Tag: anal

Source unknown – Title unknown (201X)

I have no idea where these images originated and that’s truly unfortunate. They’re hardly flawless–the poses are a bit too marked by self-conscious contrivance; however, they do feature carefully coordinated lighting design, a clear sense of purpose and although perhaps not intentional: there’s a sense of reflexive connection between content and context (i.e. the incisive sense of well-worn procedure in tandem with the carefully considered attention to detail).

It’s possible I’m projecting my own OCD tendencies onto this photo set. I’m very much a creature of habit. I’m very predictable and if someone knows my schedule, you can predict where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing with 100% accuracy give or take a seven or so minute deviation on either side.

I’ve always been like this. It’s part of how I’ve learned to survive in the desert of the real. There’s comfort in knowing the train arrives at this time and takes this long to get me where I’m going. Any delays, deviations, etc. cause me intense stress.

I get agitated when folks with a hippy bent preach new age/Buddhist mindfulness at me. It’s like my default setting is what such folks actively pursue. I’m constantly trying to be less aware of every goddamn little piece of sensory input screaming for a piece of my immediate focus.

What’s ironic to me is that my all this rigorously circumscribed need for order, predictability and certainty is less about iron fisted control. It’s like that Baudelaire quip about remaining boring, ordered and dull in life so that you may be exceedingly violent and unpredictable in your creative work.

The regimentation I cultivate in my own life is really a means to an end. To return to the metaphor of trains–with their timetables and presumed correlation to said timetables–it’s almost always the days where I’m merely going through the motions out of habit, and am following a particular thought that takes an unexpected turn that captivates me. I’ll completely forget that I’m on a train and end up four or five stops beyond where I meant to disembark. (As much as I crave order and hate when things go awry, I never mind these lapses. What they offer in insight is more than equal to the resulting frustrations of missing my stop and running late to appointments.)

What does this introspective speculation have to do with anything? Well, I think my need for predictable rituals as a defense against the mundaneness of daily exigencies is an itch that I don’t usually feel gets scratched by explicit depictions of sexual expression. Except these images appeal (a great deal, actually) to the order seeking side of my brain.

And I can’t help but think how aspects of my own sexual expression are similarly circumscribed. As an adolescent, masturbation was highly ritualized for me. (I’m not sure if it’s the OCD tendencies or being raised super religious… I think I could also point to my druggy years with all that focus on set and setting.)

It reminds me of something my friend Amandine said to me about attraction. Trying to seduce someone by making them want you is the wrong course of action. Instead it’s better to make them feel comfortable sharing time and space with you.

That’s the other thing about this that appeals to me. So much pornography hinges on a sort of heteronormative checklist of activities being ticked in a proscribed order. It’s about showcasing particular information–without any sort of consideration as to why this information as opposed to that information. In other words, matters of inclusion vs. exclusion are dictated by notions of what will appeal to the broadest set of viewers possible.

I’m much more interested in things that interrogate why something is being showcased over any number of other things. And these images have a strong feeling of what I’m being showed are not just things that turn the author on, there’s a great deal of effort put into presenting those things as a series of decisive moments in an erotic progression.

So yes, the attention to detail in the set design and lighting orchestration speak to creating a sense of context. The presentation of decisive moments fosters a sense of documentary objectivity. (This isn’t exactly well-managed from the point of the subjects–whose poses seem self-consciously contrived.) But it does seem to be about creating a comfortable space as a starting point and emphasizing concrete ritual procedure in a carefully considered fashion. And that feels honest and affirming of my own experience in a way that porn never really offers me.

Source: bedxxx2

Source unknown – Title unknown (200X)

It was the perfect picture of utter spirituality
and utter degradation. I was fascinated and could not turn away my eyes.
By watching them I in effect permitted their mating to take place and
so committed myself to accepting the consequences—all because I wanted
to see what would happen. I wanted in on a secret.

–Annie Dillard, The Force That Drives the Flower

Source unknown – Title unknown feat. Anina Silk and Joy (2010)

I’m not 100% on the attribution here but I’m pretty sure the year and performers are correct. (If anyone knows where they real clip originates, I’d be interested in seeing it actually.)

Ass play isn’t really my thing. It can absolutely shorten the length of time it takes me to climax and it changes my awareness of what muscles do what when I’m orgasming. Neither of those things really add anything to the experience for me.

If my partner is into it, I’m willing to experiment just so long as my partners mouth as well as my mouth don’t go anywhere near an anus or anything that’s been inserted into an anus. (I know everyone on Tumblr swears about how wonderful analingus is to give and receive, but yeah… no thank you.)

Thus, it’s a little odd that I’m including this in some ways–considering it’s ostensibly a warm up for anal fisting. The reason I like it is two-fold.

