550

The degree of privilege involved in this project borders on obscene; an awareness of which is always lurking just beyond the margins.

Due to that fact, I ditch the smut and psuedo-prurience every 50th post to check in on how things are in the desert of the real.

Generally, things aren’t going especially well. But for this edition, shit is bleak as a fatherfuck.

  • Someone inside the Canadian Department of Defense vandalized Rehtaeh Parsons’ Wikipedia entry with repugnant strain of rape culture denying/victim blaming.
  • Speaking of rape culture: Paul Nungesser, who Emma Sulkowicz has accused of raping her, continues his run of being a tour de force exemplar of how not to respond to accusations of sexual assault/be a staggeringly tone dear asshole. He’s suing Columbia University for being “a silent bystander and then [turning] into an active supporter of a fellow student’s harassment campaign [e.d. reference to Sulkowicz’s senior performance art thesis Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) by institutionalizing it and heralding it.”
  • Here in the US, there have been a spate of states seeking to enact legislation to preserve religious freedom. Proponents of the laws argue that many states already have similar laws on the books. However, the new efforts to get these laws passed feature an implicit license to protect businesses from litigious reprisals for refusing to serve LGBTQQAI folk. (It’s also an effort to forestall the perceived threat of Sharia law–but really it’s just that Evangelical ass douche slurpees can’t stand competition.) It’s notable that Arizona governor Jan Brewer refused to sign a similar bill into law last year. Indiana–being far less sensible, somehow (than AZ, tho… come on IN) managed to push a bill through that was signed into law. The response was swift and furious. Thankfully, Indiana recanted. A few weeks later a similar resolution in Arkansas was sent back to clarify that it wasn’t authorizing discrimination. However, Louisiana toad/governor, and Republican presidential aspirant Bobby Jindahl has sworn to stand honorably against the homosex onslaught.
  • Freddie Gray, a 25-year old black man, had 80% of his spine severed while in Baltimore, MD police custody. As has become standard, the police immediately and vociferously criminalized the victim and lied substantively about what transpired & when. Either through negligence or intent, Baltimore PD foments riots by shutting down transit and surrounding black youth. Typically, the media responds with the threats to property are more serious than threats by the police to PoC narrative. Surprisingly, the subsequent investigation rules the death a homicide. (A pertinent meta-critique is that of the six cops arrested in relation to the death of a suspect in custody all had bail set lower than an 18-year old black man accused of smashing police are windows with a traffic cone.)
  • ISIL aligned Boko Haram is one the ropes after a coordinated military effort to eliminate them. Unfortunately, the extent of the continuing toil even if they are defeated appears to be just as devastating.

It’s not possible to touch on even a fraction of the stories I should but these are several stories I’ve been following with more focused attention.

Claudine Doury – Lola #2, Tachkent, UZ (2002)

I’m completely head-over-fucking-heels for Doury’s oeurve. She takes the best facets of other renowned image makers (Among them: Nan Goldin,
Sebastião Salgado and Monika Bulaj) and integrates them in a holistic, meditative and frequently hypnotic gaze.

But, someone might astutely inquire, why post them here–there’s no nudity, nothing erotic or seemingly transgressive?

I don’t agree. And the trouble is I don’t know exactly how to fit it to words. I guess it’s not unlike the flashes of awareness that begin as kids approach puberty–those moments of razor sharp awareness that darken faces and features–a febrile yearning for the i’ll know it when I see it future and a palpable fear of one by one putting away those childish things and following blossoming desire like some goddamned pied piper.

Doury’s images radiate with a willingness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in such a space of betweenness–recognizing and giving thanks for the sacredness of being seen truthfully and without external projection in the one ephemeral and unending moment.

Exquisite to the exponent of transcendent.

Joe Traina – Kelsey Dylan (2013)

The so-suffused-it-appears-smoky backlighting here is just sumptuous–not unlike sfumato steeped in the implicit neo-paganism of the Hudson River School and then heartily infused with the sensibilities of Gerhard Richter’s landscape paintings.

