Torbjørn Rødland – Poolside (2017)

At some point I am actually going to be able to compose something coherent on Rødland’s work.

Today isn’t that day–unfortunately.

Thus, as a place holder please watch this interview produced by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. (The circumspect way he speaks about his work sets my teeth on edge. His positioning of his art as an outcropping of an effort to find value in the banality of stock photography, along with the influence of Jeff Wall and his frustration with realism are astute observations; however, I’m more interested in how his work seems to be the inheritor of Nobuyoshi Araki’s mantle–except Araki obsessively and explictly explored the intersections between pornography and art from the position of a pornographer, Rødland’s work strikes me as an inversion of Araki’s M.O. I’m just not yet to a point where I can coherently explain my thinking on the subject…)

Source: davidkordanskygallery.com

stillcrazyafteralltheseyears6 – Untitled (2018)

When I see this image, I can’t shake the notion that photography and digital imagining can arguably be reduced to questions regarding contrast–e.g. inclusion vs exclusion (framing), luminosity vs. opacity, near vs. far, etc.

More directly linked with this image–and it’s genius–is the quintessential question of depth vs flatness.

No matter whether it’s photography or digital imaging, the result involves compression. Spatial references are reduced to micro-fine layers in an emulsion or an array of pixels. In other words: three dimensions are rendered in two.

Over time certain modes of visual shorthand have become codified–e.g. with skintone we have notions interpolated based on the Zone System or the red before blue before green rule of thumb.

As best I can tell these tendencies are meant to be aesthetically pleasing but the why they are attractive has to do with stylistics–the notion of skin as smooth and/or soft. (And this is more of a psychological prejudice than a factual one–I mean look at the back of your hand up close and it looks like a muddy landscape that has been sun baked until it takes on the appearance of craquelure.)

In other words, there is a notion that as far as Caucasian models are concerned there is a preference for either an alabaster or apricot tone–an ersatz synesthesia by consensus where tonality or color is in and of itself supposed to be suggestive of texture.

As a synesthete, I am constantly befuddled by this knee-jerk approach. I mean: show me an image of a swatch of twill pictured under strong light and I can actually feel the texture of the material on my fingertips.

Here though it almost works and how it works is by taking a step back to consider how photography/image making is about contrast and then juxtaposing something which easily conveys textural information (water) against something which does not easily convey textural information (skin).

Simple, elegant and something I’ll be trying to figure out how to apply to my own work going forward.

Source: stillcrazyafteralltheseyears6

Cheyenne Montgomery – water (2008)

Do you ever wonder where stock photos/images come from?

Well, if you’re on Flickr you can opt in to Getty Images and then Getty comes through and if they see something they like/think they can sell; the image is added to their databases.

Montgomery opted in and has 300+ photos listed with Getty now.

Her images might best be labeled ‘sites & sights’–as they favor day-to-day (read: banal) documentation with an emphasis on travel and family events. 

I can’t say I’m particularly taken with the rest of her work. I mean she’s clearly exercising her visual thinking muscles even when a good percentage of her strategies/choices faceplant)–although I will grudgingly credit her for avoiding the typical ‘gram flavor of the week aesthetic which tends to be endemic in work with a similar approach. She instead embraces a moodier, muddier vibe.

The above image is exceptional. The shallow focus emphasizes an Impressionist-adjacent interplay between color and texture. This is–in turn–heightened by the unresolved tension between any definite interpretation of what is depicted, i.e. is this a hug, a fight or a rescue?

It’s not unlike fred hüning‘s work, actually; yes–he’d never have zoomed in this close; but everything else is very much in keeping with his style and conceptual preoccupations. (I’d not be surprised if Montgomery is a fan of his work.)

[↑] Hardcored – Title unknown (201X); [↓] All Fine Girls – Title unknown feat. Amia Miley (201X)

This was originally supposed to be a juxtaposition as commentary post.

That, however, shifted when I discovered that the version of the top image posted by @partialboner (who blocked me, for some reason, apparently–which sucks since he runs a damn fine art porn blog) was a crop of the original.

My initial reading of the crop version of the top image was: this is aggro but fucks with notions of public vs private in a way that this is more edgy than uncomfortable–even the extra color saturation enhances the feeling that what we’re seeing has been carefully negotiated.

