Month: December 2013

Exclusive Teen Porn – Teen Threesome featuring Peach + Kyara (2012)

I would really rather skip the citations here because ExclusiveTeen Porn’s features a downright creepy website.

I am more surprised by how unsavory it is than I really should be considering my first reaction to this was SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!

But between the third and fourth syllable of ‘patriarchy’ I’ve registered the red outlining the lower crest of Peach’s right ear, pink flush speading through her checks. And Jesus Christ, her expression–eye closed, lips pressed hard against enamel. trying to focus on sensation, to concentrate to not lose the rhythm, holding out against surrender but want to fall hopelessly hard, now and forever.

My thoughts shift back to how bankrupt this is of artfulness or subtlety. Don’t get me wrong the more graphic the depictions of sex, the happier I am. But I just don’t see how this is anything other than an effort to cater to the basest aspects of what society whispers behind its hands is the stuff firing masculine sexuality. This fellow has two young women who are presented as focused on his sexual pleasure. (Admittedly, the rest of the series does pay lip service to an interest in the women’s pleasure.)

There’s momentary fluttery where I realize that Peach’s labia are just crowning the swollen corona of her lover’s erection and you can see his glans peaking out. That has to feel exquisite.

This isn’t art. Not even close. It’s not supposed to be. Ultimately though it’s like only being able to eat candy when you want something healthy and substantive.

I guess I just don’t understand how with a seemingly legit location with reasonable lighting and people who are willing to be photographed doing virtually anything, why more of a thought isn’t given to presentation.

Put another way: given all the same ingredients, I fundamentally believe it is possible to make art. The fact that no one ever tries is something I take a little bit like a kick in the teeth.

Not to mention it is some insufferable #skinnyframebullshit.

Two final notes:

  1. there is another version of this image floating around Tumblr. It looks terrible. Why do people insist on doing this?
  2. this image has been cropped a quarter of an inch or so on the bottom to remove a watermark.

Source: Unknown (Initial posting here, maybe?)

With depictions of desire, why is it at best & always a little of the good and a little of the bad?

I want to like this. That’s not fair–dismemberment of her right forearm and both legs by frame edge & #skinnyframebullshit aside, I like it: I swoon over freckles like it’s my job and I prefer giving over receiving. Credit should also be given to the bokehed emphasis of her expression/face as opposed to her body and her lover’s hand shielding her is a delightful gesturing.

Still I am hesitant to embrace; I think because it strikes me as a clumsy half-measure.

Yes, shifting depictions of sexual pleasure away from the usual male-bodied locus and onto female-bodied individuals is out-fucking-standing; but this well-intentioned effort only serves to reinforce the traditional one-dimensional view of female bodies as the singular site of all that is sexual.

The unfathomably talented Sarah Polley–who, duh, I LOVE–implicitly calls bullshit on the double standard with regard to depictions of nudity in her film Take this Waltz. It’s depressing how shocking it is to audience to have female nudity presented in the way male nudity is: i.e. as incidental and unconnected to sexual behaviors. This reprehensibly simple-minded conflation of female bodies with sexuality is fucking everywhere.

And it’s not not that female bodies are not or shouldn’t be sites of sexuality; they are and will be forever and ever amen. The fucked-up thing is they shouldn’t be the only such site.

Again credit to those out in front of this issue. I’m thinking of Beautiful Agony, Clayton Cubitt’s Hysterical Literature and clever work like this; or, any effort really to present sexuality as an extension of an interpersonal totality and not the requirement of a body.

Source: phroydianslip

Elene Usdin – PROJECTION SILENCIO (2013)

Video portfolio are de rigueur, it seems.

They’re an interesting notion–at least in theory: complete control over how work is contextualized, viewing of extensive archives is streamlined and the resulting presentation has the potential to be far more dynamic than the customary webpage-as-ersatz-gallery motif.

They’re just as fraught, however; in fact,Usdin’s PROJECTION SILENCIO is the only example I can think of where the work benefits from the presentation.

The reason for this–I think–is that in addition to making still images, Usdin is an illustrator and videographer. There’s a good bit of overlap between still and moving images, but it is ridiculous to suggest that mastery of the former ensures success at the latter–something thoroughly proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by the vast majority of video profiles.

