Acetylene Eyes

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Great googly moogly aren’t freckles goddamned sexy as fuck?

And their effusion on this young woman’s shoulders and face is truly resplendent.

Now I could follow my usual knee-jerk rabbit trail with regard to composition—a horizontal frame would have almost certainly improved this photograph—but the freckles seem more the point.

Photography and digital imaging distill the space and time of a select visible area down to a two-dimensional representation. In the process, a great deal is changed and/or lost completely.

To a degree, image makers exercise control over what remains in the picture. For that reason, I am constantly unnerved that given a field of so many options the results of what stays and what goes tend to be so starkly homogenous.

Most images provide a record of an objects position in a particular spatial field at a given moment in time. How often though is the object treated as more than an insinuation representation of itself? Or, to say it in a less abstract way: when was the last time you say an image wherein skin was presented as more than the container for representation identity or a symbolic placeholder?

It’s not just pictures of people, it’s fabric, wood, everything. Photography fails more often than it succeeds to give solidity to its representations. A means of accomplishing that is beginning to think less strictly visually. There is this amazing sensory overlap between sight and sound—a sort of synesthesia that everyone shares: the sight of different textures affects our eyes differently, in a way that is—in fact—somewhere between seeing and feeling.

For example, consider this image of coffee beans ground to varying coarseness. By looking at them you see the different visual texture but that impression is processed in some fashion as an awareness that each feels different.

That’s ultimately what I adore about this image: her freckles add texture to her skin and thus weight and solidity to her body. She is not a representation; she’s a living, breathing, dreaming being with fears, hopes and ideas who also happens to be breathtakingly beautiful.

Source: dreaming-without-vanishing

390. by Nicolas Sisto

The first thing I see, the thing that reaches out and smacks the shit out of me is the light. Fucking A.

Next and simultaneously, I notice the color of the tile and the way the light diffuses on her skin, in her hair—the way it suffuse the blue tiles and tub.

This is the sort of light photographers kill for, a distinct cousin to the magical cinematography in Malick films.

Further it’s analog, a real photograph—any detail in the highlight with such bright white hot spots would be DOA in digital. And the photographer is clearly trying to emulate the tenebrist contrast range and vivid colors of Polaroid’s late 90’s palate.

Also, in the images favor is its inclusion of two quintessential photographic tropes: nudity and miraculous light.

Still, even though I want to like this, I can’t; the light alone isn’t enough. There are two glaring flaws:

First, who sits this way in an empty bathtub? I mean honestly. It’s overly self-conscious and awkward. Look at how gorgeous I am just plopped down here in this pool of perfect light… ladiladidah.

Interestingly, there’s an outtake from this same sequence. In it some of the light’s grandeur gets lost, the pose is at least less self-conscious and therefore less contrived.

Yet, in both case the composition is fucked. You see it a lot—envisioning a strictly balanced and symmetrical shot within the frame and shooting hand held. That saying close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades goes triple for symmetrical images. Either keep the hand held camera and accentuate the asymmetry or use a motherfucking tripod.

I am posting this photo along with the link to its sibling not to bash either so much as point out that somewhere between them is an image I wanted to see in both but didn’t. The hint of what might have been but never was is pretty incredible to me.

Source: Flickr / ni-co

youarecordiallyinvitedtopissoff:

Christian Vogt

Baryta print from the SIX/TWELVE series.

The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
–the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly–
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
–It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
–if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels–until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Source: christianvogt.com

creativerehab:

Valeriya on the bed.

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A film school cohort of mine (and long-time shameless Tumblr lurker) begged me to re-blog this photo of Valeryia.

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He’s interested in booking her for a photo shoot but claims the Google has exactly zilch on her.

If you know her or have decent info to pass along, maybe throw him a line: minuslinear at yahoo dot com.

Is not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes? In perversion (which is the realm of textual pleasure) there are no “erogenous zones” (a foolish expression, besides); it is intermittence, as the psychoanalysis has so rightly stated, which is erotic: the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (the open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve); it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance (Barthes, pg. 9-10).

Perhaps it’s the introversion suggested by the huddled pose or the comely skin. My eye—wishing it was a tongue—darts and circles the erect left nipple.

But the wetness of wanting is thwarted by the shallow depth of field which pushes my gaze away over oceans of cream floating morning glories, wilds rose and springs of red baby’s breath before being pulled back again over small breasts and pale skin to sunlit shoulders and long strands of red silk hair.

