Category: Uncategorized

#800

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Obviously Cloe – Untitled (2013)

This image was made as a result of the asinine ban of tampons and maxi pads in the state capitol building ahead of a vote in Texas that subsequently banned abortions after 20 weeks and shuttered 88% of the abortion providers in the state.

That was two years ago.

On November 27th, Robert L. Dear entered the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic with a high powered rifle and started shooting. Three people were killed, including one law enforcement agent.

Upon his arrest, Dear is alleged to have suggested he undertook this attack to ensure “no more baby parts.” He seems to have made similar claims during his arraignment. (’Baby parts’ is of course a reference to universally discredited claims that selectively edited video proves Planned Parenthood wrongdoing. However, Fox News and Carly Fiorina still assiduously claim their authenticity.)

Not even a full week later, their was yet another mass shooting in San Bernardino, CA.

There are a number of things worth noting about these events. Dear was taken alive, despite killing a cop. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were killed during efforts to apprehend them.

I can’t help but note that if you are white and male and you shoot a bunch of people, you are only at risk of not being taken alive if you commit suicide. However, if you are any shade of brown, you will be killed. Hell, if you’re black you can be murdered in cold blood on camera and the video tape won’t surface for a year so that a shithole Obama flunkie mayor can win re-election. Or you know, the cops can kill you in your cell and a grand jury will fail to indict anyone.

What I find most galling is the fact that although Dear’s intention was clearly terrorist. Folks hem and haw about calling a spade a space. Most inexcusable of which was Ted Cruz–who I hope to fucking Christ someone finds an opportunity to crucify later for his entirely irresponsible reaction to the Colorado Springs shooting. (Keep in mind that Cruz is polling second after Fuckface von Clownstick. And having come of age essentially cloistered in a terrifyingly conservative Evangelical environment, I recognize Cruz as the same sort of monster who tormented me growing up.)

At the same time, this country seems rip raring and ready to go when it comes to vilifying Muslims. Thus the San Benardino shootings were immediately labeled terrorism.

We can and should talk about common sense regulation of gun sales–the second amendment does specifically use the words ‘well regulated’. Keep in mind the NRA weren’t always the terrorist organization they are now. (Interestingly they were originally concerned with ensuring farmers would be able to hunt until racist fear of the Black Panthers transformed them into what they are today.) And as much as shortcomings in mental health care are myriad, we only ever want to address them as a way of dodging the catastrophic toxicity of normalized white cishet male hegemony.

The real issue is this entirely false consciousness with regard to so-called American Exceptionalism. The one thing unifying racism, sexism and homophobia from micro-aggressive to macro-oppressive is the ahistorical notion that America is a fundamentally just nation because we have the Xtian god on our side. This is rubbish. The phrase Under God didn’t emerge until the 1950s, and the conservatives in this country have been progressively backdating it ever since.

But the exceptionalism isn’t even the sickness so much as the symptom. People generally believe that they and their intentions are inherently good which I feel accurate fits within the description of what separates conservatives from liberals that someone much smarter than me once said: when things go the way a conservative doesn’t like, they want to kill someone; when things go the way a liberal doesn’t like, the liberal wants to kill themselves.

The question really is: are you a fundamentally good person? If you’d say yes, then no offense, but you aren’t someone I ever want to show my back. You’re dangerous and deluded.

Source unknown – Title unknown (2009)

The above is an edit from a larger original image:

Apologies for the pixelation, but I can’t find the original so I had to screen cap the TinEye results.

This is sort of the opposite of my usual claim that less is more. The edit–although thoughtful for emphasizing the elbow, arm and side of the boys body as a window and presenting stylized skin tone as well as focusing attention onto the green yellow palate–is ultimately less engaging than the original.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

Another thing I don’t like about most porn is that even when they don’t cut to extreme close-ups of what’s going on at the site of various erogenous zones, they position the camera in such a way as to maximize the unobstructed view. It always feels annoyingly gratuitous. (I’m probably an anomaly but I am far FAR more likely to masturbate along to something like say this than this.)