In other words: this is not a bunch of images thrown into a Slide Show or animated PowerPoint presentation; Usdin expertly intersperses still images with video footage that combine to create something that works both as an artful video and a personal portfolio.

The video portfolio also benefits the sheer volume of work. For all it’s ostentatious high-end design, her website is damn near impossible to navigate.

Unlike fuckwits who spray-and-pray with dSLRs, Usdin’s work is rigorously edited. (Measure twice; cut once. Always.)

I don’t necessarily get all of it; but it is of an exceptionally high quality and I do adore mahaut1, this and I’m over the moon about the scene where the hand mirror appears/disappears, shows/does not show a reflection in the mirror. Moreover, I think the video presentation enlivens the images in a way that the website does not. That is ultimately the thing that ties everything together: the presentation adds to the work instead of distracting from it.

Yes, ‘video portfolios probably can be a valuable tool IN THE RIGHT HANDS. My concern is that people with zero background are going to find it easier to demand an audience to the three-ring circus of fuckwitery..

This is a self-portrait made by Zoe, a precocious, articulate and self-possessed sixteen year-old who blogs as Posh-Lost.

I admire her spunk.

Admiration aside, I have misgivings about posting this—not the least of which is the image maker being too young to ‘legally’ browse this site. Also, does displaying her work alongside more explicit content unnecessarily sexualize it?

Laurie Penny uses an ingenious coinage to refer to the well-intentioned worry we shower on the behavior of teenage girls: concern-fapping.

It is patently fucking absurd to think young women are not foundationally aware of the degree and extent to which their bodies are sexualized by society.

Further, anyone looking at this picture should know better. This is not some cell phone bathroom mirror selfie; light shines in through a window visible along the left edge of the frame, a la the Dutch Baroque. Further the staging speaks to an interest not in seeing while being seen but something closer to a preoccupation with the perception of self by another.

The flimsy, semi-sheer camisole is sexy; but whether sexy translates to something libidinous or reciprocally desiring remains pointedly unresolved.

Granted, it is not free of flaws. But it is thoughtful and I find it thoroughly and unironically interesting. But I can’t lie—there is something else to it that gets under my skin.

Long story short: I have never disclosed my gender on this blog. I’ve implied through omission, undertaken some linguistic gymnastics and mostly embraced opportunities to shore up ambiguity.

I have mild-to-medium gender dysphoria. As a child, I wanted to be a girl. When other kids played super heroes—I didn’t give a fuck about the perpetual fight over who got to be Superman because I was Wonder Woman. This was frowned upon. Frowns became stern words escalated to outright threats.

A dear friend suggested that if I was meant to be a woman, nothing would have stopped me. I think that is sage advice.

If you need a hammer but you only have a wrench, it doesn’t really work the best but you can more or less make due. From the standpoint of how my body relates to my sexual identity, this metaphor serves.

I pass as male and straight although I’d never embrace either. This creates a-whole-nother layer of complication. On the one hand, there are social expectations of me with which I find so uncomfortable they are debilitating; on the other, I have privilege in that I can somewhat function under the assumption that I am cisgendered. My ‘problems’ seem charmed compared to the struggles of the rest of the gender dysphoric community.

Additionally, I have a pathological aversion to anything related to medicine. Gender reassignment surgery is not a consideration. It’s that I feel more feminine that masculine. azura09 always says she thinks of me as a really dyke-y Daria Morgendorffer.

And yes if there was a Matrix like scenario where I could take the red pill and wake up female-bodied, I would do it without a second thought. Even if the ante was upped and I would die five years after taking the red pill, my choice would be the same.

I know this image is Zoe and she seems really amazing and the last thing I have any desire to do is co-opt her experience or her own depiction of her body but—fuck me—this is to a T the way I see myself in my head.

If there were surgical procedures that would make this awful body conform to this image, they couldn’t cut fast enough for me.

Maybe then someone might be able to love me.

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Source: enbasdechezmoi-blog

Anastasia Cazabon – part of From the Secret World series (20??)

