Acetylene Eyes

Source Unknown (.gif by Sumptuous Daydreams)

In solidarity with Evan Rachel Wood.

And OMFG: freckles.

Also, the bottom one sends shivers bouncing around in my tummy.

Source: sumptuousdaydreams

danishprinciple:

Do it Now! Photo by Richard Fegley ● Playboy Magazine (September 1974)

I have qualms about posting anything originating from Playboy but I had to make an exception here because:

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of my favorite places in NYC. I walk it several times a week.
The politics of public nudity fascinate me and feature prominently in my personal work.
I harbor this stupid dream of making nude portraits of my friends and I in very public around the city.
From the red jacket, loud sweater, rainbow socks and roller skates, the model bears a resemblance to a former girlfriend. (She would flip her shit over this.)

Henrique Soares – Socks Addict (????)

Call me Scatterbrain Jane.

i’m in day five of exile to the Midwest for family vacation and I am thoroughly out of sorts.

I can’t leave NYC for long before I start to miss it fiercely. Fullblown homesickness kicked in last night.

This is almost certainly not an MTA escalator. Still the tableau is strikingly familiar.

The second reason is probably impossible to explain: I find this image painfully arousing.

Yes, it’s soemwhat the dress–hypocritical considering I prefer dresses only as long as I am not required to wear them.

It’s not a thigh-high fixation either; they are super cute and all but I am usually too mesmerized by their texture to notice fuck all else. Also: yes, texture is a turn on.

No, what gets me is where the fabric ends + skin begins, where all thought winnows to a singular wanting

The semi-circular hint of skin between hem + waist, an arm peaking out beneath a sleeve, the way a pendant separates neckline from shoulder’s slope–edges are the thing.

Source: cealves

Ryan McGinley – Somewhere Place (2011)

This is easily my favorite McGinley creation–followed closely by Pickup Truck, 2013, Untitled (Bathtub), 2005, Running Field, 2007, Dakota (Hair), 2004 + Ann (Windy Truck), 2007.

As for the rest of it? I’m conflicted.

What attracts me to the work–its restless + vital physicality as well as the way the images I like thrum with a dreamlike unbounded anarchic togetherness–stems directly from party line criticism: the fuel of charmed youth, the match of absented consequences.

Plus, the work is goddamn pretty as you please; and when you tall that with it’s unmediated immediacy–so rarely seen in galleries–and it’s cleary how + why McGinley became the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney.

What, to me, is off putting is the artist’s reliance on goosing the viewer’s reptile brain. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that McGinley is conceptually vacuous–but his work lacks anything even remotely resembling the conceptual sophistication of his predecessors (i.e. Nan Goldin + Larry Clark).

In the same breath, though, I can’t think of another imagemaker who so fairly divides his focus between male bodied and female bodied subjects. And that’s not nothing. Especially, given his impressive ability to unify contrived naturalism with an ultimately hollow aesthetics that still has the capacity to resonate deeply with the viewer.

Source: ryanmcginley.com

knitphilia:

“pink candles,”by LAURENCE PHILOMENE OLIVIER.

Olivier mixes vertical and horizontal framing with impunity; plays fast and loose with framing and use color in such a predictable manner that it I can only think to call it ‘awkward’.

That said, her instincts are on point, devastatingly so. Her images could read as sloppy except for the fact that the undisciplined framing fosters a studied immediacy; the lack of nuance in color management serves as a blunt tool to not only guide the eye through the images while also emphasizing the conceptual underpinnings. It’s as subtle as a train wreck & charmingly radical in its utter lack of affected ambiguity.

The contradictions which cancel each other out–whether happy accidents or clumsy technical experiments–make the work relevant. What makes it important is the way that at twenty, Olivier is already dissembling notions pertaining to gender and sexuality and repackaging them as delicate and delectable parfaits packed with razor edged broken glass.

Beautiful, chilling and crucial.

knitphilia:

phillipdvorak:

This is “Missy” – one of my etchings, hand-colored with gouache and watercolor.

There’s something very Schiele-ish about this – and yet it’s a softer femme than his female nudes. ❤

Knitphilia has already tackled the Schiele parallels. (For me it’s the interplay between stance, framing and the articulation of her elbows, wrists and knees more than the lines themselves.)

The circuit this flips in my head that connects it with Schiele has less to do with any of that though. Full disclosure: I am not exactly intimately familiar with Schiele’s work but: I can’t look at any of it without straining to fit it to a context that isn’t the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

What do I mean? Well, some of it reminds me of manga–probably the suffusion of shaping lines and hard, preternatural intense precision of the outlines. Others remind me of hand-drawn fashion ads from the 20s & 30s.

Looking in the other direction: you can feel the influence of Klimt more than you ever see it. Yet, what’s interesting to me is Klimt’s content was so outlandish and/or clutch-the-pearls scandalous that his use of gold leaf is too frequently attributed to decorative ends. But really, what is being missed is the similarities to Russian religious ikons. (Specifically: I am thinking of Rublev’s Trinity here.)

And that is where I notice overlap: An unblinking effort to depict not only the truth of the scene but to use whatever methods are available to convey the intensity of humanness, it’s accompanying flaws, weaknesses and also it’s dignified potential.

But I’ve had a rough week and have been awake for thirty-something hours, so maybe I am just making shit up.

Source: phillipdvorak

ziggyp0p:

You are not defined by your body.

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¡¡¡♥!!!

P.S

. OMG so fucking gorgeous. Goosebumps and tears.

P.P.S. More like this, please.

Source: babywillowsmithlover

fototio:

Jeff Bark. from the Abandoned series.

If Jeff Bark were a cocktail, you’d make him by mixing two parts David LaChappelle with three parts Gregory Crewdson and then garnish liberally with some Maria Van Oosterwijck.

*If you do not have Gregory Crewdson on hand, you can make some by reducing Jeff Wall’s brilliant innovation and studied craft to a syrupy, cloyingly cliched confection.

Casting aside my distaste for the antecedents, Bark’s work is nice. Hell, if nothing else at least a quarter of the Tumblr’s I follow have re-blogged this post.

But I think this post–presenting as it does these two images as a diptych instead of their inclusion in progression on Bark’s site–emphasizes identity politics in depiction of gender in images. Although Bark certainly needs to be commended for his equal use of male-bodied and female-bodied models, his work does not strike me as being as preoccupied with matters of gender depiction as these images would lead the casual viewer to believe.

A shame really, since their presentation here manages to be both straight-forward, unassuming and yet still disarmingly intimate.

boudoirboudoir:

(via Gilles Berquet la chair)

According to the American Cancer Society one (1) in eight (8) female bodied individuals will develop invasive breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death for female bodied individuals (after lung cancer).

It’s great news that new instances have decreased and that prognoses have grown more optimistic. The American Cancer Society, Pink Ribbon and other organizations have done a solid job raising awareness, emphasizing early detection and spurring research.

For all that–which should not be diminished–what about the eight person in that room. What part does that individuals fear, suffering and, hopefully, heroic recovery have in the conversation about breast cancer?

Some photographers have started asking these questions. I chose the Gilles Berquet’s image its fetishization of the body (and some definite #skinnyframebullshit).

Still, there is a regal, animal fierceness to the image. A strength and dignity in the face of fashion lighting and overtones of sexualization.

It’s a sight better than the more focused but less adept work of The SCAR Project.

Although the best image I’ve seen encountered is Sandra Blánquez’s stunning Ponte el pañuelo contra el Cáncer de mama.

Matters of respective quality aside: this is important work and it deserves a much wider audience.