Photographer Lina Scheynius , Bandeau by Saint Laurent
Scheynius’ images make me feel all twitterpated and woozy-in-my-tummy. If I ever met her I’d become a shy, stammering mess of looking-down-at-my-Docs + kicking at dirt that wasn’t really there.
I don’t know what I find her more: talented or winsome. Then again, I don’t do well distinguishing between them.
I have tried to source this but neither Google Image search or TinEye are coming up with anything conclusive.
This uncertainty exacerbates my polar reactions to it. Most of the time, the muddiness is reminiscent of Duane Michals early-ish work, particularlly a moment of perfection.
But there are also times–like writing this–where the position way his arms are positioned and his motion blurred face feel more like a horror film, a sort of E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten-esque haunted house where the ghost seduces then strangles the amorous.
I don’t know what to make of it. Not in an I don’t give fuck one about it, though. It’s so true what is said about the distance between what we love and hate is much less than the disparity separating love from apathy.
There something else rattling around in my head about the body as a house haunted by a soul, but language and I are having another one of our frequent sullen tiffs. Besides, any time it starts to feel like the only thing I have ever known, I start to forget how the stories go.
Juan Troncoso – Premonición 2009 (Made with a Nikon D300)
There are strong similarities between Troncoso’s work and art historical precedents. For example: Iluso smacks of Margritte, Real’s bad acid trip made flesh, borrows from a similar work– which escapes me at the moment but also used fragmented images attached to models’ bodies for unnerving effect–both owing a thing or fifty to Max Ernst.
But I can’t help thinking the references are little more than premeditated sleight of hand. The first clue is the image quality. There simply are not that many people around who can coax decent greyscales from digital equipment. Second, though his Flickr account is noteworthy, his personal website–despite its awkward and unwieldy layout– is incisively curated.
My Spanish is quite rusty but I ran Troncoso’s artist statement from the body of work in which this image features through a translation engine. What resulted was borderline nonsense. I tried to clean it up a bit–bear in mind my Spanish grammar is severely limited by my utter impoverishment when it comes to English grammar:
These images were performed over the course of five years and are chronologically arranged to portray a questioning evolution. A journey of visual interventions that came together in interpretations and symbols. Each photograph is a projection of my imagination, inspired by feelings involving me with this world. [A world where] reality and time intertwine with the infinite. The images seek to portray this connection.
Correlations with Margritte and Ernst shift to the background and I am left thinking of Yves Klein–specifically Saut dans le vide. Whether or not this is an astute response, there is something of Klein’s brash dynamism in Troncoso’s work.
Honestly, it matters less to me how they work than that they do–quite well, in fact.
42112 (by brittanymarkert)
I like this image—perhaps for the wrong reasons.
To my eye, it represents a discontinuity with the rest of Ms. Market’s work because I am not inclined to associate it with an obvious photo-historical reference (i.e. Untitled is an obvious homage mashup of Francesca Woodman’s Untitled Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-76 and Untitled Providence, Rhode Island 1976; this still from the hotel haunting screams Diane Arbus via Kubrick, while room 109 invokes David Lynch with the subtlety of a thunderstorm.
Influence is crucial—sheer force of will and work ethic only goes so far. Hell, without inspiration, how many would have picked up a camera to begin with? Let alone kept on after all those rolls of ruined film, struggling through plateau after plateau in the work, etc.
So called fine art photography operates off the principle that imitation of your influences forms the most effective framework for becoming a photographer. Although seen through rose colored glasses, Arno Rafael Minkkinen presents the essential premise behind fine art photography with insight and aplomb in his renowned Helsinki Bus Station Theory.
While I disagree with the notion that gallery owners would so much give you the time of day let alone inquire as to your familiarity with X or Y artist and object to prejudicing the destination over the journey, Minkkinen’s theory does have special resonance for photographers with a vested interest in visual narrative or those—like Ms. Market—who count filmmakers among their foremost influences since the Helsinki bus station presents us a bit of a conundrum.
