preraphaeliteblues – Untitled (2015)

As images go, there are a number of elements that might be tweaked here.

Each of the five frames invokes a degree of something not unlike the feeling of wondering whether it’s okay to look or whether one should turn away. The second and fourth frame present a vantage that is both voyeuristic and confessional while also simultaneously neither. As such, the self-conscious posing for the sake of posing self-consciously awkwardness of the middle frame takes hold.

Small faults, really when stacked along side the precociousness of the top and bottom images–both of which I adore; but it’s really the top one (which is just alluring as fuck) that prompts me to read these images as a staggeringly astute commentary on the implications of self-portraiture.

In this The Year of Our Lord Instagram, with it’s accompanying glut of selfies, it’s difficult to untangle questions of self-definition (ridiculous as such a concept is at its root), the ontology of obsessive documentation, etc.). It’s become less about what we see in the mirror as opposed to the ways in which mirrors serve as preview windows for cyber representation.

That’s what gets me about this: the image maker is employing the camera as ersatz mirror. As if, to say this is not carefully cultivated version of me or even the me that friends and family know and love, it’s the me I carry with me everywhere and always.

Edward Weston – Nude [Charis, Santa Monica] (1926)

I have a conflicted relationship with Weston’s photography: on the one hand, his images don’t do much for me; on the other, I consider his print making skills unsurpassed.

Yes, Pepper No. 30 was printed by Weston’s son. And yes, it features the dynamism of a stiletto pressed against your jugular. But the prints made by Weston’s son–although never less than monumental–are good because the exaggerate what the senior Weston was so astute at underscoring in his work: dimensionality conveyed by means of rigorously exacting control of tone and texture.

Perhaps I’ve just worked too long with B&W film but the skin tone in this looks more perfect than I can fit to words. I don’t miss color. In my head, Wilson’s skin looks exactly how I see skin in my head. (And I love, so much, that one of the most iconic images of feminine beauty in the photographic canon features a woman with unshaven legs and pubic hair.)

You can want to be drawn me like one of those French girls all you want. Me? I want to see (and be seen) the way Weston saw Charis.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (20XX)

Artfully depicting masturbation is not an easy feat.

The act is private, sequestered. Thus, the question of how one witnesses such goings on becomes central—is it voyeurism, exhibitionism or a bit of both?

The more voyeuristic the image, the less intentional it appears, the more it relies upon the reputation of the image maker to supplement its ‘artistic’ merit.

The more exhibitionist the image, the less artful it appears–exhibitionism being rooted in self-consciousness and the efficacy of art being so commonly measured on its ability to annihilate notions of self and other.

This scene suggest an altogether brilliant fucking with this dichotomy: subvert the distinction between subject and object. What’s one of the oldest means of doing that? Reflections.

Now, I will not argue the young woman is unaware of the camera. (She definitely is… at least initially but she’s watching herself trigger and experience her bodies sexual response.

This discursive nesting of contexts–for me at least–continually refocus my attention on her increasing arousal and accompanying pleasure.

That to me is such a fucking turn-on that I really can’t even…

(NOTE: I had previously published .gif excerpts from this clip. I’ve elaborated somewhat on the comments accompanying those .gifs in an effort to tidy things up a bit.)

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

I suspect the image maker intended to nominate a single image to represent the entire sequence. (Or, perhaps, the context whereby I initially encountered them was individual and not collective.)

Each frame features both compelling and distracting features. For example:

  • (top left) This features the best composition including her nostril in a way that allows the sudden shift to black to operate in a thoroughly flattering fashion. The down side is that while my brain immediately makes the connection that it’s cum spilling over her lower lip, the artsy chiaroscuro could also mean it’s spit or one of those ostentatiously sexual popped bubble gum photos.
  • (top right) If this image had the entirety of her nostril in the frame, it would easily would’ve been the one to rule them all; except for that oversight, it’s a better frame in the way it uses space more interestingly by cutting out the distracting flyaway hair above her ear from the previous frame disappears. Plus, it’s clear that the substance in her mouth can only be semen. Zoom in close and check out the texture in the highlight that contributes dimensionality to the greyer air bubble area.
  • (bottom left) You could argue that the upper right frame has the best skin tone. I’d say that this one is better because the highlights blow out just a little more evenly and although I haven’t dragged it into Photoshop, I’m prett sure this one features the most detail in her lips. The composition is a little wonky, tho. She’s tilting her head slightly into the light and the upper margin makes it seem as if she’s uncomfortable. (I’d also argue that the focus is a tad bit sharper her, probably due to the additional light.)
  • (lower right) I want this one to be so much better than it is. I think it suffers from the worst skin tone, composition, color but there’s also something perverse about it the fact that you can see a little ways into the darkness; see that she’s wearing what is–to my untrained eye–a nice sweater and that this is either a bathroom or a kitchen. (There’s a sink behind her, unless I’m mistaken…) This uses light in a way that I try and with which I am subsequently always disappointed in the results.)

