danishprinciple:

[Siren by] Stephen Carroll

I am about as anti-digital as you can get short of Nottinghamshire circa November 1811.

In the broadest strokes my grudge distills to rejecting the commonplace assumption that since the physical process and user interfaces involved in making a photograph and a digital image is similar, there exists an interchangeable equivalency between them.

Fucking bullshit.

Analog photography produces a physical artifact representing a moment in time. That resulting artifact—negative or positive—stands in relationship to both the moment of creation and all subsequent retellings.

Digital image making translates light into a phenomenally long string of ones and zeros.

As a result of these differences, each process responds differently to similar situations.

  • Digital can’t handle overexposure; negative stocks benefit from mild overexposure.
  • Digital has immense depth of field even large apertures; film shot using fast lens with the aperture fully open have a narrow depth of field (DOF).
  • Digital makes it easier to capture an image in low-light settings as result of its extended DOF; however, digital is incapable (and will always fall short) of rendering a true black.

Digital works best when its limitations are embraced instead of obfuscated. (Recall the scenes in Zodiac where they are driving around at night and nothing is really dark so much as murky vs. The Social Network where wide open prime lenses stopped down to the correct aperture using ND filters in an effort to create a more filmic DOF and instead resulted in emphasizing the deathly plastic pallor digital imposes on everything and looked less like film.)

As much as a detest digital, there are a small group of people who embracing the multifarious shortcomings of digital and do interesting things.

  • Noah Kalina has created a cottage industry using the sweet spot just inside to digital overexposure margine for fashion editorial work.
  • Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth is one of the few instances wherein digital proved superior to film.

After seeing the image above and how it employs the same deathly plastic pallor I loathe so much in digital as a hyper-stylized means of conveying the ethereally phantasmal splendor of fading light on still water and wet skin.

passius:

I have reservations about this image: it can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s entirely preoccupied with titillation or intimacy.

For example, the blocking emphasizes the clean-shaven vulva and anus for the benefit of the male gaze. Not to mention the #skinnyframebullshit—probably enacted to counteract heavy handed illumination as well as suggesting a moment outside space and time. (As visual shorthand, I’ve never felt such a tact work especially well; with maybe the exception of the seamless flashback scenes in The Frighteners—which if not exactly sensible were at least a novel technical exercise.)

However, there are at least two things I appreciate: the stripped down, stepped out of mound of clothing on the floor and the intensity of the intimacy between the two women. The clothing clearly speaks to what happened prior to the moment this single image was captured; it understands seduction as a process, not a single, discrete and isolated event. The chemistry and raw passion these women exude is thoroughly authentic and awesome to see. And in combination with the glimpse the discarded clothing offers of what preceded, this intimacy foretells a great deal of what will happen next.

In other words, there are clear elements of a story; or, put crudely: an incident with a beginning, middle and an end. After all, seductions are essentially narrative.

And if a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then why shouldn’t image makers tell a story, make a poem or preferably both all at once?

Those who peruse what I write will be aware of how much I loathe fucking gratuitous/illogical use of portrait orientation.

I never tire of calling that bullshit out. But, for the sake of avoiding redundancy and not beating a dead horse on the subject, I am going to henceforth distill these criticisms to a pithy hash tag: #skinnyframebullshit.

#skinnyframebullshit should be applied here. Further, the awkwardness is compounded by the top frame line’s amputate the young woman’s legs. (And if one was inclined toward hair splitting: an argument can be made that with the angle of light it would’ve been preferable to swap the position of her head and feet.)

Even with these shortcomings, I dig this image a lot. Mainly because it dodges the usual questions of subject/object and exhibitionism/voyeurism back loaded into visual depictions of masturbation. It has the sort of masturbation as punk rock/do it yrself sex positive vibe I adore.

Source: veryhot

I hate making my bed. Always have. It’s simple cost-to-benefit analysis there’s no payoff that will ever justify the effort required of the task.

I feel similarly about “unwanted” body hair. Struggling to temporarily erase it takes energy, resources and time and becomes a vicious cycle.

Plus, I think body hair can be really fucking cute.

This image isn’t especially great—the camera is so close to the subject that any substantive context beyond the suggestion of a dark bedroom is lost; the flash renders her skin in tones of pink and way too white, drawing attention to her nipples. too white. (Though the graded shadow edging the outside of her left arm is delightful.)

What made me want to share this is what it made me flashback to…

It was one of those early summer days that plays like a coming attraction reel for high summer when everything is molten and shot-through with bayous of sepia toned sweat and everyone still staggering out of winter wool relishes the sheen of moist second skin as if it were the curious touch of a new lover.

I had been called down to wrangle a printer. (Pro-tip: printers are the swing sets and see-saws of the Devil’s playground meant to occupy idle hands.)

The window unit in the small office was spitting air only just less sweaty than the room.

