“An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He’s a worker, always.”— David Hockney
In Hedonism, female photographer Jamie Nelson transforms her Los Angeles home into both stage and subject—a living artwork devoted to the spectacle of pleasure, performance, and artifice. The series captures a succession of feverish scenes unfolding during the legendary parties Nelson orchestrates within her pink-hued Los Angeles mansion. Like Hockney, she recognizes the tension between indulgence and discipline, between the spectacle of decadence and the labor of creation.
Across these photographs, the viewer enters a hallucinatory world where construct and authenticity collide. In one image, two women provocatively lick the flames atop their jeweled fingers, their punk defiance crystallized in a moment of erotic absurdity. In another, a crowd of tattooed bikers, topless women, and glittered eccentrics gathers poolside around a bubblegum-pink swimming pool, a surreal tableau evoking La Piscine by way of John Waters. Nearby, women in green and orange lounge on velvet beds, their breasts humorously adorned with sunny-side-up eggs—a pop-art pun on desire and domesticity.
Elsewhere, beer cans, stilettos, and cigarette butts scatter across manicured lawns and tiled patios—relics of ritual excess. One woman exhales through a mouthful of cigarettes; another spits beer into the night air. These gestures of debauchery become both parody and poetry, underscoring Nelson’s fascination with the aesthetics of rebellion.
Nelson’s characters, dressed in leather, latex, and vintage glam, embody a postmodern hedonism—simultaneously performative and self-aware. They are subjects and collaborators, muses and mischief-makers. Through saturated color, flash-lit immediacy, and cinematic composition, Nelson constructs a world that is both decadent and emotionally raw.
Ultimately, Hedonism is less about indulgence than about observation. Nelson—both participant and documentarian—positions herself as the voyeur of her own chaos. Amidst the glitter and hangovers, she reminds us: the artist’s truest devotion is not to pleasure, but to the work itself.