And Dylan’s pose reminds me of a Venus born without a societal imposed sense of bodily shame.

I’m extremely fond of this image but I do have to take issue with a facet of its presentation. I’m personally against watermarking images. Yeah, yeah.. I understand people regularly steal stuff. But if you as the image maker have done your work, it bears your distinctive finger print with or without a water mark.

I admit that’s a personal peccadillo. However, if you’re an image maker who insists on using a watermark–be mindful of the fact that you are an image maker and therefore, ostensibly, a visual art. This tendency for visual arts to employ typographic watermarks is fucking inexcusably lame. (This is perhaps the only accolade I’ll ever offer SingleChair: he gets it and his watermark might as well be considered the gold standard–ahead of literally thousands of superior image makers who slap together a 75% transparency text logo. Mad unsat.)

Source: trainaphotography

Source unknown – Title unknown (20XX)

Generally speaking, although my grammar is fucking terrible, I do make an effort to maintain a degree of rigor in my application of certain terminology w/r/t this blog.

I’ll only ever refer to images produce via analog processes and technologies as photographs. Anything digital will always be referred to in terms of process as ‘digital imaging’ and the result as an image. And I refer to the confluence of analog and digital practices as image making. The point being: contrary to how they are used in practice, analog and digital are in no way interchangeable processes.

I also distinguish between porn and pornography–the latter of which I consider matters of what constitutes ‘pornographic’ to be a logical subset. Lower case a-art can be about porn and Art (upper case A) can be pornographic. Porn is fundamentally incapable of association with Art (upper case A).

Also, one of the main ways of differentiating between porn and pornography, has to do with the profit motive. Is the purpose to make money? It’s not always cut-and-dry but generally, I’d argue if the goal is to make money, then it’s porn.

You get into grey areas with material that isn’t necessarily produced for profit. Nothing about the above suggests it was made to turn a profit. Yet, it doesn’t read as a documentary self-portrait, either. It seems it was taken for someone other than the subject’s personal/private enjoyment. So the ‘profit’ becomes less about currency and more interpersonal attraction.

I’m not sure I’m willing to deem this porn. Yes, it’s lacking technical merit–it’s #skinnyframebullshit is egregious as fuck and the bleach bypass effect adds nothing.

Still there are some nice things: the discarded clothes, the computer, the ever-so-slight glistening perspiration on the boy’s face. Ultimately, these are all just missed opportunities to transcend something more than porn. (It’s clear that the document of the act of seeing is more important than the how and way of it.)

And that’s unfortunate because even if the act of seeing was so important horizontal orientation would have contributed additional contact and if the camera had been moved 18 inches to the right and panned 35 degrees, this would’ve further highlighted the globs of semen on his abdomen as well as accentuating the sixth spurt current blocked by his spent member.

So while I do not for a second think this is a good image, it does have potential–admittedly ignored–but, something about this gets me right in the feels.

I have very few regrets in life. I’d rather have do than wonder what it might’ve been like to have done. If I’m honest, I do have one regret: I wish I had been able to shoot a scene for I Feel Myself–or since (much to my perpetual chagrin) my body is the goddamn wrong gender for that, Gentleman Handling, I guess…

And as much as I’d like to do it now: the intermittent health issues I’ve had for the last two and a half years, have caused me to gain weight. And I’m realizing now that although I’d never be happy with my body, that the fellow in the above image is only slightly more attractive than I was back in the day.

I’m rambling… I guess the point is I missed my window. No one wants to see me now. Hell, no one wants me period. So I guess that if you were feel like you really want to do something but you’re afraid what the consequences will be if you go for it, in my experiences the  consequences of not going for it are much, much worse.

Source: shep-hard

Researchers Find Association Between Porn Viewing And Less Grey Matter In The Brain

One of my more conservative, straight and cisgendered female friends posted a link to this on her Facebook timeline yesterday evening with comment noting that science had gone ahead and proved what she’d long suspected.

