG.com (if you don’t like to type or spell anything complex) or SteveDietGoedde.com (if you prefer being completist).

Steve Diet Goedde has been shooting much longer than I have and he has been very generous with good advice to me over the years, so I was really happy to do this interview. His perspective is interesting in general. Enjoy.

Last month, Blue Blood made a submissions site live for models and photographers and writer/photographers to submit to various Blue Blood projects, mostly BlueBlood.com and, to a lesser extent, BlueBlood.net. Blue Blood enjoys publishing a variety of body types, both male and female and in between. The most important thing for modeling for Blue Blood is that someone have that certain something, star quality, individuality, passion of personal expression to put in front of the lens. The original Blue Blood magazine in print featured exclusively interactive pictorials of people who were lovers in real life, who would be doing what they were doing, whether or not a camera was present. Non-feature photos in Blue Blood in print were generally related to specific entertainment news or how-to articles.

BlueBlood.com features pin-up and interactive erotica photo sets where all the images in a particular gallery will be of a person or couple, in one setting, in a series, which generally tells some sort of story. BlueBlood.net, of course, features articles and galleries about cool events, genre movies, goth-industrial music, punk nightclubs, interesting clothes, and similar fun stuff i.e. BlueBlood.net publishes photo galleries which are about a particular topic of interest. You would think that more photographers would shoot entertainment news, fashion, and music work than shoot nudes, but apparently that is not really the case. I’ve found that the most common question I get from interested photographers is what the galleries on BlueBlood.net should be about. Somehow, once the naked aspect is removed, many of them don’t know what the photos are about, other than that there is a photographer who happens to take pictures. I am baffled that there are people who consider themselves Photographers with a capital P and have no idea what their work is supposed to be saying.

I entirely understand, however, why many models are confused by the submission process and gunshy about asking questions. Running a site can be stressful and there are never enough hours in the day, but I’m genuinely kinda weirded out by how many site operators or model coordinators hate to answer questions from models. I’m always happy to answer anyone I might work with’s questions beforehand. It makes me ballistic when people try to go back on their word, once they have made an agreement, but, to me, that just means everything should be entirely clear from the beginning. The most common question I get from interested models, once they have read the Blue Blood Photo FAQ is almost the opposite of the most popular photographer question. Models are puzzled by the whole nudity vs. clothes thing. Some models don’t seem to get that they have to keep their clothing on for BlueBlood.net editorial. By the same token, any model who has even considered modeling for a membership site besides BlueBlood.com wants to double-check precisely what she must do on camera and what she must not do. This is because of the way these models have been pressured to do either less (nice girls only do conservative nudes) or more (all the cool girls give strangers blowjobs) by sites they have considered working with. I really don’t get the thing where some sites feel like everyone has to be fully nude but nobody is allowed to (heavens to Betsy!) insert anything or where some sites have the attitude that anyone who hasn’t fucked everyone else on it shouldn’t be allowed in the clubhouse. It really bothers me that there are models who go along with this conformity BS and peer pressure other models to only do exactly what they have decided is okay for them personally, no matter whether other models personally prefer to be more conservative or more extreme. These are not decisions which should be made via groupthink.

If everybody on BlueBlood.com was doing the exact same level of nudity or naughtiness, with the exact same amount of explicitness or lack thereof in presentation, that would be as antithetical to the point of Blue Blood as if everybody looked exactly the same. (You are not required to have tattoos either; they are optional and only a plus if you got them for a meaningful reason or they are quality ink or ideally both.) Of course, all publications have to have some sort of structure, a certain promise to the reader of what they will find inside. However, any pay site with a bunch of chicks who look the same and apparently all want to get the exact same amount naked is just pandering to a fetish and it is not punk and it is not about freedom.

Many of Blue Blood’s photographers and writers and models, and certainly your truly, have fetishes too and naturally they are more likely to be represented in the variety of BlueBlood.com content than kinks various creative team members are less into, but Blue Blood doesn’t have all the hang-ups so many of the sites seem to about nudity. The whole point is that it is about individual expressions of sexuality and sensuality. Individuality is key. If all a photograph does is hit a format, that is not art, just commerce. If a photo utterly fails to hit any format, that is not art either, just wanking. For photography to be art, it must both express something and communicate something.

The thing I love best about photography is the way it can capture and preserve a moment.

Most of my ephemeral moments have gone unrecorded. When I got to college, it was my twelfth school in twelve years. Moving that often gave me many qualities I like about myself, but it also meant that there were so many people, so many communities, so many adventures, and so many times in my life which evaporated with nothing to show they ever took place. Just my memories with no one to share them with. People who do not move can at least have conversations about “remember when . . .” but my friends and compatriots were scattered across dozens of countries.

I always loved when people showed me their photo albums and yearbooks and explained the most important images. Oscar Wilde once famously said, “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world.” Oscar was speaking of absinthe, but pictures are a lot like the green fairy that way. Sometimes a flattering photograph represents a loathsome situation and sometimes a hideous photograph is a reminder of something wonderful.

I reminded myself of what is most important about a photograph, while going over the scans for the two most recent photo galleries by Forrest Black and yours truly. These galleries are bittersweet. While I was going over the final edit to put the pictures in the BlueBlood.net system, one of the people pictured instant messaged me to tell me she had just had a nasty break-up with the guy, also pictured, who she was with on this particular Halloween night at Bar Sinister. Two of the girls Forrest Black and I shot that night became mortal enemies shortly thereafter. Over a guy, of course. There are pictures of people from multiple bands which should have broken bigger than they did in there. Heck, there are pictures in there of someone I used to really like who eventually was nearly singlehandedly the main reason Forrest Black and I all but totally quit rock journalism and photography. Occasionally shooting musical friends and high dollar jobs, Forrest Black and I probably still shoot more rock work than most of the knobs wandering around Los Angeles claiming to be rock photogs, but we used to do so much more and feel so differently about it. These two galleries also feature a girl I thought could be a great mainstream model, but she never followed up the contacts I gave her. There’s the promoter, who was one of the first people we ever covered in Blue Blood in print, who just closed his most recent venture. The list goes on. It was a fabulous night, even though we broke the camera we were shooting with. This happens more often than I’d like in a nightclub setting. I’m not even sure where all the pictures from that shoot are because the ones we shot on a second camera seem to be MIA.

Regardless, there are so many people here I have felt such fondness for. Dreams and relationships may wither or shatter, but our photographs preserve one hot moment.

There is even one person in our photographs here who is dead now. He was a nice person, talented and fun, and he passed away far far too early. Some of Forrest Black’s and my photography was used in his memorial service, but he never got to see these pictures. There are many things I feel there will always be time for, but sometimes the clock stops. Rest in peace, J.D. I guess there was a reason you had to wear a shirt which reads, “Die young; stay pretty”?