Tag: 9mouth

九口走召 9mouth – Untitled from Menstrual series (2014)

From one vantage: this image is a little too perfect of an addendum to the previous .gif. From another: I’m not entirely comfortable posting it.

9mouth is an exceedingly problematic image maker. I’ve posted about him before and my argument each time seems to boil down to even misogynist men can sometimes make an objectively good sexy picture.

However, engaging with his work this time around has prompted me to modify my opinion of him and his work.

The first thing that’s worth mentioning is that I’m bringing a better working familiarity with Nobuyoshi Araki and Daidō Moriyama to the table this time around–9mouth’s aesthetic being influenced heavily by them both.

The problem with this is that that the younger photographer cleaves to these sources in a blunt and non-contemplative fashion. To speak in broadest of generalities Araki’s work implicates its own voyeuristic raison d’etre through various conceptual stratagems; Moriyama tends to seek out the foreign in the familiar–in the instances of his more voyeuristic work, there’s a decontextualization of the mundane in an effort to draw attention and focus to how the juxtaposition between the erotic and the mundane infroms our notions of the limits of either category.

It feels like 9mouth looks at Araki and Moriyama as photographers who like make photos of nude women–without understanding that there is a lot more going on in their work than just gratifying a knee-jerk cishet male gaze.

9mouths work hinges not on any conceptual framework–and he very much attempts to lead with that but it’s disingenuous, self-justification at best–instead, his work is fixated on either women’s bodies as the locus of all sexual fetishization and women’s bodies presented to the viewer as if their bodies are sexually available to anyone approaching the work.

I am disappointed in myself for taking so long to see this fact. (Even by my own persnickety quibbling with compositional considerations–it’s taken me a minute to apply my own frequent criticism regarding the frame edge as a amputative tool. (For example: in the image above the woman–who is unnamed and due to the nature of the Menstrual series, inherently carrying an expiration date and therefore also disposable–has her feet amputated meaning that not only is she presented as sexually available to anyone who sees her, she also is rendered immobile through the symbolic amputation of both her feet.

Source: vincekris

9mouth – Untitled from Instax Love series (201X)

The Sino photographer identifiable by the moniker 9mouth is hugely problematic. (I won’t repeat myself: you can read my previous thoughts on his process here.)

Still he does manage to produce some truly breathtaking photos–seemingly in spite of his galling misogynist bombast.

Here the interplay between the flash and the semi-reflective wallpaper renders an incrementally overexposed skin tone–not only flattering but also steeped in an almost tonal patina of late night in a seedy love motel vibe.

The model’s expression is an inscrutable defensive wall–is she bored? annoyed/impatient? judgmental (of the photographer? Or the viewer? Little of column A, little of column B?)

I get the sense that this is very much front loaded with ambiguity. There is a very compelling feeling of intimacy; yet, also a sense that the intimacy is forced–not exactly contrived or coerced but conditional somehow.

That conditional consideration and that it is effectively what makes this image so successful is more than a little discomfiting. (At least to me.) So while I am willing to acknowledge that this is an astute image–I think it functions in a fashion that operates in a sort of beyond good and evil approach to broader issues of consent and visual representation. Another way to say it might be to say that if mainstream porn shifted its model to produce art, it would likely come off much like this.

Source: schwein-child

9mouth – 789 from Menstrual series (2014)

I can’t look at the sprawling mass of mostly messy work on 9mouth’s website without comparing him to Ren Hang–particularly his Instax mini images. The comparison does the former no favors…

Yes: occasionally 9mouth’s work achieves an almost transcendent tenderness. Take the above–the lighting, pose and gesture all balance perfectly to offset what appears to be barrel distortion warping the baseboard. There’s an introspective cast to her expression. It’s really quite lovely.

There are a few other pictures where the image serves to still questions about concept and execution. This one, for example.

Unfortunately, these images are the exceptions that prove an entirely entitled, arrogant and conceptually specious framework. Take his on-going Menstrual series. He says essentially–I’m paraphrasing because the English translation is astonishingly bad: he chose a different woman every month and photographs her life. It’s not intended to be private because like you know he widely shares the pics on the interwebs. By working with them he finds himself falling in love with them but at the end of the month, it’sover. A cycle of melodramatic, manufactured loss he equates with the monthly shedding of the uterine lining.

It’s the sort of thesis that even a shoddy art teacher would render more hole ridden than a slice of Swiss cheese in less than a minute. But, it’s infuriating to me that on top of this he so frequently imposes himself on the frame in an objectifying fashion or worse, touches the models in a way that is unambiguously sexual.

And I don’t mean to suggest that there is something that is inherently off limits as far as process goes. If being an image maker is the only way you can get laid, then at least own that shit upfront. Don’t be all using flimsy conceptual justifications for the shart you use as an occasion to perhaps drop those panties. (That shit is straight up a soft form of predation, btw. And spare me the exploratory creativity justification counter argument…check out mafucker’s Lofter with the outtakes from Menstrual where he takes selfies with each women he shoots.)

What disgusts me with 9mouth is that his work has a fuck load of raw potential that quite frankly seems wasted in 90% of the work he exhibits.

That other 10%, tho… makes you like to say gotdamn!