Michal Solarski and Tomasz Liboska – Untitled #98 from Cut It Short series (2013)

Pursuing this blog I’ve encountered exactly four (4) photographers whose work destroys me: Igor Mukhin, Amy Montali, Allison Barnes and Prue Stent.

Michal Solarski needs to join them.

I don’t even know where to start here. I’m Stendahl-ing all over myself.

The religious iconography alone–Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on the left, a crucifix on the right, i.e the span of Christ’s final mortal night framing the scene–speaks volumes. Add the triangulated tension–personal, sexual, dramatic and fuck me but if this isn’t utterly compelling.

What would be a throw away subtitle [a]fter first sexual encounter instead puts the rest the electrical charged question of have they or haven’t they.

But this is one of those times when I need to shut up and trust the work to speak for itself. Here are Michal on Tomasz on Cut It Short:

We come from a little town of more or less four thousand people, in the southern edge of Poland. This is the place where twenty years ago, both of us were coming of age. It was nothing unusual, growing up is a process everyone goes through and there are certain things we all must encounter and discover at some point or another, and people of a certain generation find themselves going through the same fads and trends as fashion, attitudes and politics enter our awareness, well, at least that’s what we think.
It was the early 90’s, and if you really wanted to be cool, there was only one way – to declare war on your hairdresser, wear anything stripy and dive into the very depth of the Grunge revolution.
All that counted was our friendship and our dreams. And always, while listening to another new CD, somewhere in between the first and second bottle of cheap wine, that absolute certainty of having our lives under control was coming back. Time had stopped. But, before we learned the rules of the game, it was already over. Fate pushed to the front row unannounced. It wasn’t the first time fate had played unfairly. We happened to choose different schools, we started to eat burgers and to visit hairdressers from time to time. Both of us went to find our own happiness far from the little town we once used to call ‘home’.
Today we return to the familiar place with Dominik and Marek. With their help we are trying to reconstruct past events of our lives.
Slowly, we are back in the game. Sneaky fate – you better play your cards carefully this time!

The title ‘Cut it Short’ refers to the old tradition in Slavic cultures called ‘Postrzyzyny’. Young boys have their hair cut in order for them to enter society, a ‘coming of age’ of sorts.The custom is still being practiced in some circles as a kind of symbol of obeying the rules.
It’s an autobiographical story about transition between boyhood and adulthood, about friendship, and the passing of time.

Source: maciekjasik

Polina Poludkina – Untitled (2014)

This photograph resonates strongly with me.

I am not sure it’s completely non-appropriative to assert but I feel that if I could use a picture instead of a label to express my sexuality, this would be one of a dozen images too which I’d point. (Full disclosure: I would always point to this first and this second.)

But, you may object, this image is not explicitly sexual. And I am not going to insist it is but I do think it has something interesting to say–as much as mute images may speak–about intimacy.

I have lost a number of friends over the years and especially of recent. It would seem that more neurotypical folks view a continuum of intimacy associated with the concept of friendship and a separate continuum of intimacy associated with romantic and/or physical attraction; each are mutual exclusive and never the twain shall meet.

I don’t understand the dichotomy; either I trust you or I don’t–there’s no middle ground.

And this photography–and much of Poludkina’s work–is obsessively preoccupied with intimacy. In that her work overlaps the work of a photographer of whose work I will always be critical, Jock Sturges–specifically, The Last Days of Summer.

Both Poludkina and Sturges are interested in intimacy; but whereas Sturges primarily uses the nuclear, nudist family as a means of subverting criticisms of sexualizing pubescent youths–and to be clear just because I dislike his work doesn’t mean I feel it is worthy of censure or that it displays any sort of predatory sensibility, Poludkina doesn’t have to front load her work with the same sort of conceptual contortions. (As an aside: browsing her Flickr photostream there’s a feeling that her work is aggressively edited, distilled down to a moonshine of memories–yet instead of the memories we actually remember when we try to remember, the scope of her work reads as the memories we’d prefer to remember if we could remember to remember them. That’s unnecessarily layered and abstract but although I can’t quite articulate it the way in which the one young woman–who is out of focus–is aware of and watching the camera activates a sort of narrative insinuation. Her look somewhere between curiosity, welcome and insular reservation. The feeling of that narrative insinuation is identical to a prominent tone in maybe my favorite films of the last decade Short Term 12–it’s streaming on Netflix you have no excuse. This connection is interesting because Short Term 12 is, among other things: a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves and others and how the telling of those stories shapes our perception of the world around us.)

I feel like the strength of this photo is that unlike Sturges’ work it at least remains unblinking to the interpenetration of intimacy and sexuality.

