Homily

Dear Mr Richards

Further to our conversation of 23rd April I would like to confirm my interest in commissioning original photography from your agency for the purposes of creating an ongoing, cross-media advertising campaign promoting our line of products.

To recap: TT Anussen is a Rotterdam-based manufacturer of state-of-the-art surgical devices pertaining to the lower alimentary canal, perineal and fourchette regions. We are the acknowledged European frontrunner in this niche market. However, we recognize that in the field of the lower intestine the United States is the big door prize and to this end we are committed to an imminent expansion across the Atlantic.  Hence the need for an integrated North American campaign.

We work closely with physicians and alternative therapists (as well as consumer-market sodomites) to render the exploration of certain sensitive areas of the body as comfortable an endeavour as possible. We market and exclusive range of products, including:

• homeopathic analgesic suppositories (eucalyptus, tea-tree, apricot kernal, ylang-ylang, etc.)
• small, medium and large bore rectal thermometers
• pinpoint, floodlamp and rear-screen projection anal illumination equipment
• vari-speed proctoscopes
• single and multi-use flexible tubing
• manual, electric and diesel-powered suction bulbs
• Jangbu Prabesh ‘Master Your Sphincter’ DVD Box Sets
• hammer-percussion endoscopic febrillators
• re-useable swabs and wipes
• floor mops/buckets
• rapid deployment specula (smooth, ribbed and abraded)
• Disney character single-ended probes (M Mouse, D Duck, etc.)
• on-the-go fistula repair kits
• unisex clip-on electrodes
• liturgical insufflation valves and hoses
• NTSC-PAL adaptors
• belt sanders
• hamster/gerbil grooming supplies
• laminated, wipeable back issues of Harpers Magazine

Bearing in mind the broad range of products in our line we feel it will be necessary for us to harness the talents of more than a single photographer. Hence my overture to you.  What I propose is that we institute a group collaboration with a smaller ’boutique’ agency whereby the particular talents of each artist in the roster are brought to bear upon the areas of our product line which suit them best, thus creating a series of campaigns which are unique, original and diverting in their own right but which also benefit from an overarching viewpoint.  Your agency was referred to me by several prominent figures in the advertising industry (I had particularly fruitful conversations with Greg Carter of Modernista and Jessica Hoffman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, along with a somewhat inebriated and profane dialogue with Marni Beardlsey of Wieden + Kennedy) and upon review I believe your agency will be a perfect fit.

Obviously as we move forward I will be looking to you for guidance as to which photographer’s specific skills and interests would be best applied to which product lines.  Clearly this does not have to be entirely literal; I am very much open to the utilization of metaphor, simile and allusion.  Areas of our line have, in the past, suffered from commonly held misconceptions that have rendered them somewhat prosaic in the public eye.  But at Anussen we’ve always believed that creativity can be applied to the most seemingly banal items, illuminating their practicality, ingenuity and improbable range of applications.  I cannot claim to be an expert in the field of commercial photography but perhaps as a starting-point I can elucidate for you the areas of work I had considered each of your photographers most suitable for:

Henrik Knudsen - I adore his darkness.  His images are redolent of velvet, the work simultaneously melancholy, a touch menacing and yet deeply romantic: all elements that can be aptly applied to our products.  I am seeing a remote, roadside café at night, the parking lot abandoned but for a single car. A neon sign flickers a fragmented honky-tonk across the inky blackness.  Through the grease-streaked window an attractive man toys wistfully with a half-empty cup of coffee whilst a curiously arresting waitress looks on diffidently from behind the counter.  A contemporary Brief Encounter, echoing the kind of coming together such characters might undergo with, say, a length of colonic hose or a home-proctology kit. Perhaps we could reference the timeless nature of the narrative by reprising a classic tagline from the past.  ‘You’re Never Alone with an Anussen’ or something similar.

Dean Kaufman – the other end of the spectrum.  Where Knudsen embraces darkness, Kaufman floods us with light and space. and yet the theme of elegance persists throughout both.  He can bring a bright Sunday morning to our line.  Fresh New York bagels and gravlax in a vast Tribeca loft, a beautiful woman reclines, gazelle-like along a contemporary Biedermeyer chaise, the bed linen confidently tousled, the bright gleam of a brushed nickel speculum casually discarded upon a Baluchistan rug – a contrapuntal highlight and a teasing portal to the romance of the night before. We see our products as the epitome of good proctological taste.  Kaufman’s patrician sophistication compliments this perfectly.  In our view the broad sweep of a 2-meter enema tube is no less soaring and graceful than an Alexander Calder.

Micheal McLaughlin – whilst we endeavour to reach for the stars we must nonetheless take care lest our feet leave the ground. McLaughlin returns us to Everyman.  The baker, the small-businesswoman, the car-wash employee.  The cop, care-worn from a long day protecting and serving, watching The Sox with his feet up while his tireless wife tenderly swabs his hemorrhoids. A contemporary, working-class Christ/Magdelene composition worthy of Caravaggio.  I love how McLaughlin unflinchingly depicts reality but resolutely resists the temptation to laugh.  Eye contact, clarity, purpose. His subjects retain their essential dignity through the vagaries of life.  And Anussen’s products deal expressly with such vagaries, striving always to overcome them.  While there may be little joy in the cauterizing of anal warts there should nevertheless be a modicum of dignity.