The administrative staff had migrated to another less sweltering leaving a student to field calls. She was dressed in one of those super thin, nearly threadbare hipster graphic tees and a powder blue floral patterned loose knee-length skirt with yellow accents. It seemed like maybe three months ago she’d shaved the sides of her head to the skin, leaving violent curls to cascade darkly down the left side of her face.

She explained the problem was with the printer and went back to searching for the perfect word to fit the meter of some poetic line flickering before her on her MacBook.

The printer was rightly fucked and I wrestled with it while staring without appearing to stare.

As the printer whirred to life, she yawned and extended her hands above her head—stretching, a dizzyingly sexy fringe of hair peaked out above the edge of her sleeve.

She went back to her poem while finished up with the printer.

We ugly ducklings see the world for all it’s terrible fullness of beauty but it remains for us resolutely untouchable.

Source: gazo-ch.net

kalkibodhi:

The wall

KalkiBodhi Archives

Hitting the floor face-first woke me.

The overhead light was on already.

Thick fingers knotted in my hair; pulled till my toes pirouetted and twirled.

Alternating between being dragging and scrabbling for footing, my father hauled down two flights of stairs and planted in the unfinished basement.

The poured concrete floor was frigid.

I felt something splash onto my foot. Looking down, I saw blood clotting into my pajama top and crimson dots scattered around my bare feet.

I raised a hand to my face.

“Ten-hut!”

My hand flew to my side.

I could see Kyle crying out of the corner of my eye—a spectacular tactical blunder but Dad ignored it.

Not an especially auspicious omen.

After nine years, these sessions had grown predictable: all fuss-and-bluster at first until my father found cadence, began to enjoy the sound of his own voice and the tone would shift adversarial to professorial.

These professorial lulls never lasted. But at least while they did, I could turn off my mind and preserve energy for the worst to come.

The 2 AM lecture this morning was on the subject of Integrity (capital-I) as exemplified by Bolt’s A Man for All Season.

I had not absorbed a word of it but after an hour, the electrical buzzing of a silence that stretched several seconds too long snapped me back into full focus.

 “The body follows the head,” my father said.

And with a sinking feel, I knew what followed.

He grabbed my throat, his fingers tightening.

I knew to breathe in shallow and slow.  Not to panic. But his grip was too tight.

When you are being can’t breathe is nearly impossible to keep your arms ramrod straight at your sides. I was terrified but I was also certain I would rather suffocate than show that fucker I was afraid of him.

Not to mention, the level of disrespect fearing the man who claimed to love me would entail. Things were bad now but if that happened they would be so much worse.

And just then in that perfect moment a shiver shook my shoulders.

I was on tiptoes again, pulled towards him; held by my neck, my windpipe collapsed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just see the snarling grey-whites of his eyes shining in his wax-fruit, steel wool stubbled skin.

I stared straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes, to beg him not to kill me. Black spots swirled and yawned over the porous blue-grey cinderblocks in the middle distance.

“Control the head, control the body.” He said, his voice perfectly calm as he nodded my head for me.

Warm wetness bloomed in my sinuses again. I tried to snuffle it back. Couldn’t breathe. My head like it was going to explode.

A drop. Another. More splattering admist the nests of black hair on his arm.

He felt it and shoved me backwards and I fell sideways, landing on my hands and knees, gasping.

He pulled at the tail of my blue shirt, stretching the material so that he didn’t have to kneel and rid himself of my residue.

…

I suppose it makes sense that I am completely whack-a-doo about being touched.

And it’s not even being touched so much because I am fine with it as long as I am not thinking about it. If I am thinking about it and you aren’t one of maybe five people, I am likely to launch you into orbit.

There aren’t any easy rules to it I can articulate even to myself, let alone anyone else. Still, this image turns me on in some ineffable way.

But it also makes me sad. There is only one person I would allow to hold me like the young woman above. And although I trust her completely, that wouldn’t be why I would be okay with it. I’d be okay with it because she wouldn’t do it unless there was some truth in the action. I don’t know another way to put it except to say that with out me knowing it was what I craved, this woman knows me enough to grab me by the neck, force me up against a wall and whisper with her lips against my ears how very, very pretty she finds me before enumerating all the unspeakable things she intends to inflict upon my body. Calling me a filthy slut because she knows what I want even when I don’t.

