Category: Uncategorized

[↑] Source unknown – Title unknown (2009-2010); [↓] Albert Finch – Journey.. (2015)

There are literally thousands of reasons why the Harry Potter series was such a cultural watershed. Among the most notable: a consistent worldview/mythology and the way the world is introduced to the reader very much the way humans begin to understand their world, i.e. through limit observation–the reader experiences the world with Harry and then learns the depth and breath through institutionalized education.

It’s funny though because the point where I invested in the story wasn’t when Hagrid arrives. It’s when Harry arrives on Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station and encounters the Hogwart’s Express train. Whether we realize it or not: there is something in our subconscious that still clings to the wonder of our first–from the standpoint of evolution–encounter with speedy transit.

Trains are fucking magic. Full stop. (And the fact that the wizarding world would enchant a train sells the whole thing in a way that is one of those conceptual coup de graces that there is no way to overestimate.)

The best I’ve ever heard this sense articulated was by Ani DiFranco in her staggering 9/11 elegy entitled Self-Evident, where she laments the problems our addiction to fossil fuel creates:

…once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like duke ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face

give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll

And that’s why, although neither of these images is anywhere near perfect–both feature underexposure and the compositional logic doesn’t really gel–there’s still something compelling about them. It’s almost as if by virtue of the fact that one places a moment that is moving not only in time but also in space in stasis, there is an inherent narrativity to the resulting image.

Consider Pavel Kiselev’s heinously under-edited, but still intriguing Railway Novel. Or, this fragment by Dylanne Lee that doesn’t fit within the themes of this blog but has been almost constantly lurking at the fringe of my consciousness.

Sophie van der Perre – Sarah (2014)

Overall, I find der Perre’s work perhaps a little too self-consciously editorial/fashion in genre.

I do not mean to suggest it’s bad. It’s just that there’s almost a self-same ubiquity to it and it looks to me like all the rest of effectively executed, even thoughtful but ultimately dull editorial/fashion work I see.

But I do really like this image and a few others in her Flickr photostream. And although I could make easy correlations to Lina Scheynius or Chip Willis, I am more interested in my realization that although I consider Erica Shires to be one of the best photographers working today, der Perre’s work actually suggested the closest thing I have to a criticism of Shires’ work: namely, her didactic use of nudity.

Shires is teaching a workshop in Tuscany this month. And one of the first topics she mentions in her course description is: [s]hooting nudity but being thoughtful about it. Does it make sense? Go beyond the literal.

This sensibility is pervasive in her work. And I feel that now that I know to look for it, a great deal of the nudity in her images comes across as preachy.

It is always a very fine line between leading by example and insisting on leading by example. I feel it’s actually the same margin between showing and telling. But one should never tell where it is possible to show and I think what der Perre does is feature nudity in images that are intrinsic to the images themselves. There’s no question of how it happened or whether it was motivated, it merely is a discrete, moment presented without commentary as-is.

The result is playful without being the least bit coquettish or flirtatious.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (20XX)

I’ve been staring at this for an hour or so trying to untangle why–despite being a shitty image–it resonates with me fucking seismically.

Yeah, I totally get the essence of it. I distinctly remember the feeling of being so aroused that it was painful and my single all-consuming thought being alleviating some of that tension.

And this nails a sort of visual distillation of that experience. But it also reminds me of that line: youth is wasted on the young. I’ve always thought of that as a sort of vampiric sentiment; you know: if only they could figure out a way to bottle that feeling of urgent adolescence, all the things I could do with what I know now!

All the while there are days I’ll not crawl out of bed all day and spend those hours wishing I had a time machine and I could go back and find myself at 19 and have just a few minutes to explain how the fear comes on its own. Don’t borrow it ahead of time, don’t wait on it. Just step out into the void and let yourself fall. Because there’s only falling. It’s not ours but it’s all we’ll ever get.

But I’m not sure I’d listen. Not sure I’d even know how to talk to the myself of so many years ago. And I think if I went back to me at 13, maybe then I’d know what to say. But what could I say: be less afraid to make mistakes because it’s not the mistakes it’s how you respond to them that will define the boundary between who you are and who you want to become.

