LSG Models – Amber Dawn from The California Sessions (2008)

I originally encountered the above via a cropped version posted here.

There’s clearly some thought given to the color palate, the couch and the background are gray green to green gray; the red of her top and pink knickers skillfully bookend her skin tone.

The cropped version is, however, enormously problematic–there’s no way you can argue that it’s not outright objectifying. (I mean you can argue it but you’re wrong and will demonstrate yourself an idiot with no capacity for reading images.) 

The uncropped version is not all that much better. Although I can at least say that it takes the coy right-on-the-line-ness of her pose and imbues it with a more pornish variation on this image by PeterVR.

The addition does nothing to ameliorate the awkwardness of the frame. (The crop is inexcusably objectifying but it is at least more thoughtful w/r/t basics of composition and visual grammar.)

While I was looking at this I recalled an article I read earlier in the week about an image book that was successful Kickstarted. Essentially, the book is a collaboration between model Vienna Love and her husband Matt Iam.

The work itself is insufferable garbage. The article correctly pokes holes in the main conceptual conceit–i.e. public vs private. And I would add that the images are flat, uninteresting and objectifying. (Also, it’s like they’ve never fucking heard of I don’t know Gary Breckheimer–whose work I aggressively dislike but who in terms of craft and conceptualization makes Love and Iam look like the shitasses they are.)

But I did think that DigitalRev’s take on the line between pornography and so-called fine art nude world demonstrated a gross, knee-jerk, lame-brained analysis requiring little thought and depending upon socialized preconceptions instead of independent thought.

However, it’s instructive to know what you’re up against if you’re a fine art nude image maker. It might be worthwhile to ask of the work–is the maker attempting to profit from the work. Both LSG Models and Love/Iam are presumably similar focused. But with the former, there is some of the proceeds that clearly are recycled into hiring models, renting studio space, upgrading equipment. Love/Iam have made something they foolishly claim is art and are now trying to profit off of it. (To me: that seems far more baldly pornographic than a great deal of the output of say Vivid Entertainment.)