As long as women’s natural body hair is called disgusting and inappropriate while men’s isn’t, I am a feminist.
As long as I can’t watch an episode of a popular sitcom without having to sit through multiple sexist comments or “jokes”, I am a feminist.
As long as women have to face the rational fear of being sexually assaulted every time they walk home past dark while men don’t, I am a feminist.
As long as misogyny exists in any country in this world, I am a feminist.
As long as women are being raped, then stoned to death or forced to marry their rapist, I am a feminist.
As long as companies promote men to manager when there are women who are equally as or better qualified, because they find that men look more authoritative, I am a feminist.
As long as women (her choice of clothes, her friendly nature, her weakness, her choice to drink alcohol) get blamed when men rape them, I am a feminist.
As long women’s opinions on online social networks are dismissed with phrases like “tits or gtfo”, “get back to the kitchen”, “are you pms’ing?”, I am a feminist.
As long as dressing like a women is degrading for men and as long as men are insulted with phrases like “you throw like a woman”, clearly implying that being like a woman is shameful, I am a feminist.
As long as both men are women are expected to work, but taking care of children and the household are still largely considered a woman’s job, I am a feminist.
As long as boys and girls are treated differently, expected to act differently, and surrounded by different toys and colours from the day they are born, I am a feminist.
As long as topless women aren’t allowed in public unless they’re on the cover of a men’s magazine, I am a feminist.
As long as women who have sex frequently are generally told they are “sluts”, “lacking self-respect” and “lacking morals” by both men and women, while men who frequently have sex are “just being men” and it’s “natural for them”, I am a feminist.
As long as there are places where women have to pay more for health insurance than men, I am a feminist.
As long as men experience situations with equal gender representation as female-dominated, and don’t consider a group discussion equal unless there are significantly more men then women participants (as has been proven), I am a feminist.
As long as there are men who think it’s their wife or girlfriend’s duty to have sex with him whenever he wants, I am a feminist.
As long as the word feminism (“the movement aimed at equal rights for women”) has a negative connotation, I am a feminist.
As long as misogynist people exist, I am a feminist.

LE CHRYSANTHÉME: I am a feminist.   (via psychedelicpaisleyprincess)

selections from Caroline Mackintosh’ Thigh Deep series

This is so how I want to celebrate my birthday this year.

Alas, with two or three exceptions my friends wouldn’t be down for drunken skinny dipping. (And I am way too chicken shit to suggest it as an option.)

Maybe next year. (Probably not though.)

Le sigh.

(Soundtrack suggestion: Oceanic)

Source: nevver

kalkibodhi:

The reach through

KalkiBodhi Archives

Even though it’s oriented without any goddamn regard for compositional logic and lacks the technical rigor and sophistication of say a comparable work by Robert Mapplethorpe, this image is noteworthy for avoiding the visual impoverishment which seems to follow as an almost natural consequence of focusing on the extremity of the act– an experience contrary to the experience of fisting and being fisted.

Not that extremity should be excluded. It is more that any roughness or violence in the exchange is– at least in my own experience– is beside the point. It’s about intimacy/connection; or, more specifically it strips the pretense and affectation of intimacy/connections, laying bare the vital underlying vulnerability. 

That’s my two cents, anyway. And since our experiences ends up projected outward on the world around us, this is what I see here.

Plus, I think it’s hell of sexy that you can see her piercing.

Untitled shot on a Mamiya 645 by Heidi Systo

Every now and again I crush hard on internet famous photographers. For example: Kimmie Eliot Fung, Traci Matlock (aka Rose) & Ashley MacLean (aka Olive) and Lynn Kastanovics.

With Ms. Fung’s shift to more textile oriented work and Traci and Ashley’s ‘breakup’ the last three years have remained crush-less. (Even if Ms. Kastanovics never chooses to exhibit her work again, she will always hold a place in my heart not unlike the one occupied by Francesca Woodman.)

But the drought ended when Muss4You posted this photo created by Pratt undergrad Heidi Systo.

Ms. Systo describes herself on her website as:

[A]n artist living in Brooklyn who uses medium format photography to explore issues of identity and voyeurism in the era of social media.

She is who she appears to be.

As far as artist statements go the above hits all the right notes: simple, unadorned and streamlines.

So I was surprised to find another expanded statement on her Flickr profile:

Since the era of social media, photography is more accessible than ever. From the perspective of teenage girls it is a tool used to gain attention through provocative imagery posted on sites like Facebook, Flickr, ad [sic] Tumblr. My work explores the relationships between photographer, photograph, and ultimately how it is consumed at various levels in the realm of social media. I portray these attention seeking girls at different levels of development, from passive and curious, to sad and aggressive. As an artist, I am shifting the power away from the viewer and on to the subject. No longer an object to be either discarded or idolized, she now becomes a window into the unsettling viewer’s gaze.

This again towers over most undergrad artist statements—which suffer from the default ego-tripping blather setting; but a young artist whose work is so precocious, edgy, technically savvy and stands on its own, doesn’t need to be explanations.

Unless the statement is meant to reveal the artist is fully aware of what she is doing—and given the swaggering confidence of the photographic voice, doing so seems unnecessary/redundant. (Then I am admittedly kinda anti-artist statement…)

Regardless, I cannot recommend her work highly enough. Definitely check her out. Just don’t tell her I sent you. The lesser known fourth law of thermodynamics holds that: beautiful women render [me] incapable of managing fuck all more than stuttered, incoherent ramblings.

I’d rather not come off like a total heel to someone whose work I admire so much.