What is your take on the new British law banning some porn acts? Are you worried as a cam model?

vextape:

What kind of a world do we live in where I can’t get home from a long day at the office and relax with a glass of wine while watching one person consensually inserting their fist into another person and then drinking the subsequent ejaculate? THAT’S NOT THE BRITAIN I KNOW AND LOVE sometimes think is ok

(in all seriousness, yes, it really really sucks. It hits the independent, niche companies and content producers the hardest and gives more market monopoly to the old traditional porn establishment. It strangles the most creative, experimental and ground breaking content making the only porn “safe” to produce in the UK, the same boring, repetitive, male-centered stuff we’ve been putting up for forever)

– here’s a clear legal breakdown of the change in regulations

– here’s why they are sexist

– here’s a good summary

– here’s where you can donate/support an organisation fighting it

Molhada & Quente – Untitled (2014)

I’ve mentioned my fascination with depictions of ejaculation several times. Mostly it’s the synesthesia wherein watching ejaculation results in a sympathetic resonance. Even without that freezing the essentially random trajectories and their illustrative fluid dynamics is just fucking endlessly intriguing to me. (Further, I think due to the customary highfalutin pretense of fine art photography wanting to explore questions of pornography without being pornographic has caused ejaculation to be a woefully under explored photographic motif.)

I have mixed feelings about the above image. On the con side of things:

  • the close-up framing diminishes contextual clues as to locations and circumstances
  • in tandem with the shallow, low contrast tonal range there is an even further disjunction from interpretable visual cues–rendering the image little more than blow job on a beach.
  • if proximity to the subject comprises a spectrum of voyeur to participant, the camera is–in this case–without question: participant.

By the same token, most of the cons also contribute–at least tacitly–to a knee-jerk efficacy. For example:

  • Although the close-up is a poor creative decision, it does bestow depth and dimensionality to the stream of semen.
  • the tonal range is distinctly reminiscent of some early twentieth century photographer whose name–despite four cups of coffee–I cannot currently retrieve.
  • the caption accompanying and the Molhada & Quente’s mission statement–which I have not reproduced here–it would seem the proximity of the camera to the action was intended more as POV documentation first for the couple and second for mass consumption.

It is entirely understandable why this was shot the way it was–arguably even justifiable. And I’ll never suggest it’s not an interesting image, though I would argue against suggestions it is good. My point is merely the potential for it to be good or even great is built-in. Should the camera have been backed two feet away from the proceedings, it would’ve been indubitably clear that this is public sex.

And I admit I am a context whore but in this case I thing more context also equals a more transgressive document–a result of which I will always be vociferously supportive.

Ashkan Sahihi – [ ↖] O; [ ↑] S; [↗] C; [←] C; [+] N; [→] J; [↙] C; [↓] T; [↘] K (2003)

Taken together, the nine images above constitute Sahihi’s series Cum.

On the surface, what they are is obvious: carefully crafted head and shoulders portraits featuring an assortment of men and women with semen on their faces.

I am admittedly exactly the opposite of a fan of facial cumshots in pornography; however, the immediacy in the confrontation of the viewer by the subjects’ gaze is compelling in a manner reminiscent the obviously exposed nerve as raison d’etre that contributes such vitality to the cinema–birth by poetry–that became the Iranian New Wave.

However, upon researching Sahihi’s work, I find his conceptual framing frequently emerges from both sides of his mouth. For example, to make the images in the Cum series, he “asked his male and female sitters to bring along a male partner to ejaculate on their face just before the photo was taken.”¹ Whereas, when it comes time to courting the art world, he refers to his impetus as addressing the “pornification of everyday culture;” and just in case that isn’t specific enough:

I wanted to do a series on how I feel popular culture is getting more and more saturated with pornographic imagery whenever something needs to be sold — any product, any TV program. The pimp-and-whore look is everyday fashion. But as people get more and more sexed up, they don’t necessarily have a happier or healthier sex life. They don’t have a better relationship with their sexuality. My point was not to claim that pornography or sexual self-empowerment were “bad” or “immoral,” just to say it’s everywhere, and our acceptance of it is a pose. If you told some of the same people who wore pimp-and-ho clothing that you support gay marriages or gay adoption, they’d be up in arms.²

In other words it seems doubtful that Sahihi informed his sitters of the aim of his project beyond him wanting to take classy photos of folks with jizz covering their faces. But in subsequently packaging this as a critique of consumerist culture, he enacts the same sort of transaction he claims to be criticizing.

The additional art speak rationalization is fucking patently unnecessary–analogous to seeing a monkey sitting in a recliner in a room and having the narrator explain that you are seeing a monkey sitting in recliner in a room.

And as much as I like these images, seeing the way Sahihi uses people as props in so much of his work, is as deeply problematic as it is disturbing.

Ultimately, he does share in the provocateur tradition of the Iranian New Wave. Unlike it–the Iranian New Wave was provocative because of the perspective it espoused, Sahihi seeks to suggest provocation as a means of selling his work. 