The uncropped original skeeves me out because of the production company whose water mark it bears. (I’m fine with BDSM–I’m a switch–but BDSM demands a baseline minimum of respect for boundaries and hinges upon complicated questions of verbal and non-verbal consent. (More on this in a bit…)

The lower image is more visual complex-yes, it’s still very porn cliché-y but it’s at least less flat than the top image.

Initially, I wanted to feature this as a juxtaposition as commentary post in order to underscore varying degrees of visual legibility, as well as how the top scene is ostensibly public and the lower one is obviously transpiring in the privacy of a boudoir.

Also, I wanted to create a comparison/contrast between the way panties (an object) are employed in a manner for which they were not designed–a gag and a penetrative object, respectively.

The post would get close to going up and I’d kick it down to the bottom of my queue because I knew it belongs here but the framing of juxtaposition as commentary seemed too toothless a means of engaging with it.

Part my initial reluctance to post this was a direct result of allegations made by Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon… and, well: nothing about the scenes they are speaking out about are acceptable things to not have explicitly negotiated boundaries/consent in advance.

I think the problem I have with these runs much deeper and has everything to do with objectification. You wouldn’t be out of line to respond: methinks the lady doth protest too much–after all she does run a sex blog that frequently showcases graphic and/or explicit depictions of sexuality.

In for a penny, in for a pound, you’d think; except…

Porn deals in fantasy. You can argue until you’re blue in the face that a person who sees a pornographic video and goes out and treats the video like a how-to guide is a full psychopath. I mean how often has the pizza deliver guy shown up holding a pizza with his schlong just hanging out and the scantily dressed woman who answers to door just pulls him in and starts using his member to probe her tonsils. The world doesn’t work like that and you’d expect that most folks would realize that’s not how things work IRL; except…

Increasingly folks do not have access to fact based, reliable, comprehensive and honest sex education. So in some ways the argument that it’s all fantasy and everyone knows that and only a real fuck-up would think the world operates like that doesn’t follow here because part of porn being a fantasy involves the suspension of disbelief.

Beyond the absurdity of some of the scenarios porn features, what is someone who lacks strong sex education to believe and disbelieve? It’s dangerous to assume and not assuming makes things very thorny.

Generally, I think you can argue that in most porn you can presuppose that the participants have consented. However, I think it’s EXTREMELY dangerous to extend that presupposition to more BDSM elements–since those sorts of scenarios demand additional verbal consent as a result of the escalation.

And I realize I’m applying my impression of the one studio to all of their work; except…

I don’t know it’s hard to read either of these images as if the women are anything more than objects for sexual gratification. And honestly that’s where my primary beef sits: I think there is an onus on porn producers whose bread and butter involves scenes of women being manhandled and acknowledge as little more than warm, more or less moist orifices to penetrate really do have a responsibility to convey something with regard to an awareness of and respect for consent.

It’s definitely easier to do that in a video–I’m not sure how you do it in a single, static frame (it would likely be difficult to impossible and would dramatically slow down production).

But I do think we really have to do better about being mindful of consent when producing this kind of content, fwiw.

[↑] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↖] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [+] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↗] Helix Studios – Title unknown (201X); [-] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↙] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↘] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X)

Follow the thread: Pride edition.

Chris Maher – 0876 Two Nude Women Abstract Vulval BW Photograph (2013)

One of the things I dig about photography/image making is that although I wouldn’t argue the form is inherently egalitarian, the line separating streamlined visual simplicity and lazy/creatively bankrupt work is an ultra fine one.

I think Maher’s work is actually 98% trash. And I wouldn’t say this is necessarily good–there’s some spill on the floor behind the left thigh of the rearmost subject which really should’ve been flagged off in order to underscore the interplay between bodies and landscape style abstraction.

It’s perhaps a bit essentializing but the simplicity of it and the clitoral piercing belonging to the subject closer to the camera manage to strengthen the tension between abstraction and concrete representation.

I think there’s arguably a way to take this general premise–stretch and otherwise complicate and enliven it so that it’s more than a simple (or, in this case, most likely lazy) meditation on form that is simultaneously tawdrily titillating.