mixed greens | magazine | Coke O'Neal

In the past, photographer Coke O’Neal has produced sly, repurposed portraits of American cinematic icons, and documented the near-mythic American roadside landscape. In his most recent Medicine Cabinet Portraits, he takes the work to a new level. Playing on conflicting strains inherent in contemporary culture—the obsession with health and aging; the assumption of privacy in an increasingly voyeuristic world; the simple thrill of snooping—O’Neal is creating a unique form of portraiture: his cabinets capture an interior, personal landscape that is nonetheless visible to the exterior world. The photographs speak not only to the cultural theorist or the art critic, but to the voyeur in us all.

MG: Did the cabinet photographs develop out of a concerted plan to document the private lives of friends, family, and strangers, or was it a happy accident? In other words: how did all this start?

CO: I’ve always looked into people’s medicine cabinets. I think that a lot of people do that. I started photographing them because I enjoyed the thrill that I felt, thinking that I might get caught. I liked the idea of stealing without physically stealing, stealing an impression of light. But when I started to look at the photographs, I noticed that people organized their cabinets in a very artistic way: they stack like items together, arranged by height, color, size. I felt as though I had discovered a form of private sculpture, a shrine to be viewed only by its creator. I knew then that I had to print them. It was readymade art. My camera, plus your idea, equals a forced collaboration, to become my “art.”

MG: The pictures are a little unsettling, but there’s also something almost innocent about them, a kind of mischievousness that one hardly ever associates with portraiture. Do you think that an artist needs a sense of mischief, of irreverence, in order to do original work?

CO: No, just be curious and willing to be honest, neither of which is mischievous or irreverent.