Yet, when they are re-collected and presented as a series… the continuity between the frames bridges the gaps in each of the individual images. In that way it’s clever. And it shows a certain inspired instinct in that this isn’t the sort of image I’d normally be interested in, much less turned on by.

Vlad Krum – Upstairs (2013)

I’ve been staring at this image for an hour trying to find a way to express what it is about it that hits me like an anvil dropped from a skyscraper.

If I was in my apartment, I’d dig through my college notebooks–nerd alert: I still have all of them–and couch things in terms of the points of contrast between Balinese and Javanese dance.

For better or worse, I am a long way from home. And unfortunately, once my brain shifts into a particular mode–in this case compare/contrast–I keep trying to find the words to point to what is so breathtakingly radical in this not necessarily good image by subtracting this image from it and analyzing the difference.

And that difference would almost certainly get at something with which I’ve been trying to come to terms for half a decade: when and if pornography can also be Art.

But every time I try to approach that vector my brain redirects me to a recent memory; namely: last week I boarded the subway and standing across from me in the opposite door well was this young woman. She was tall, perhaps an inch shy of six feet tall. It wasn’t her height that drew my attention; it was the not yet completely unlearned, painfully self-conscious awareness that made her cross her feet at the ankles and slouch slightly.

She had that I’ll-never-be-a-cover-girl-and-I-could-be-style-myself-in-such-a-way-as-to-be-conventionally-pretty-but-I-can’t-be-arsed look that gets me everytime: black Shure studio headphones, flaxen hair with ginger root highlights, alert eyed, constantly scanning her surroundings.

I found myself achingly aroused. An odd thing during morning rush hour in NYC. I tried not to look at her–I’m sure she realized I was eying her and the last thing I wanted to do was make myself a nuisance to her.

I’ve thought about her frequently since then. I still get the same pheromonal flush but it’s not sustained. Yes, my initial response was to her body. But a body is just a body unless it’s understood as part of the totality of a discrete personal identity. It was that searching spark–like the glimmer of a starving fire–that I saw that made me look closer.

And that’s the thing that gets me about this image: it’s not staged to play towards my preconception with regard to the semiotics of desire. It declares this is what my wanting looks like.

Pornography lacking in consideration for the empathy underlying the mechanics of pleasure will be forever incapable of being Art.

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. That solves a lot of problems. Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you.

Brian Eno  (via anorsexic)
Source: artpropelled

Mona Kuhn – [↖] Untitled from Evidence series (200X); [↗] George by the Door from Evidence series (2002); [←] Libellule from Evidence series (2006); [+] Untitled from Native series (200X); [→] Untitled from Venezia series (20XX); [↓] Jacintha from Evidence series (2006)

I cannot in good conscience endorse Kuhn’s work wholesale. I fucking love the photos above–this one is great, too; but, hearing her defend her work is rather off putting.

She’s big into nudes due to their ‘timelessness’ and the human body as a ‘residence’. She’s quick to point out that she’s also interested in totality and, as such, sexuality being an element of physical embodiment–which is problematic for it’s failure to include the experiences of folks with an asexual reality–it is clearly a facet of her work.

She’s walking the same high wire as another photographer with whom her work shares overlap (a focus on nudes, specifically within French naturalist communities), namely: Jock Sturges.

I find her work much less disingenuous and of a higher quality but it still vexes me that she dodges accusations of sexual overtones in her imagery because while I totally think Sturges is a perv who goes to great lengths to insist he’s not a perv–and to be clear here, I’m reclaiming ‘perv’ in a non-value judgement-y, re-appropriative, sex-positive way–Kuhn images function due to a sexual tension. (I’m referring specifically to Jacintha [above] but I think there’s a voyeuristic heavy-handedness motivating the concealing/revealing of nudity, i.e. her depth of field–which clever–is also a wee bit salacious in the way it invites squinting leers.)

What always ends up nudging me away from these concerns is how powerfully the photos communicate a palpable sense of intimacy. I’ve always maintained that narrativity and how we determine what is and is not narrative holds up a mirror to questions of the function of eroticism. Increasingly, I am beginning to think that it’s a trinity: narrative, intimacy, eroticism.

Charles Hudson White – The Kiss (1905)

Although this is clearly staged (not to mention: some #skinnyframebullshit), it feels like that Lacanian sentiment: [t]ruth has the structure of fiction.  The truth here has the structure of the fiction that in every relationship one person loves more than the other.

…and oh my! But, the light coming through those eight background window panes, and the reflection on the wood floor and that angled kicker reflection highlighting the line of her throat.

I can’t look at this and not recall the way “[m]y blood is alive with many voices telling me I am made of longing.”

Source: Wikipedia