Terry Shanahan had a great idea one day. We were talking on the phone while I was getting ready to leave for a tour of Italy in January of 2014 to promote my latest CD. I told him about how I had been photographing interesting bathrooms for 10 years during my travels, and he suggested that I put together a book of these photos and call it "Dear John".
The concept evolved from simple photographs to painted photographs, as I had seen Terry's work as an artist and some of this work included painted photographs which I thought were just great. We thought to paint scenes into each photo and this eventually evolved into the idea to include a short poem that I would write which would correspond to each painted photo; each mini poem would be about love and relationships. It was at this point that "Dear John..." was born.
We began to go through each of the the photos, which I had started taking in 2004 while on board the MS Veendam for a cruise. There were quite a few from the Veendam, as well as from 2 other ships, along with photos from the many hotel rooms and clubs that I had either stayed in or performed at while on tour in Italy and Germany during 2006, 2013 and 2014. We picked out what we felt were the most interesting ones, and got to work.
"Dear John..." is a work in progress, and the process is simple, but tedious. Terry has chosen to use a very basic paint program on his Mac G4, which is very fitting as many of these photos were taken using a cell phone with very low resolution. The goal is to create something beautiful using the least amount of help from sophisticated technology.
~ Carolyne Mas, May 21, 2014
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| Guest bathroom in the Penthouse Suite aboard the MS Veendam, December 2006. |
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| Ladies' room in the Archivo Storico nightclub in Naples, Italy, January 2014. |
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| Bathroom at my friend Massimo Massimi's home in Naples, Italy, April 2006. |
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| Ladies' room in the common area of Il Palazzetto hotel in Clavesana, Italy, January 2014. |