It all comes down to the simple fact that although it does it shabbily and with less technical acumen that I prefer…this image’s raison d’etre exists in the boundary between where my work is as a photographer and where I want it to go.

The feeling underlying it has something to do with they way I always mishear that Neutral Milk Hotel line as: the miracle of their dark thing.

As has been said: Light is easy to love. Show me your darkness.

And the angles sing: How? What is the appropriate way? I’m trying. I’m trying and failing and falling, always falling.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (20XX)

Despite this being a terrible image–what exactly are those bars behind them and is that a curtain in the background?–I’m into it.

A good part of the reason I’m into it has to do with it avoiding both the usual MMF cliches of dude bros frat studs high-fiving over a coed they’re having their way with as well as the default tender sentimentality of more bi-curious tuned fare.

There’s something more primal to it.

Admittedly the image doesn’t read as clearly as it could but if you look closely you’ll notice that the woman has semen on her neck. It’s very likely that he started to come and is now finishing in the other guy’s mouth.

The way heteronormative porn handles ejaculation pisses me off and I think we should treat male ejaculation closer to female ejaculation in that… oh, that was cool but we’re just getting started here. (I don’t know about you but the best sex I’ve had has always happened after I’m sure I can’t physically handle further stimulation and then my partner(s) demonstrate to me that I most unequivocally can handle a great deal more than I think I can.

Also, I really love that everyone is so into what’s going on. The guy having intercourse with the woman is clearly into sucking cock and the woman appears to be enjoying herself. (I also really like that her braid is coming unraveled on the wood floor.)

Seeing this makes me feel like maybe there are people out there in the world who fuck the way I think people ought to fuck.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

This is not a good photograph. Good or not, it is goddamn fascinating.

The color is positively garish–render skin tones livid with blue green bruising. The two tone yellow of the tub and wall paper certainly doesn’t help matters.

But note how the reflection of the flash off the mirror–while absolutely contributing to the fucked up color balance–is rather lovely when you only consider the reflection.

And I do love the way the cunnilingus giver is supporting the receiver’s hips with her hands, the soapy wetness of the skin and the despite the unflattering angle, how the receiver’s reflection appears so unfeigned in its blissed outness.

Source: partialboner

Morgan Gwenwald – Untitled (1992)

All I’ve been able to learn about Gwenwald is that she was a photographer active in NYC primarily during the late-70s and throughout the 80s.

Most of her work appears to be documentary in nature. (The most comprehensive collection can be accessed via the Lesbian Herstory Archives.)

However, it seems that she was also very active in efforts to reappropriate depictions of the vulva from mainstream pornography. There’s mention in a couple of places about a notable image entitled Incorrect View of the Beloved. ( can’t actually find an example of it online, but there is a reasonably specific description here.)

Source: lesbianartandartists

Gene Oryx – Provocazione (2015)

I’ve stared at this enough to realize it’s a backless evening gown she’s wearing backwards.

Remember that feeling when you were young and on the threshold of sharing your body with someone new? How your back teeth were filled with bees and your knees went all jello-y electric? That’s what her line of the dress caused by her right thumb makes me feel.

(And it’s probably #skinnyframebullshit, but I’m too biased in this case to insist.)

Source: a3paper

Massimo Leardini – Untitled from Scandinavian Girls (2013)

This wears its influences on its sleeve–Jock Sturges and Arno Rafael Minkkinen.

One out of two isn’t bad.

But it also shares common ground with Taiwanese genius Yung Cheng Lin insofar as it chooses implicit insinuation over explicit denotation, i.e. this could be nothing more than a simple image of a sprite nude young woman in nature, yet the pose here can just as easily be read as a sort of adolescent body curiosity which is perhaps even masturbatory; also the positioning of the log could reference Freudian misogyny or–I’ll pretend I’m an optimist today: an underdeveloped theme of genderfuckery. (I don’t really think that last suggestion fits because in this case the vertical composition is logically consistent with the image; yeah, it’s phallic as fuck but at least the skinny frame is logically consistent.)

In other words, I’m into this image on a conceptual level and not so much w/r/t technique–there’s almost no highlight detail which limits contrast and tonal separation by hazing out the middle greys. (Imagine what this would’ve looked like with the 3D pop that you can get when you effing nail the exposure with an appropriately contrasty film stock.)