Although I’m really not into the down tilt in this and how it renders the verticals diagonal instead of straight up and down. I don’t feel the angle was chosen to provide a titillating view of the one participants genitals and anus. Instead the view seems chosen to convey the most coherent information about both the space and what is happening within the space. The explicit nudity just happens to be a bonus.

Source: refer.ccbill.com

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

There is no end to the way the marketing of pornography as if it’s an a la carte menu alienates me.

It’s like there’s the default menu–straight, heterosexual and cisgendered. Solo, oral, anal, gonzo, creampie, teen, milf.

The gay porn that I’ve seen benefits from it seeming as if the dudes really, super actually want to be fucking each other. Sorry not sorry; thirst is hot, y’all.

Lesbian porn that is of a for us by us sort of bent is unquestionably my preference.

But I just don’t understand the segregation of menus. Like, can we get porn where one scene is your typical Vivid-esque cis-het, blowjob, vaginal penetration, rough anal sex followed by facial money shot and the next scene is army guys hazing the new recruits in the barrack’s showers. You don’t have to watch it if that’s not your thing. But I think being confronted with things that aren’t particularly what get you hot and bothered serves to normalize them as valid expressions of human sexuality.

I don’t know where these images are from. My guess is that their probably from one of those cliche reluctant bi- productions–where there’s an element of forcing someone to do something they don’t especially want to do.

I’m super put off by that for many of the reasons most mainstream porn makes me feel like I need to take a dozen scalding showers. Like where are all FFM threesomes depicted so that the ladies get it on with each other and the stud but almost all FMM porn involves the studs high fiving over the woman they are penetrating from either side. Like seriously, if there was a possibility that every now and then the woman in an FMM would say to the dudes, you don’t get to touch me until I see you suck each others’ cocks, I’d watch a hell of a lot more porn.

Laurent Benaim – Title Unknown (20XX)

This is an ambitious photo. Nine people–five men, two women and two others of indeterminate gender beyond the frame edge boundary–focused on pleasing one woman.

There are two prominent compositional strategies working here:

First, the image can essentially be divided along a diagonal axis (lower left to upper right); this renders a dark side (upper left) and light side (lower right); within this there is, of course, a sort of yin and yang where light portions in the dark half and vice versa more or less balance each other out.

Second, since any three non-co-linear points can form a vertices of a triangle, heads–and to a lesser extent limbs–imply suggested re-framings.

You’ll note that these implicit triangles favor directing the viewers gaze to what’s happening between her legs as opposed to emphasizing the expression on her face–which appears strangely resigned to the proceedings.

I almost want to give credit for effort seeing as how within this triangulation there is a calculated inversion of the light and dark that over-arches the composition–the dark hair vs bright faces and how this shuttles the gaze around the photo.

However, the angular dynamics are undercut by the fact that the frame is essentially centered on the woman’s crotch. (A slightly wider angle of view or a shift in frame that centered on either the woman kissing her left thigh or her right knee would make this more logical consistent.)

Yet, despite the fact that looking at this too long makes my pubococcygeus muscle clench because of the visual overstimulation, I do really like that fact that although this is explicit, it isn’t graphic; there is no visible private bits.

And I do really love the way the woman in the upper half of the frame has latched onto the main woman’s nipple while just to her left someone out of frame has the main woman’s wrist pinned to the floor.

Source: laurentbenaim

Sandra Torralba – [↑] Estranged Sex 4 (2008); [←] Estranged Sex 8 (2009); [→] Estranged Sex 12 (2009); [↓] Estranged Sex 2 (2008)

I love these so effing much I can’t even…

It’s partly the pathos–the simultaneous ravenous curiosity and trepidation that comes along with exploring the boundaries of your sexuality as an adolescent, the libidinal asymmetry that touches all relationship, the fine line between performing your sexuality in public and the need to restrain or privatize the sexual as it pertains to your family and television as active incitement to participate voyeuristically with the sexual performance of strangers.

I’m not quite sure these qualify as capital A Art, the process that goes into making these images is reminiscent of Gregory Crewdson–about whom I make no secrets to the fact that I think his work is heinous excrement not even deserving of inclusion in discussions of lower case a art; but if you spend any time perusing Torralba’s blog, you’ll note that her process is of a decidedly fine art bent.

