Category: Uncategorized

Weronika Izdebska – F1020013 (2014)

I’ve always wondered why certain historical epochs contribute more than their far share of stunning Art: the Italian Renaissance, Holland during the Dutch Golden Age; Hong Kong cinema circa the early 1990s; The Romanian New Wave for roughly the last decade.

As far as photography and image making go, I can’t think of a single place in the world that is killing it like Poland.  [I actually have about a dozen pages of notes for an essay on the politics of visual representation and identity in the work of contemporary women making photographs in Poland–that’s how rich the landscape is at present.]

Izdebska work belongs to this milieu.

The image above is in one way uncharacteristic of most of her images: she usually employs a rigorously centered symmetry and then places those she shoots strategically off balance in the frame, conferring an oneiric feel to the scenes that’s straight out of mid-to-late Soviet cinema–here the camera is not square with the building; note the askew verticals compared to the frame edge as well as the lower boundary between the paneling and concrete.

It’s a small annoyance given the overall quality of the image. The limiting of the color palate is sublime and the tone that shimmers in the margin between dream and nightmare.

Also, there’s more than a casual similarity to Wynn Bullock’s famous Woman and Thistle.

(In the interest of full disclosure–I probably should admit that it’s difficult for me to be completely impartial when it comes to other image makers who are also similarly transfixed with the Icelandic landscape.)

Source: sam-i-jam

vextape:

fourchambers:

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I am gross and I love putting my fingers in things they don’t belong and I dooooon’t careeeeeee 

Awhile back one of my followers advised me that Duke University was attempting to start a Porn Studies PhD program.

I flipped my shit a lil. I mean what I’m attempting with this blog is a less formally academnified version of exactly that premise. And as much as I feel alienated from academia these days–there is a part of me that knows that if nothing else I function exceedingly well in that framework.

I looked into it and turns out the information was only about 10% true. A professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at UC-Berkley named Linda Williams published a book called Porn Studies through Duke University’s press in 2004.

But Williams’ notions are absolutely fascinating. Via Wikipedia:

[S]he argues that horror, melodrama, and pornography all fall into the
category of “body genres”, since they are each designed to elicit
physical reactions on the part of viewers. Horror is designed to elicit
spine-chilling, white-knuckled, eye-bulging terror (often through images
of blood); melodramas are designed to elicit sympathy (often through
images of tears); and pornography is designed to elicit sexual arousal
(often through images of “money shots”).

Two things about this relate directly to what Vex and Four Chambers do and do with beauty:

So-called “body genres” tend to be relegated to a default subset I’d term not-art. (Alien would be an exception but note that it’s first a sci-film and only secondly a horror piece; and so the skillful genre fusion allows critics to sidestep the horror isn’t art prejudice.)

The work being made by Four Chambers isn’t just of an exceedingly high production value, I would argue that it’s capital-A Art.

And as much as I’d like that argument to take a form similar to the Buddhist monk who when tasked with passing wisdom to those gathered to hear him speak, merely held up a lotus leaf for all to contemplate–in other words, I’d just point to this image and say: duh, of course this is Art; there is something else that applies.

The fantasy that the majority of porn sells is centered on cishet white male pleasure. It’s formulaic and sterile–the only mess pertains to the money shot.

But, in reality, sex–at least when you’re doing it right–is hell of messy. I swear there’s a dissertation for a Porn Studies PhD just waiting to be composed about how Four Champers represents sexuality as messy and rich with fluids. (Literally pick one of their videos at random and you’ll see what I mean. The one I happen to have handy is this image that I was going to save for a future post.)

You can call it gross or more honest or both even but whichever way you cut it, there is a subversive push to decentralize the fluid mess of sex from cishet white male pleasure. Not only is that hot as fuck, its importance and absolutely vital.

Source: fourchambers

mpdrolet:

Cara Robbins

Cara Robbins – August Getty SS2016 (2015)

The above image has a very Blow-Up vibe to it.

