Out photographer Mike Ruiz is giving fans of his work the virtual keys to his visual kingdom with his new app, “Pretty Masculine,” now available on iTunes. The app is named after Ruiz’s self-published, fantasy-driven coffee-table book featuring his vision of the male ideal. Released in 2011, the book quickly sold out of its first printing and is currently unavailable.
The “Pretty Masculine” app delves deeper into Ruiz’s work to create an interactive experience, allowing the user to witness behind-the-scenes videos and interviews with the models and artists featured in the book. The app also has a studio section where the user can take a picture or upload one and attach “Pretty Masculine” elements to dress it up.
“I knew that I wanted to continue this project,” Ruiz said about the inspiration for the app. “It’s been growing and evolving. I draw gratification for the process of creating these images because I don’t have any parameters. It’s not like an advertising job where I have definite parameters. This is a platform for me and other artists to just do really awesome creative stuff that is gratifying to us. I wanted to do something and take advantage of technology and do something that would be a continuous thing, not just another coffee-table book. This is a really great way to constantly be able to update content and my images through one platform and one application.”
Ruiz said that giving the public a peek into the creative process and the tools to replicate his aesthetic is in no way intimidating to him as an artist.
It takes more than a good camera and attractive models to do what he does, he noted.
“The reality is, art is a point of view,” Ruiz said. “There are technical aspects to creating art. Everybody has a digital camera now but not everybody can take a picture. It stems from an innate ability to see light, and also you have to have a very defined point of view of what it is you are trying to say. That is specific to one person, so I could show all the behind-the-scenes footage available and people still wouldn’t have the same approach to doing what I do. It’s like a painter; someone could show you how to paint, but everybody is going to have a different point of view of what it is they need to say through that medium. The reality is, everybody has a very short attention span these days and people are information-thirsty. It’s almost not enough to just provide them with an image anymore. Also, I’m not giving away every single nuance of my creative process. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff and you definitely see what goes into the making of a shoot, but I don’t give away the philosophy of it all.”
While the book version of “Pretty Masculine” was a success, Ruiz said he doesn’t feel like he has to repeat it with any future book projects.
“I don’t really base what I’m doing from a creative standpoint on the success of a previous endeavor,” he said. “It’s just that what I need to say evolves all the time. It’s a byproduct of everything that I’m exposed to — politics and art and film. That is what is going to manifest in what I am doing creatively. I don’t feel married to continue in any particular vein. The coffee-table book was very defined. It was my attempt at trying to deconstruct what it means to be masculine by using hyper-masculine men and softening them with feminine elements. Now this project has taken on many different facets. I’m including all types of men, not just hyper-masculine but also androgynous men and all types of women from all walks of life, including transwomen. So it’s pretty all-inclusive now. It’s a continuous exploration that will probably grow and evolve. Two or three projects down the road, the content will be vastly different from my original book.” These days, Ruiz is probably as famous for his television work as he is for photography, having appeared on TV shows like “The A List,” “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List,” “America’s Next Top Model” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Ruiz said that while those shows have heightened his profile, he doesn’t think they have had that great of an influence on his work.
“Any life experience manifests in what you do and how you express yourself,” he said. “I don’t think there is any direct correlation to me being on TV and the kind of work I do. I have a lot of energy and I manage my time really well. I’ve compartmentalized all that stuff so I’m able to put all those hats on and seamlessly go from one mindset to another. Usually if I’m doing an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ I’m just there doing that for the time period allotted. Then I’ll move on to something else, a photo shot, and that will be my mindset. You learn to adapt and be malleable. Photography is a completely different business than it was when I started. If you aren’t willing to be malleable and change with the times and politics and technology, you are going to be left in the dust. So I’ve learned to adapt.”
Speaking of adapting, Ruiz’s clients include an endless list of celebrities — such as Adam Lambert, Margaret Cho, Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj — and his reputation as a top-notch photographer means that they often have to adapt to his vision for the shoot, whatever that may entail.
“I usually come up with the idea and it has to be cleared through several channels,” Ruiz said about working with high-profile celebrities. “When it does, then they give me their trust and put themselves in my hands and allow me to do what I do. It’s come to a point where people know what they are getting when they do a shoot with me. They don’t get blindsided by some of the ideas that I have because they know it’s going to be transformative and fantastical. People trust me now. If that’s not what they are looking for, if they want something simple and clean that they can control creatively, then they don’t come to me. They go to somebody else.”
Even with A-list clients in his portfolio and numerous book and magazine shoots to his credit, there are still some celebrities Ruiz would like to see in front of his lens.
And, as he said, his work is always evolving.
“There are a slew of young actresses that I’d like to work with. It’s been a while since a ‘brat pack’ has come around,” he said. “I think it’s happening right now with Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone and Mara Rooney. There are some inspiring actresses I’d like to work with. Creatively, when I started out, it was all very exploratory. I was doing everything. I was going to dark places. But I find that that’s not what I need to say. I tend to try and do dark and controversial kind of images but it’s all about your point of view and it’s not what I needed to say. Things evolve constantly and I’m sure I’ll go to places that I’m not aware of. To me it’s all so organic and it unfolds. Where it is I need to go usually manifests, but it’s in a positive way. Even if I’m doing some fetish kind of thing, it comes from an empowered, uplifting perspective, as opposed to a dark, victimized perspective.”
Mike Ruiz’s “Pretty Masculine” app is available on iTunes. For more information, visit www.MikeRuiz.com.