Artist Statement:

These images are based on my own childhood, specifically the transitional period between the ages of 9-15. This period of liminality, when girls are on the threshold of womanhood, can be one of the most defining and vital stages in a woman’s life. In this stage of life, young women become acutely aware of the world around them and how they are portrayed within the world; physical appearance is suddenly pushed into the spotlight and with that comes insecurity, excitement, jealousy and narcissism.

Relationships with other girls are also critical and these friendships are often fleeting yet intense; feelings of love, envy and rivalry pervade adolescent female companionship. These friendships are also marked by polar swings of emotion – one day encompassing cruelty and the next kindness.

These images revolve around the secret, yet everyday lives of adolescent girls. The power of this transformative time is characterized by the struggle to reconcile one’s girlhood while moving into womanhood – an experience that elicits strong feelings of both fear and longing.

Jan Emil Christiansen – Book II (20??)

The colors in this are in-goddamn-sane. the punchy yellow of the 3D glasses…

…the cream + peach + magenta of the skin tone against the red plastic…

…and the exhaust blue + gun metal grey of the storm-roiled sky.

Still, something is missing…something about those glasses triggers a series of questions:

  • Why is she wearing them?
  • What is she seeing?
  • Isn’t she worried about the weather?
  • Why is she nude?
  • How in the hell did she get here?

For me, the patent lack of answers is not charmingly ambiguous, it’s fucking frustrating.

So… I breeze over to Christiansen’s website since his Flickr no longer has any shared content.

Frustration rapidly transforms into confusion. + I don’t mean confusion in the usual sense of being lost or uncertain. I mean more: how in the exact fuck did this cat ever make such a killer image?

Le sigh.

Jan Emil Christiansen is an Urban explorer; the above, ostensibly (not that you can realy tell) an Urbex image; making it the least Urbex-y Urbex image I’ve ever seen–which probably also makes it the best. (I give negative shits about Miru Kim’s ‘thinly veiled’ narcissism.)

Not to be all Debbie Downer on Urbex. I vaguely orbit the scene + in truth urban exploration environs figure prominently in my own work.

This issue is making images in such environs demands a hodgepodge of bastardized and otherwise degraded photographic conventions: a little bit o’ landscape, some documentary and some architecture thrown in for leavening.

Put another way: if an urban explorer is there  has a camera, there is a sense that the resulting images have an in-built relevance.

Mostly he abject wonder that motivates most urbex folks to bother taking a picture usually serves the resulting work. The trouble arises when airs emerge + pretense begins to take root.

Christiansen thrills at mixing his beloved hobby with a gumbo of contradictory ends in mind: documentary, horror films, erotic + portraiture. Excepting this image the single unifying aspect of his work its the appalling discontinuity between concept and enactment.

To see these tendencies in this image, you need to look no further than what stands out the most in the frame: the 3D glasses. They do tie the frame together fabulously.

But as has been noted, their presence suggests questions for which the image contains no answers. This has to do with Christiansen’s pick and choose approach to image making blissfully unaware that the glasses shift the image away from an uncomplicated ‘document’ and veer toward a mise-en-scène, of sorts. + the audience has no recourse to fill in the blanks necessary to suspend their disbelief, unravel the story and surrender to the image.

This could have been so fucking lovely; but all just sound and fury, signifying nothing–a fact which depresses + infuriates me me all at once.

Source: Flickr / hestsomdanser

whenitgetsheavy:

Libby Edwards – Collab (2012)

Not only a weird angle, this is rather unlike the rest of Edwards’ images.

The strobe bleaches right up to the very verge of burning away texture and color from flesh–waterline tracings still show a membranous sheen against skin.

Water fragments and refracts, a hissing sizzle bouncing between and dotting bodies; arcing strings stretching and shivering–quick silver in a vacuum tube.

And oh just look at all the secrets two hands hide in their showing.

  1. Right edge of frame: a thirty party watching, approaching; casting a shadow figure bent beneath the spray.  (The Observer Effect) EDIT: Alveoli Photography sees this differently. The ‘third’ hand is actually his left hand reaching over to trigger a short cable release. This makes more sense than my interpretation since the third person would have to be roughly 6’7" to account for the positioning i had in mind.)
  2. & her hand’s Apollian claiming a quote from the greatest sculptor, Bernini.

This is sexy a fuuuck.

Source: whenitgetsheavy