First, it reminds me of being five. I had a friend in my neighborhood named Dirk (not his real name but his real name was also disturbingly phallic in hindsight).

Dirk liked to play a game called ‘butt work’. One person would pull down their pants and lay face down on the ground the other person would pull the cheeks of the butt apart and look at, blow on, tickle or insert a finger into the other’s rectum.

I liked the shameless curiosity of it. The experimentation involved.

It was also turn based. I’d lay there hidden from view of the adult world by bushes while someone probed my body. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing but I knew there’d be a chance for me to be equally curious about their body if I was patient.

It’s that sort of I won’t ask you to let me do anything to you that you also wouldn’t ask me to do to you mentality that appeals to me.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Although I would also like to make porn at some point, I’m currently interested in pushing my personal photographic work in a more erotic direction. But I am patently uncomfortable with asking anyone to do something unless there’s some sort of mutuality to it. I have zero interest in pursuing anything exploitative.

I’ve not made much progress on figuring it out. But I did want to point to the mutuality that radiates from this image and to point to that feeling as something I’d like to learn how to encourage and foster in my own work.

Katya Clover – Title Unknown (2016)

I’m of two minds about this image. It gets me painfully hot and bothered. So it at least has that going for it. The trouble is it’s a garbage image.

There’s no sort of compositional logic. It’s #skinnyframebullshit. There’s no rule of thirds, no golden mean; it’s merely the camera turned on its side as a means of most easily fitting the most information pertaining to Clover into the frame and (also the slimming effect that a vertical frame can impose.)

What makes the image attention grabbing is the super saturated skin tone, magental of the blanket and organ of the carrot against the bland straw and blah sky. (This is about as first rate an example I’ve ever seen of how faithful rendition of color does not guarantee a good image.)

I do like the concept–quite a lot, in fact. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Further, I love the giant wet spot on the blanket. If we knew a bit more about where she was, the image might be improved. Is she near a garden? Is that where the zucchini and the carrot came from? But there’s not enough of an indication to go anywhere with these questions. (Another short coming of the image.)

I’m not sure her pose works. It’s a little awkward but it does at least seam to be in service of what she’s doing. (I adore her expression.) Even though it is interesting, in that I feel most images like this would go for an angle more aligned with a straight on view of her vulva and anus. I always tell people that one can absolutely include graphic depictions of vulvas in one’s work, but if one want to know a general real for what’s objectifying vs what’s depiction, imagine the vulva is an eye lid, if the eye opens and is looking straight ahead is it making eye contact with the viewer? If so, there’s a good chance the image will end up being objectifying unless a good bit of other work is put in to avoid it.

Looking at this I’ve realized another thing about the difficult in using masturbation as a subject for art. It’s really a question of visual depiction of an experience versus staging the experience for a voyeur and by extension–due to the unfortunate white cishet male history of art–the male gaze.

If I can find someone interested in posing for it, I would actually very much like to reinterpret this concept as a fine art photograph–’cause I think there’s that sort of potential to the concept.

Source unknown – Title unknown (2009)

The above is an edit from a larger original image:

Apologies for the pixelation, but I can’t find the original so I had to screen cap the TinEye results.

This is sort of the opposite of my usual claim that less is more. The edit–although thoughtful for emphasizing the elbow, arm and side of the boys body as a window and presenting stylized skin tone as well as focusing attention onto the green yellow palate–is ultimately less engaging than the original.

Source Unknown

The composition here is certainly not The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp; but at least it’s thoughtful enough to present a legible staging: 16 seemingly male-bodied persons in 4 groups–3 threesomes & 2 couplings.

There are:

  • 4 instances of fellatio
  • 2 handjobs
  • 1 soixante-neuf situation, and
  • 1 occasion of anal penetration.

It is unclear what the gent whose stroked erection marks the center of the frame is doing with his hands between his two attendants legs. (Cradling their testicles? Fingering their asses?)

And I can’t help thinking that the photographer must have had some decent art historical chops due to the pose of the fellow who is licking the reclining gent in the white shirt’s scrotum, is too much like Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus to be accidental.

Further this isn’t the worst example of the whole proximity/participation thing I am always kvetching about w/r/t close-ups.

Yes, the camera hung back to front load explicit content into the frame. But that’s probably less due to an aesthetic concern than a a necessity borne of limitation– i.e. scarcity of equipment/skill required for its operation.

Take a minute to consider each of the 4 groups independent of the others–again the composition makes this fairly easy to accomplish. What would close-up really add? Reducing the totality to a metonymy of explicit action. Does that add anything? Does seeing the sheen of saliva on an stiff cock bestow some kind of hyper-real synesthetic sensory stimuli?

Whereas in a wider shot bodies not only move in relation to each other, they retain evidence of being ground in their particular form of life.