And in this seeing I have an honest-to-goodness itty-bitty petit mort every time I glance at this picture.

No, it’s closer to a lover shifting slightly and the movement sending cascades of shivers outward through the ebbing pulsing of orgasmic spasms.

A feeling not unlike the memory of pixie with snow white skin, wire straight, carbon black hair and mischievous eyes wider than miles of un-translated manga: I gazed as she reached across the table, her motion pulling the lower edge of her too-small t-shirt away from the waist of her too-large belted jeans. Thinner than a rail, the ridges of her spine led my eyes down to the orange on purple Victoria’s Secret underwear.

Edges are important. Particularly given their extensive history of being manipulated in order to objectify and sexualize the female body—expertly lampooned by Duchamp’s Etant Donnes.

But the headless woman does have anonymity. And where this previous implied women as little more than fodder for men’s sexual appetites, it now is put into service in order to facilitate the open expression of a sexual identity from behind the safety of a mask.

To be clear, I think that’s awesome; but like all awesome things, it is not without its problems. In this case, the line between anonymous expression and exhibitionism is razor thin at best. What is presented as artful and considered frequently suffers as a result of compositional inconsistencies necessitated by the requirement for anonymity.

This beautiful photograph is one of the few that manages to be rigorously consistent in its composition while also employing the frame edge as a means of masking idenity. A slight shift in perspective, however, would have almost certainly transformed it into something either nakedly exhibitionist or visually impoverished.

It for that reason I think most photo dabblers would do well to borrow from the book of Bellocq’s brother by making a thoughtful image first and then blacking out faces and identifying features later.

Source: vaginabubbles

I don’t like when porn operates off lazy assumptions. Sadly, that is almost all it ever does.

The result is entire adult entertainment syndicates—even progressive, sex positive outfits like Abby Winters—ordered like menus prepared exclusively for straight male sexual appetites: blonds, brunettes, solo, girl-girl, boy-girl, anal.

This sets a shitastic precedent which presents straight sex as the default setting and therefore the norm—the only sex that is sexy.

And by implication any non-hetero-normative sexual expression is rendered non-standard and/or deviant.

Whether intended or not, it’s bullshit. Sex is sex is sex.

It would be great if mainstream porn include a multitude of gender identities and perspectives in every offering. But since that would go over about as well as a far in a space suit with all the homophobic dickheads out there, I’d just settle for most porn stealing a page from LGTBQAAI pornographers and performers by reclaiming some of the sense of joy and empowerment that comes from sexual expression.

Case in point: with the obvious exception of Stoya, I cannot remember when I last saw straight performers as hot for each other as these two boys.

Between getting off watching two people getting off or getting off while two people getting off on each other—the latter will be my choice every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

youarecordiallyinvitedtopissoff:

Reto Caduff

It is unnecessary to state this comes from a series called Road Trip; the feeling of driving through some summer night with the windows half-down into dawn is embedded:

The thick-limbed weight of waiting as humidity films the skin.

The lulling half-time found in shared space, motion and momentum.

Eyelids heavy with loneliness, with wind-whipped hair, with the world of trains and lightpoles smeared against the windows.

The Onion often presents astute commentary on political issues. Unfortunately, the merit of that commentary gets obscured by their efforts to incite riotous laughter with—at best—chuckle worthy material.

This photo set is a notable exception.

I am posting it to serve as a reminder that blogging and re-blogging images made in an effort to document our sexuality and the sexual expression we identify with in others is decidely a ‘first world problem’.

Also, I am posting it because it juxtaposes mindless privilege with the burden of awareness—which, even though I fail more than I succeed, is the ultimate purpose of this blog.

Source: The Onion

Yves Klein : Art :: Neurosis : metal

Hello! I took the photo in which you commented on. I would like to tell you that the photo was not cropped, I however edited to make it horizontal as well in which looks like this.

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/272971_10200390803838453_1956929646_o.jpg

I thought it was quite interesting, what you wrote. Hope you are doing well!

Thank you so much for the correction! Really, I am operating on sheer gut reaction to images in most cases. And I admit that I sometimes get things completely wrong. It makes my day when people care enough about their work to correct misconceptions about it.

Also, have to say I ADORE what I can see of the uncropped original. It is actually benefits more from the horizontal orientation than I anticipated.