I’ll be the first to admit that I know fuck all about science and research methods. But conceptually, it seems to me that this experiment was structured in such a fashion as to produce the desired results–namely: to prove that an increase in time spent viewing porn facilitates negative neurological consequences.

I cannot access anything more than the study abstract but it seems to me that there were 64 male participants. Beyond their cis-gendered-ness, nothing is mentioned about their sexual preference. The only concern seems to be their self-reporting the amount of time they spend every week consuming pornography.

Already–this is in and of itself–problematic: it assumes a standard heteronormative experience of sexuality in relationship to presuppositions about pornography. Additionally, there is no mention of whether or not a preference for specific kinds of porn were reported. If the participant has a preference for MILF or Asian creampie material, this will skew the test results in favor of the end the experiment is trying to prove. (Also, who curates the clips shown to the participants. What were the criteria for the curation? We each of the 64 participants showed the same footage?)

To me it seems logical that those who consume more porn would–at the very least have a clearer understanding of what they enjoy seeing whereas those who consume less porn are more goosed by the novelty (for lack of a better way of putting it). I know that in my case, unless someone curated the clips I was going to watch based around my particular interests, then I’d be bored as fuck. (I’m hardly an expert on neurology but I suspect that could easily register as a decrease in motivation.)

Also, to what degree was the material shown to the participants low-budget, sloppy, sexists garbage? Can we run another experiment where we show the participants episodes of fucking Friends and compare the results? What about repeating the same experiment with straight, cisgendered women?

Or, maybe I’m just a neuroatypical nutbag who over thinks everything including the porn I consume…

Researchers Find Association Between Porn Viewing And Less Grey Matter In The Brain

Mercedes Esquivel – Sarah Vōx (201X)

At first glance, there was some thing about this image that flustered me–not flustered as in frustrated, more unconventional; as in the way the profound is often masked by it’s commonplace-ness.

It’s been saved as a draft for several months now. I keep  traipsing back to it, spending an hour hear and there trying (and ultimately failing) to give expression to an inarticulate gut reaction.

As with so much of my intellectual life, I have this tendency to believe only that which is so difficult as to be functionally impossible has merit. It’s a mentality that in the absence of intellectual heavy lifting, creates unnecessary work.

But that’s super abstract. Let’s keep it concrete and focus on this image: from square fucking one this image has been about the effortless, lack of contrivance to the pose. It is as if posing for an image were to be separated into a continuum of 1. ) preparing to pose, 2.) the mindful tension of holding the pose and 3.) the subsequent dissolution of mindful tension, then this image would represent the moment after 3 but also before 1.

This fit with my limited familiarity with Esquivel’s work; thus, most of my initial efforts to explain my reaction centered on the notion of pose. The trouble is that when you’re looking for something so specific, there is a tendency to miss the forest for the trees. By focusing on pose, I drunkenly lopped down long dark alleys of considering odd framing decisions; and instead of taking a step back, trying to justify my initial theory by suggest that kind of like counterpoint in musical compositions, the frame was an effort to highlight poses intended to exemplify the Golden Ratio.

However, after spending some time with Esquivel’s work, I’m realizing that there just isn’t that consistency in her use of pose. For as natural as the above is, her work is also rich with unnatural, highly stylized poses. In fact, her use of scale and angle of view differ enormously over her body of work. That which remains consistent is how she frames things.

And the framing is extremely interesting; it features an internal logic–while not immune to #skinnyframebullshit, she mostly avoids it–as well as an external consistency across her work. Moreover, there is a sense less of an image maker creating an image and more that the work exists as an exercise in assisted self-portraiture.If you spend any time with the images, there is a feeling that the impetus for the frame being what it is has more to do with it being something the image maker might have set up a tripod and posed for the picture herself without access to willing models.