Source: ashkansahihi.com

Source unknown – Title unknown (19XX)

I tried to draw attention to this series a few posts back but on the grounds of quality of craft, i.e. adept handling of a diverse tonal range and unimpeachable attention to skin tone/texture.

Yes, some of the framing is awkward but I feel that’s more than counter balanced by the fact that the camera remains at enough of a remove that it remains voyeur instead of becoming an ersatz participant in the liaison.

(And my Wittgensteinian side thrills in the fact that the action–haphazardly framed or not–is firmly grounded in the context of a background equal parts Ostra Studios and anticipating Saudek.

Source: robotromis221168

Source unknown – Title unknown (20XX)

Images like this give me a feeling like maybe I’m not irrevocably broken.

I’m not sure I can explain why and I’m even less certain such feelings are a good thing…

Touch is such a goddamn minefield for me. Generally, if I don’t know someone and they touch me–something as little as their coat brushing against me as they walk by me on a subway platform can be downright unnerving. Extroverted people who throw their hands about when they laugh to collide and rest briefly on my shoulder, arm or thigh make me shudder and have brought on full blown panic attacks.

I’m split as far as how to respond to such incidents–half the time I snarl get the fuck off me, the other half I bite down hard and try to swallow the discomfort.

When it comes to acquaintances and friends, I try–and admittedly fail more than I succeed–to follow the other persons lead. Any contact will make me uncomfortable but it feels like that’s just the price of admission.

The weird thing I’ve found is that closeness isn’t prescriptive when it comes to touch. I know people who’ve insisted on hugging me upon our first introduction and I’ve been fine. Whereas, it makes me feel all squirmy inside when one of my oldest friends wraps her arms around me by way of greeting.

And here’s the rub of it: those people who can touch me with a seeming impunity to negative reaction–to a one, I would sleep with them without so much as a second thought if there was a mutual desire and clearly articulated consent.

The decision to do so would be based less on desperation (even though I have been sexually inactive for 5.5 years at this point) and more motivated by curiosity.

I don’t for a second believe I am entitled to sexual gratification from anyone simply because a random, proverbial dice throw by the universe reconciled my instinctive response their body. But I do feel–and much more often than I am willing to openly admit–that there is a disconnect between the frequency with which I experience attraction and the infrequency with which I express to those for whom I feel it.

People just don’t respond well to such admissions (from me). I just wish things in my life could be more like two of my close friends in college–both female and straight–who after a wild night woke up in bed together and although hungover one admitted to being extremely horny and the other admitted to always wanting to go down on her.

After neither was embarrassed or ashamed and they are still dear friends to this day.

To me this image not only conveys an intoxicating post-coital afterglow, it also resonates with the calmness of knowing how to ask a question so that it is not only heard but in no way presupposes any sort of response. (And I believe the entirety of my sexuality is encapsulated within that sentiment.)

Lastly, it must be noted that no matter how much this image resonates with me, it is textbook #skinnyframebullshit.

400

I know, I know… I’m the purveyor of a hopefully artful sex blog. I don’t exactly keep things consistent with regular posts. And when I do I doubt that people really want to hear my opinions on social issues that don’t directly pertain to the politics of visual representation.

However, I would be grossly remiss in this endeavor if I neglected the fact that a substantial degree of privilege allows this project to exist.

Although I DO NOT identify as white or straight and am extremely uncomfortable with my gender assigned at birth, I pass as Caucasian, cis-gender and heterosexual.

This translates to an appreciable decrease in the frequency with which I face experiences such as racial profiling and street harassment among a myriad of other flavors of traumatizing as fuck oppression.

The decision by a grand jury–consisting of 9 white folks, 2 MoC and 1 WoC despite the fact that the demographics of Ferguson, MO are at least 2/3 black–not to indict racist shit heel, police officer Darren Wilson for the murder of an unarmed 18 year-old named Michael Brown is an appalling miscarriage of justice.  Full stop.

Over the last 36 hours, this reality has never strayed far from my mind. I have a mess of impressions, thoughts and feelings on the matter. But I don’t want to make this horrifying manifestation of institutionalized racism about myself.

Instead, I would like to listen to and in listening validate the experiences of those without the same privilege from which I benefit every day.

I saw portions of this segment air on Atlanta’s NBC affiliate Channel 11 last night. In it, MoC in the same rough age range as Michael Brown articulate with devastatingly clarity what this verdict means to them and their experience of being black in America.

Many SJA types–myself included–have an academnifying understanding of racism but that’s head-based. Until you’ve lived it day in and day out, the knowing down to the bones will be missing. As the quote that’s gone viral states to feel anger and outrage instead of abject terror in the wake of the non-indictment is a huge fucking privilege.

It’s time for me to shut up and listen.