FAUX MARBRES GREGG FRIEDBERG
FAUX MARBRES
The “KNOWING
WHERE
TO CROP” Project
GREGG FRIEDBERG
FAUX MARBRES
GREGG FRIEDBERG, poet and pose(u)r, lives in Ohio and Guanajuato.
He’s happiest creating series / sequences: loosely narrative, a matrix of themes considered from various perspectives.
In addition to Faux Marbres are the following:
The Artist’s Reception, a series of photographs (including the originals for Faux Marbres) with paired texts
The Best Seat Not in the House, a sequence of poems
What’s Wrong, a lyrical fable
End All & Be All, three lyric cycles
The Elopement, a lyrical journal
The American Disease: from Citizen to Consumer, a collection of essays
Three Winter Disaffections along the upper Sandusky, three lyric monologues
Choose Just the Right Eye, individual poems
Would You Be Made Whole? a collection of unruly sonnets
Why We Polka, a play
Mr Godiva, a Shakespearean tale in five acts
More of the “Knowing Where to Crop” project – photos, texts, literally thousands of comments – can be found at: deviantart.com/gfriedberg
ISBN 978-1-988394-42-8 (e-version 43-5)
Embajadoras Press Ontario, Canada
Copyright © 2026 by Gregg Friedberg
Thanks to my friends and fellow artists at DeviantArt – so unconscionably, recklessly encouraging you’ve been through the course of this unlikely project!
ROOM
ROOM IV
ROOM V
ROOM VI
ROOM VII
Quandary
Index of titles
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The original figure photographs (among others, those that, transfigured sculpturally, comprise Faux Marbres) have appeared in the following publications and gallery shows:
NyghtVision Magazine 2021 - 2025
Tagree “In the classical tradition of the male nude” 2019
The Artist’s Reception dramatic monologue Foro Cultural 81, Guanajuato February 2018
A Suasion of Limbs gallery show Foro Cultural 81
Guanajuto April 2016
tMF Magazine (The Male Form) Issue 16 Winter 2016
The Naked Man Project November 2015
Noisy Rain Magazine Issue XXV January 2015
The Male in Art (4 parts) November, 2013 – January 2014
Vitruvian Lens, Edition 2 September, 2013
Paradox of Air Daydreaming Project, May, 2012
Enlightened Male 2000 November, 2010
Best Seat Not in the House Main Street Rag, 2010
Azul Studio H Gallery Washington, DC 2010 transformed with Geoff Ault, 2009
As well, they are published (some with different titles) at the website DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/gfriedberg, and – with paired texts – are included in the collection
The Artist’s Reception.
The images that comprise Faux Marbres are made from the original photographs by the “app” PortraitArt: re portrayal, it transforms flesh into marble (or other material /medium, according as the user specifies). In effect, the original –aspirational - aim of my longstanding self-portraiture project realized: my interest has always been creating the poses, 'supposing' them sculpturally.
The app does not change the pose - neither posture nor proportions nor otherwise: it faux-petrifies. And yes, incorporates conventions of Western classical sculpture –stylizes hair and (at times, fantastically) genitalia, formalizes facial features – and optimizes lighting.
a figure – photographed posing classically –reportrayed sculpturally
ROOM I
The demurral
Prelapsarian Adam
Antler envy
The last vision of Suor Angelica
call
The surrender
The
The wasp spends herself t
A suasion of limbs
A suasion of limbs II
ROOM II
Phantasmagorical tug-of-war
Fluid thought
Fluid thought II
Do without words
Do without words II
Blind injustice
Pythagoras proving his theorem
Dance of the unruly pullover
Dance of the unruly pullover II
Dance of the unruly pullover III
ROOM III
Better, the mind’s eye
Reaganomics
Don’t let the stars get in your eyes
Vacate to a distant place
Self indulgence
Disoriented
“
Thoughts and prayers”
I wouldn’t go there if I were you . . .
Light, after the longest night
Shadow boxer
ROOM IV
First light
Macho delicado
Soft suasion
Hang on, H-D!
The shock of recognition
Dénouement
Retrospective
Mood indigo
I can be a girl for you
Low profile
Poet’s trance
It’s all right here . . .
ROOM V
Appassionato II
“I survived Patricia”
I feel a breeze . . . as from another planet
Ganymede
Dona nobis pacem
Once I had a sweetheart . . .
Shall we denounce the decadence of haute couture?
Quo vadis?
A dazzling moment after gloom
Softening the blow
A little something in reserve
The self is not the self
ROOM VI
The same crime . . . but for the criminals different consequences: Stones or the lash. Jewels and a crown.
The importance of being Ernestina
Mixed signals
Knot
No room for lying
Sworn to silence
Fixed / flexed
ROOM VII
Merely a thing? or merely meaning?
Unfledged
Rock, paper, scissors
Flying buttress
Even when you told me I was wrong
. . . you knew I was right
The clarity of hindsight
Contemplating the Copernican cosmos
Do
you dream me?
Sharing sharpens appreciation
Icarus’ parachute
Hoping against hope
Index of titles
