Evgeny Timofeyev – Nightlife (2015)

Although I’m not fond of virtually all Timofeyev’s work, I adore this picture.

It’s very in-the-moment, both philosophically as well as self-consciously aware of the flavor of the week with regard to prevailing trends in fashion and editorial image making  in 2015.

The flash contributes a (false) feeling of documentary immediacy–this scene is very obviously contrived. Yet at the same time the way the head is turned away–which can be interpreted as either the result of being in the throes of self-pleasure or (probably) more likely an acute preoccupation with retaining a degree of anonymity. (Really, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times–putting in the creative labor necessary to figure out how not to decapitate the subject with the frame edge pays off in spades. And if you need further examples besides this, @thewillowrae has been goddamn fucking killing it lately.)

Clearly, this shot is intended to imply a masturbatory scene. At the same time it has this feel that both the photographer and the young woman, have maybe had a little too much to drink and the suggestion is made that a picture feigning masturbation be attempted. There’s a sense that while this is staged, that it’s teetering on the line between staged and actual by nothing more than the virtue of a strong willingness to entertain the premise.

Finally, I don’t normally like images where the verticals take on such an intense angle. Here it may be the thing I like most about the image is the fact that the tilt is motivated by the way which the woman is pushing her hips forward and leaning backwards against the wall to engineer a non-horizontal/non-vertical angled plane.