Source: thebodyhung

Norman Jean Roy – Laverne Cox for Allure Magazine (2015)

Honestly, I’m just kind of perpetually flustered by Ms. Cox. She is articulate, brave and as jaw-droppingly talented as she is beautiful. (She’s the only reason I still bother with OITNB—because seriously don’t even get me started on Jenji Kohan’s and her faux edgy, patronizing bullshit better-than-thou narcissistic tokenist bullshit.)

The response to this image of Cox has been predictable. Noah Berlatsky, at Playboy of all places, exposes radical feminist exclusionism in several responses.

And I don’t want to diminish the import of the image–because in a way it is revelatory. The problem I have with it is the implicit violence of the frame edge. It’s one thing to present Cox as sexy–I’d say it’s unavoidable, she’s positively sultry like always–it’s the symbolic rendering of her immobile by the amputation of her feet that doesn’t sit well with me.

Erika Lust – I Wish I Was A Lesbian (2014)

In theory, Erika Lust’s approach to making pornography–outlined in her oft referenced TEDxVienna speech–appeals to me: an emphasis on context (characters are more than the performance of their respective sexualities) and diversity of modes of sexual expression are all v. on-point.

And it’s totally counter-productive but… the traditional trappings of porn are low-production values, improbably scenarios and exaggerated sexual performances. Thus, when you preempt the traditional with a more thoughtful diversion into the who, where and why instead of rushing into the what and how, you raise audience expectations with regard to ultimate quality whether you intend to or not.

That’s the great failing of Lust’s promise: by setting out to make better porn she sets her sights too low. She’d do better to expend her efforts trying to make art that just so happens to be pornographic.

Which is not to say that the above scene is without certain moments. Placing equal emphasis on graphic depictions of sexual expression and the physical response to those depictions is unquestionably inspired. However, those moments are ultimately diminished when they are spliced together in such a rough-shod, pretentious fashion.

And it’s entirely possible that I am putting too much emphasis on the fact that this scene was shot handheld. The current preponderance of handheld camera work in motion pictures is an enormous pet peeve of mine since with the exception of Lars von Trier (who is preoccupied with using a subjective cinema-verite approach in combination with editing to stylize ellipses of perception by a fly-on-the-wall observer) or the Dardenne Brothers (who have pushed subjective handheld cinematography to something perhaps not objective–framing necessarily precluding questions of inclusion/exclusion–but unblinking and entirely unselfconscious), there is a total obliviousness to the history and functionality of handheld camera work.

Granted, I haven’t seen the full scene but the excerpted clips suggest that the handheld nature of the shots is intrusive–it is supposed to be noticed. The audience exercises some sense of active voyeurism, a passive co-authorship. And while, yes, this arrangement allows for scenes like the young woman’s face in the third frame from the top and the lubing up of the strap-on in the sixth frame from the top, my response is that any narrative motion picture instructs the viewer how it is supposed to be seen in the first third of the first act. The expectations that this film establishes are cribbed from art-house/international cinema but it can’t follow through in execution once it arrives at the place where it’s always intended to be.

Source: ferroso01

April-Lea Hutchinson – Untitled (2012)

Underlying Hutchinson’s work is a visual equivalent of the restless energy which motivates a lion to pace back and forth behind the bars.

There’s a sense that she shares a strong connection with those she photographs. I don’t know anyone who manages to capture Tanya Dakin in such an assured and sultry state– bearing in mind that by the word ‘sultry’ I mean it in much the fashion as my dear friend who was born and raised in the deep south and always tells me that southern ladies never sweat, the merely become increasingly sultry. (Of course, she said this as she was visible sweating through her linen dress…but her point was well taken.)

She also manages to summon an affected coyness from Johanna Stickland that you never see anywhere else in either of their respective work.

It’s interesting that she happens to be close friends with both. As if the history of mutual understanding that fostered the relationship, provides a basis wherein either party is comfortable trying on and shedding whatever roles or perception of self seem to fit in the moment without judgment or consequences.

And that freedom in the moment, seems to be an effective tool in work that is consistently and unapologetically erotic.