This is exactly the sort of work I started this blog to showcase and it’s exactly the sort of work I want to be creating as a photographer.

Source: sandratorralba.com

Scott Morgan – IMG_0283 [1] (2012)

On dry land, even in a studio under canned lighting, this would be a dynamic as fuck pose but orchastrating it so that the pose occurs in approximately a foot of water is inspired.

The problem is that you can’t really appreciate how completely mesmerizing the surface of water can appear when rendered in B&W given this angle.

The better angle would’ve been at roughly the same height as this image, only with the camera angled to see the woman’s face.

Unfortunately that wouldn’t work–since part of what makes this composition work is that the figure is presented off-center and the slanting light capturing glistening skin and taut musculature serves to balance it. Shifting into the better position would black light and in so doing interrupt the carefully positioned horizon (which contributes an oneiric tone) by necessarily including the intersection of water and shoreline from the alternate angle.

Instead, the best course of action would probably have been for the woman to shift 90 degrees clockwise and then to have the camera line up with her face. This would further emphasize the surface of the water and diminish the degree to which the shadows consume her hair, arms and legs.

Although, props to the image maker for having the sense not to make this a full on crotch shot. I know about two hundred lesser image makers who would’ve done exactly that given this pose.

Source: flickr.com

Garry Winogrand – Photo night at the Ivar Theater (1982)

Call me an iconoclast if you must but I really detest fucking Monet.

I won’t argue his technical accomplishment as far as applying paint to canvas–at that he was an indisputable master. And Woman with a Parasol is exquisite.

However–by and large–I find his paintings intolerably cloying and consider the impetuses for his stylistic affectation specious at best, at worst: entirely contrived.

At the same time, I would never challenge his art historical import.

I feel similarly about Winogrand–except there maybe merit in the conversation about whether or not he deserves to be as lauded as he has been and in some circles continues to be.

He made some great photos. I adore New York, 1969. And Mark Steinmetz has repeatedly referenced Utah (Wyoming), 1964 as one of the first photographs that truly captivated him completely.

In a painfully overlong, overwrought, overwritten and sparsely edited essay entitled Standing on the Corner – Reflections Upon Garry Winogrand’s Photographic Gaze – Mirror of Self or World?, Carl Chiarenza manages (despite these significant faults) to provide valuable observations and insights; namely: Winogrand produced far more shit than shine and he was godawful when it came to sexualizing/objectifying women.

Yet, with an image such as the one above, anyone with any sort of partially developed critical facilities should take issue here. There is nothing particularly studied about the frame. In fact, it appears like a crap snapshot any idiot with a basic understanding of how their camera works could have produced.

That we look at it today independent of the context of vintage pornography is solely due to the name of the reputation of the person who made it.

But that shouldn’t be where an analysis stops. Frankly, I find this image disturbing. Chiarenze addresses this better than I will but was entirely preoccupied with photographing the world around him in such a way that it allowed others to see the world the way Winogrand himself assumed it ‘really’ was.

The above image is unequivocally about photography. At least three men are taking pictures–the two we see and the third who created the record that allows the viewer to witness the other two.

I get messages all the time from people who think I’m a raging dickhole when it comes to critiquing framing. But take this as an example of two things I’m always going on about–whether or not the image space given suggests a continuity or discontinuity with the space/reality surrounding it and the issue of decapitations/amputations w/r/t frame edges to preserve anonymity or for any other reason.

The frame here is analogous to a peephole where the aim is not the setting but the occasion–a naked women. Thus, there is no suggestion of space beyond the frame edge.

As such, the decapitation is a calculated act of violence. And I can’t help but see a similar act of violence in the patrons–who are equally absent feet and legs which would allow them to get up and leave. The implication of this image is because those who are sexually desired cannot think since they are presented sans heads (minds, facial identities) are essentially interchangeable.

The sex object merely is a sex object, in other words; there is no recursive abilities. But the men–who are presented with head’s–are rendered impotent by their sexual attraction. They couldn’t leave where they are to walk away because they are presented without feet and legs to do so.