Sian Kennedy - there is an element of pathos, even tragedy,  involved in the employment of Anussen products.  It is critical, however, that the process be rendered in some way endearing, even sweet. This is Kennedy’s canvas.  The grieving rectum does not discriminate.  The gentle, plump lady who serves you tiramisu in a Boise diner may have a large anal fissure.  The man beside you on the train has chronic seepage.  The conductor, warts.  Kennedy is a master archer able to silently zero in on the poignancy of apparently random encounters between people or objects, be it swollen perineal sepsis or raw burgers suppurating.  He gives plaintive voice to the underdog.

Greg Miller - his mastery of the large format lends us the facility to produce works redolent of frescoes in Venetian churches.  Miller’s splendid implied narratives, the sly glance and the momentary human connection, these are wholly appropriate for our ‘story-driven’ work.  A nervous, near-naked patient catches the eye of a solemn nurse as she purposefully greases the colonoscope nipple.  A lonely businessman contemplates his soiled underpants in a Courtyard by Marriott near Cleveland.  I am also fascinated by his new work, whereby he employs the profound detail of the 8/10 camera to render a familiar object – a face, a body – an objective landscape.  It is almost topographical in nature.  ’What is a nose?’ he seems to ask. ‘How does it relate to a mouth?’  We can have Miller pose similar questions for us. ‘What is an anus?’ for instance. ‘Why is it drooling?’

Perkin Lovely - what is there to say?  Lovely accelerates like a meteor to the core of our being.  It is as if the glands that secrete his artistic intelligence are located entirely below the diaphragm. I see him as the bare-breasted figurehead on the prow of our fourchette and vulva campaigns.  He speaks the language like a native.  In this sense I believe Lovely to be the future Voice of Anussen.  His adamant fascination with the cartography of the territory between the navel and the thigh – his torrid reluctance to stray from it – these are assets difficult to measure.  It may be necessary to broaden his gender focus from ‘the arse, the thicket and the pube bush wilde’ but I suspect this will not be a problem for a man of his appetites.  Other than a pendulous shadow the perinea of both genders are surprisingly similar. Lovely’s oeuvre is worthily eponymous.

Tim Morris - product, product, product.  For too many years we have presented our lines in clinical manner, silhouetted against white.  Whilst this approach may have rendered essential information with due clarity, I have come to believe that we have been underselling the unique personalities of the various pieces of equipment: and after all, it is personality that sets us apart from our competitors.  In the end an anal dilator is not an anal dilator is not an anal dilator.  There are crucial if esoteric differences.  Morris brings an apparent foundness to his still-life.  Why sanitize a speculum when you can breathe life into it by inserting it into an appropriate environment? Perhaps tossed to the side on bright yellow formica or languishing upon sheer subway tile having fallen during a rigorous examination? Morris’s work lends context, it informs and begs questions that the observer must mull over privately in a space with a locking door.

Chris Buck - humour.  Whilst not wishing to subside into abject scatology, we at Anussen recognize the capacity for comedy in the promotion of our line.  Asses are funny.  As are the fanfares that issue from them.  There is a Becketian absurdity in the application of a radial high-volume insufflation valve.  Laughter in the dark, perhaps, but doesn’t that define the Buck Manifesto? Along with the ‘yeah, been there’ chuckle of recognition and penetrating human empathy.  Buck makes lasting images that twist in the corners like a crooked pin.  I am also fascinated by his creative deployment of props and costume.  I look at his work and find myself projecting Anussen products into it.  My imagination is loosened.  Billy Joel cradling a fissure suction ligator in his damp palms. Maya Lin sniffing swabs.

Nick Meek - brings a certain objectivity and high-key verve to the table.  I love his sense of landscape: whether it be torrid peaks under a high-octane Alpine sun or the miniature topography of sardines in a tin.  The world of proctology is replete with colour and Meek’s hair-trigger mastery in this field will be a great asset.  Fecal incontinence rendered as a kid of austere Pollock meets Rothko potpourri of plosive iridescence – this is Meek territory indeed.  I am also intrigued by his skills in the melding of separate and distinct images into a cohesive whole.  A curving stop-motion snowboard descent might be the template for a multi-part colonoscopy procedure, and it is exciting to think of the places he could put a face where no face would ordinarily be.

David Barry - his canny hyper-realism and innate understanding of the peculiar semiotics of photography will lend a thrilling inner vibration to our collaboration. Barry ably utilizes metaphor and non-sequitur to illuminate how we respond viscerally (rather than intellectually) to what we see.  A man stands blankly on a suburban lawn clutching a flaccid garden hose that steadily dribbles muddy fluid. We will also embrace Barry’s cheeky take on sexuality.  It would be disingenuous for us to suggest that our products are employed exclusively in the service of Hippocrates: Eros too has a seat at the table.  If this is viewed as something of a cabalistic pleasure then that is surely in keeping with the mantra of Mr Barry.

In conclusion, I hope this proposal excites you.  Clearly this is a considerable undertaking and we have a substantial distance to go.  We must discuss approaches. We must plan timetables and draft budget proposals.  But I firmly believe that an Anussen/Richards collaboration, with all its attendant corollaries, will bear delicious fruit for us all.  I look forward to your response.

With warmest regards

Pieter Anussen

CEO TT Anussen

Sian Kennedy 2008

Share on Facebook