Carlos Batts has enjoyed a successful career as a fetish and fashion photographer. He has captured dominatrices and strippers, rap stars and rockers, celebrities and wannabes. His work has appeared in numerous porn mags, including Hustler, Taboo, Oui and Nugget, as well as the magazine I used to publish, Extreme Fetish.

He's also had fashion and music shoots printed in While You Were Sleeping, Vibe and Sportswear International (?!?!). And after moving to LA, Carlos even dabbled in video porn, shooting Love Hurts 1 and 2 and Girl Trouble.

His photography has also been published in two books, Wild Skin and Crazy Sexy Hollywood, both of which are primarily erotica. His latest publication is American Gothic, a collection of altered images. "The title comes from the painting," Batts confirms, referring to the Grant Wood painting first exhibited in 1930 at the Art Institute of Chicago. "At the time, the painting was a big deal because it was saying, 'This is what America is right now.' It's rural. Big country. Farmland. Manifest destiny. So the book is what I think of America now. This is my world. I live here. I breathe here. And this is the visceral planet that I've created."

The book is a return to the artist's original style, a conglomeration of photo deconstruction utilizing, among other things, duct tape and a deft exacto blade. Disembodied eyeballs, animal carcasses, disturbing illustrations and other nightmarish imagery sum up a life influenced by comic books, death metal and bloody slasher movies. "In this book, I'm focusing in on my art," Batts says. "The celebrities I've photographed, they don't represent me. Nor do the girls. I wanted to go back to what was most important."

Faces and poses are recognizable from his previous books: shots from magazine spreads, party fliers and gallery exhibitions. They've all been sacrificed, tortured and given new life. He grabs whatever's handy -- nail polish, spray paint, duct tape -- and disfigures his photographs, morphs them into something more. Or something less. But definitely something... else.

The visceral foreword, by cult noir crime and murder author John Gilmore, compares Batts to a pathologist, paying homage to his slicing and splicing. He is clearly a big fan: "Art beyond the cusp of convention, shrieking originality and defiance, announces the arrival of the real artist: Carlos Batts, stepping off some limit of mind and falling at a hurtling pace through the special and terrible space of his renegade spirit." Huh. Gilmore's hard-bitten prose braces the reader for the jarring images.

Phoenix New Times columnist Stephen Lemons penned the introduction, offering up lines of lyrics from the Bad Brains song "Fearless Vampire Killers" as his opener. Lemons speculates about artistic inspiration and political influences and what has driven Batts to create.

But Carlos admits to a rather normal childhood, replete with G.I. Joe and lessons in etiquette. His early interest in comic books and slasher films was followed by a fascination with Black Sabbath and serial killers, and Batts began incorporating these influences into his artwork. Combine the base appeal of Charles Manson and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the sensibilities of Avedon, Leibovitz and Newton and you begin to understand the simultaneous aesthetic scrutiny and artistic insanity that exist in each Batts photograph. And that's before he whips out his exacto.

These two writers serve up the artsy mumbo jumbo, but the accompanying CD provides the screeching soundtrack. Nine disturbing tracks of death/thrash/metal by bands with names like Pig Destroyer and Mastodon approximate the aural equivalent of Batts's nightmarish images. Taken all together, it is a very scary package. But as with any work of art, you're welcome to draw your own conclusions. The book shrieks for itself. Whether you see an apocalyptic present, a fucked up future or merely a manipulative artist is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. Or that disembodied eyeball on page 48.

You can purchase the book American Gothic: The Art of Carlos Batts on Amazon.com. American Gothic: The Art of Carlos Batts is published by Scapegoat Press. You can see more of Carlos Batts' work www.carlosbatts.com.

Carlos Batts - by Abby Ehmann

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