Whether Winogrand meant to or not, this image clearly blames the stripper for the existence of this purgatorial tableau–an implication I find fucking repugnant.

Unfortunately, once you begin to see this less-than-subtle misogyny in Winogrand’s work, you can’t help but to begin to see it in everything he ever did.

…

While in Berlin several months ago, I got up early one morning. Unlike in Brooklyn, where one can get a decent cup of coffee at any hour. Coffee places generally do not open until 9am. I decided that since the sun was coming up and the light was golden and lovely, that I would walk around with my camera for an hour or so.

In truth, although I started out walking around looking for interesting things to make pictures of, increasingly–despite the fact that I am technically a landscape photographer (for better or worse)–I don’t know what to do without people in the frame. I tried a POV shot of myself throwing away a beer bottle in one of those strange brown glass recycling mounds. I tried to treat an abandoned lot as if it were a landscape.

I tried several angles but was increasingly aware that a rough looking forty-something was making a B-line for me. I mean, it had to be me, since there was no one else around.

He queried me in German. Then Dutch before I got out that I only spoke English. He demanded to know what I was taking pictures of. I tried to explain the light was nice and I was looking for shots but he wasn’t interested. He said that I had better not be taking pictures of people; that to do so was illegal and I should know better and if he caught me pointing my camera at him or anyone else he was beat the piss out of me.

I was quite taken aback but he’d already continued on past me, looking occasionally over his shoulder as he moved away.

It turns out that he wasn’t entirely wrong. The legality of street photography in Germany is very much in question at present.

Of course, my initial response was that’s absurd. Street photography is a respected fine art tradition. Making that illegal is detrimental to capital-A Art.

I’ve subsequently come to question that response, however.

These days we are quick to decry invasions of privacy. We rally around Edward Snowden for allowing the world a peak behind the curtain. Yes, that was mostly regarding data accessed from within the privacy of our homes. But in the same breath we fault Apple for tracking our every move and lament the growing security (theater) state, we still defend the virtue of street photography–the whole point of which is to surreptitiously invade personal privacy.

It occurs to me that maybe this isn’t okay. That perhaps my defense of street photography is–ultimately–a defense of the patriarchal straight, cisgendered heterosexual status quo. Since so much of street photography has traditionally hinged on an absence of consent.

Which is not to say all of it. Helen Levitt, doesn’t make me feel creepy. Alternately, some of Vivian Maier work is ethically super suspect from a standpoint of consent.

I don’t know the answer but I know that a great deal of what is considered technical mastery in photography and image making emerges from photojournalism and subsequently street photography. Given the inherent potential for the transformation of photographic documentation into voyeuristic experience and considering the predominance of patriarchy and institutionalized sexism (misogyny, rape culture, et al.), I’m pretty sure street photography doesn’t deserve a pass. In fact, I think it should be aggressively interrogated with regards to this considerations going forward.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

I guess this technically qualifies as post-orgasm torture.

I’m not super fond of the term. It’s not that I object to so-aggressive-it-could-be-deemed-brutal stimulation after orgasm–it can be a damn near transcendent experience.

This is less vigorous, more focused stimulation which acknowledges the fact that after the initial forceful spasms of pleasure, the genitals become hyper-sensitive. The body is hard wired to interpret continued stimulation as pain even though it’s not.

The way I describe it is image a medium sized river with levees on either side to handle flood tides. Orgasm swells the river to it’s edges. Continued stimulation causes the water to rise over the banks and fill the levee. Too much pleasure, at first, is experienced like pain. But it’s not. And if you don’t always have to be in control and trust your partner(s), you can let go and drift in the waves of something unspeakably blissful.

For example: in that last frame, those shaking legs and abdominal contractions are completely involuntary. If you’ve ever experienced that feeling, you’ll understand why I’m obsessed with it. It’s amazing and I crave it.

Alas, just as being tickled isn’t something you can do to yourself, this is the same. And I remain broken and irrevocably unwanted and alone.

I guess at least I can experience a fleeting tinge of it via this gif set.

Source: homobeing