And the story behind it definitely fits that perception. Interview Magazine hired Robbins to cover Getty’s latest fashion collection “Thread of Man”

I know fuck all about fashion. When I buy clothes I usually wander around the store feeling each garment between thumb and forefinger. If I like the way it feels on my skin, I consider color–I have an unintentional fondness for earth tones, apparently. If I subsequently try the item on and it looks normalish on my frame, then we’re a go.

Thus, I had no idea that Getty is some kind of Fashion world wunderkind. He’s 21 and the above image is taken from his third ever show. For it he hired David LaChapelle. (Full disclosure: when I think of the word ‘garish’ the visual definition that pops into my head is exactly half Amsterdam’s Red Light District and half David LaChapelle.)

Given free reign LaChapelle, as he’s wont to do, built an elaborate installation on a Universal Studios back lot wherein to install the show. (If you care at all, read more about it here.)

Robbins choice to deliver the images in B&W is a bit idiosyncratic to me. LaChappelle’s work is loud and unsubtle and much of how he accomplishes this relies heavily on cacophonous color palates.

On one level, this decision is prescient: diminishing the fanfare in favor of emphasizing the clothing. (The dress and the way it fits is definitely the focus of this image; the rest is lagniappe.)

What strikes me as perhaps disingenuous is that Robbins’ work features flourishes that are frequently straight out of the LaChappelle playbook–especially in her portraits featuring more cluttered backgrounds.

All-in-all this is one of those instances where upon learning the context of the image, my original opinion shifts slightly to the bad. I just can’t shake the feeling that the image maker is hiding something in a fashion that is very nearly if not fully dishonest.

Philip-Lorca DiCorcia – Wellfleet [Emma and Naomi] (1992)

If any of you knew me AFK, you would quickly realize that I am always late to the party.

I stumbled onto my favorite band of all time just before they went on a more than decade long hiatus. It took me almost two years after all the initial hubbub and hype to stop and read Patti Smith’s Just Kids (which I’ll have you know accomplishes the rare feat of being unfathomably better than all the good stuff you’ve heard about it).

Same goes for DiCorcia. I had no idea who he was until the David Zwirner Gallery resurrected his exceptional Hustler series two years ago.

I didn’t make it to that show. (I mean to go to shows all the time. I’ve been meaning to make the Jeff Wall show on now at the Maria Goodman Gallery for more than a month but I never venture north of 32nd Street, so 57th might as well be on the other side of the country. I know that’s silly but that’s how my mental illness makes it feel.)

This image–although it is from a different series, namely A Storybook Life–  makes me realize missing the Hustlers show was a monumental mistake because it seems like he’s doing something fascinating with color.

I’m not sure I can do more to point to it but my instinct is refer to the above image as painterly. Intellectually, I know that’s something likely to get you cut by a fine art photographer. And I think what’s really going on is something very much anti- the-prevailing-conversation-about-the-place-of-color-in-fine-art-photography.

It feels like if the statement that B&W highlights the foreign in the familiar, then I think that DiCorcia is actually attempting to employ color in the same way that B&W is taken for granted. It’s an audacious conceit, actually.

Further–and I’ll own my bias from the outset by admitting my abject contempt for Jock Sturges–I feel like this is a kind of implicit critique of recurring Sturges motif of nudists showering, of which this is perhaps the most famous.

photominimal:

There and Back. With Suspended in Light: Montreal / Polaroid Automatic 100 / Fuji FP3000b

I am absolutely dead-to-rights, head-over-heals for this ‘Polaroid’.

Yes, the tonal variations are effing exquisite. Note the gradual grade from right to left–reversing the convention set by Dutch Golden Age (that’s been more or less continued uninterrupted ever since).

And the light slides into the frame in such a way as to imply a right triangle. There are so many grace notes: the way the sunlight accentuates the curve of the bottle like a hand that can’t quite decide whether to lift the object or merely luxuriate in the cool press against its palm. The two plants–how they are just illuminated enough to separate them from the background, rendering them legible. The way the brightest point in the image is the echoing right angle formed by Suspended In Light’s left forearm the sink edge and the side of her top.

