Photographer Stacy Krantiz on her ​“muse” Jerimy

Taken from the new print issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.

I met Jerimy in 2011 at a dystopian compound in Ohio. I discovered him sitting on top of a hill with his childhood friends Andy and Wesley. They were yelling foul obscenities at strangers passing by and, as I stood listening, I felt the urgent need to know them. So I invited myself to stay at Jerimy’s home in Nashville where he lived with his parents. I slept on his bedroom floor and began to take photographs of him, his family, and friends.

Over the course of many years, Jerimy and I have built a relationship depicted in sound and image. I take on the role of observer, documentarian, friend, therapist, house guest, instigator, social scientist, mother, and fetishist. Jerimy takes on the role of performer, object of desire, interlocutor, storyteller, muse, and informant. Our relationship celebrates our bond as subject and documenter.

More than just immersing myself in the daily experience of his life, I am interested in the ways that I provoke, empower, and exploit him as my ​“subject”. The images that result teeter on the line between pleasure and suffering, lust and adoration, friendship and fascism.

TALENT Jerimy Cherry and Jakoda Cherry SPECIAL THANKS TO Tina and Brad Cherry