Oh, and the way the light from her left thigh pops against the gloaming darkness. And the second bottle to the left of the mirror with the sprig of something standing at attention. And the light on her reflected face…

Instant film stocks tend to provide an unpredictable softness of focus. It is used to masterful effect here were the paneling, sink pedastal and skin all appear to have visual texture that almost seems as if were you to touch it, it would feel like wood, porcelain and flesh.

But I think what I love most is the washing machine and dryer nudging in along the lower left edge of the frame. Not only does it balance out what would have otherwise between a frame leaning decidedly off balance to the right, the inclusion renders a greater degree of interest in the frame as a whole. There is a timelessness feel to the image but it is clearly anchored in the present.

I especially admire this image because in my own work, I am generally loathe to work indoors. I always tell myself that one day I’ll be able to afford to live in a place like the apartment in Mirror. This image serves as a reminder that even if I had that apartment, I’d still struggle to shoot in it because when you’re working in close confines, at a certain point you have to play it as it lays. I’m too much of a control freak to do that–and I think my work suffers as a result.

Source: photominimal

msjanssen:

idiedatbirth:

I haven’t Tumblred in a while.

It’s cause this girl happened.

Deal with it.

this is an amazing image…

^I agree.

But I also think it could have perhaps been improved. In tone, form and content it reminds me of Jim Richardson’s A thunderstorm halts haying as two farmers watch the sky–which is less compositionally muddled and self-contained.

I say that not as a slight to the above–just as an example of how people who make images like the above need to think differently if they want fine art legitimacy.

Henrique Santos  – Title unknown (201X)

Dear whoever-made-this:

I love it. LOVE it. Have you ever thought about making it a t-shirt?

I’d buy three. No lie–because I love the design and what it shows but moreso for the fact that when asked about how I identify my sexual orientation I could point to this instead of trying to use words that feel awkward, short-sighted and confining.

Keep making awesome work!

AE

Source: iblackbutterflies

Duane Michals – Man Undressing (1990)

I spent my first three years as a photographer relying solely on self-instruction.

As far as art photography went I was familiar enough with Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, William Eggleston, Sugimoto, Araki, Nan Goldin and, of course, my best beloved Francesca Woodman.

Duane Michals was the first photographer I encountered in my MFA track that got under my skin.

Some of it was due to the fact that you can’t look at his work without realizing how huge an impact he had on Woodman. She routinely took cues from him and made better and far more accessible work than him by standing on his shoulders.

Still, Woodman’s work has one flaw: it’s singularly narcissistic. This sounds like a cutting criticism; it’s not: history is littered with examples of singularly narcissistic white cis men. Woodman’s work will always be important for the way it insists upon the potential of narcissism as a motivation for art by white cis women.

She carried over many of what I consider to be Michals unconsidered aesthetic debts. Like Brassai, Michals likes things dark. Like Cartier-Bresson, there is something about the way he shoots that feels international (even though he mostly worked in NYC, if memory serves).

Another way to look at it is in conception, Michals is far more visionary than Woodman. However, w/r/t public consumption, Woodman reigns supreme. (Rightly so, I’d argue.)

Years later, I’m still not entirely sure how to wrap my brain around Michals. I definitely appreciate the conceptual rigor and thought that motivates his work. I frequently object to his muddy technical chops. Yet there is one thing that becomes clearer to me every time I sit down with his work: the profound empathy underlying it.

For an openly gay man who is hugely invested in avoiding political work: his work is maybe the model I would suggest for tempering heteronormativity in depictions of sexuality–because although he’s made decidedly gay imagery, he also finds a way of presenting heterosexual exchanges in a way devoid of pretense or fantasy.

I relate to the image above because the palpable weight of individual awkwardness balanced against the tension of seduction/desire rings unsettling true.

Source: foxesinbreeches