Even though I am not, let’s say—for the sake of argument— I am a enamored with Stanley Kubrick’s films. But for whatever reason, I prefer the medium of photographer so I arrive the Helsinki bus station and after looking around decide that to take a bus departing from the same platform as Diane Arbus. However, once on board I don’t even make it as far as the suburbs before realizing this isn’t for me. I go back and decide to follow the Walker Evans’ line—which departs from a platform on the opposite side of the station as the previous one. Maybe I make it a little further this time but quickly discover it’s still not for me. What then?
I go back and merely because I have no idea what else to do I wander onto the platform from whence Ansel Adams departed. This time the route choice sticks—but not due to being on a line the focuses on landscape photographer so much as finding a route pathologically preoccupied with the technical. (After all, what Kubrick lacked as a storyteller he more than compensated for with his exacting abilities as a technician and unparalleled production designer.)
Filmmaking and photography are sibling art forms and like siblings, you cannot approach them in an identical fashion. Those of us who come to photography by way of narrative/filmmaking share a frighteningly similar list of influences that, to stick with the metaphor, are dispersed all over the Finnish countryside. Most are contradictory. Mistakes are going to be made; routes will need to be abandoned and subsequently re-chosen as the line that works for each person is almost never the first choice.
But back to this image—I like it. And I like it because it is one of the few images where I do not feel the photographer is not leaning on something that has been said well before in order to add feeling, depth or relevance to her own ideas.
Flattery is the sincerest form of flattery. Brittany Market demonstrates she handle imitation flawlessly. My interest in her work is what she will produce when she finds herself on a line long enough to leave the Helsinki suburbs behind. This image suggests a great deal of potential that will hopefully be realized in her maturing work.
spoil me
Still from A Surprise Guest featuring
Straight-up (pun maybe intended), this is some Grade A #skinnyframebullshit.
Yes, it’s nice to see Cindy presented head-to-toe sans frame line amputation/decapitation. But the result is all wawkerjawed.
I am going to overlook the original image being both in color and bordering on overexposed– I fail to understand how shooting to the right is preferable to just exposing correctly in the first fucking place. But, why did some idiot feel compelled to de-saturate? Was the goal to produce a flat, low contrast image? If so: bravo– mission accomplished.
Technical concerns aside, the image’s awkwardness also works in its favor. It is, after all, an image belonging to a larger more-or-less sequential, implicitly narrative images. For example: before I researched this image, I was fairly sure that this young woman walked in on the young man in the tub, things escalated and she began to undress. (As far as I can tell, that is in fact, what happens.)
There is also the ripe implication of what will happen next: the scenario will proceed to intercourse. Thus, this single image contains all the information for the viewer to discern the entire narrative arc without seeing any other image.
The possibility of distilling a story to a single narrative image seed is an idea with which I am pathologically obsessed. And for all its faults, I actually prefer this to the arbitrary, narrative pretense of photographers like Gregory Crewdson, Sébastien Tixier and Reverend Bobby Anger. (If you disagree with this premise: attempt to envision what happened immediately prior and what will happen next. (Pro-tip: you can’t; despite all the gum flapping about narrative, when the work has more in common with the so-called ‘tone poem capturing the something of the weight in moments heavy with emotion.)
But, I would have posted this for nothing more than the way Cindy is standing over the boy in the tub, her expression which might actually be an unfeigned premonition of pleasure. Plus, I think it is so, so hot that she still has her top on.
Gonna have to tie this tight for it to stay on when I pull!
When I see this image my first thought isn’t the square format/cropping, the way close-up diminishes context and affects questions of consent in BDSM imagery or the numerous technical shortfalls. No, my singular thought is: I want to be her.
To be teased with the gentlest of tugs; a smidgen harder and a simple length of twine becomes an effective, improvised lead; too hard and everything comes undone in an exquisite moment w pain attenuates almost immediately—even if it will be hours, days maybe, before it fully ebbs.
I can almost feel the sharp premonitions stretching ache into sting on towards hurt; I nearly whisper:
Please, not too fast this time—make it last. Don’t let the world suddenly bloom bright with pain too soon. Please. Make me earn the relief and sadness which rush in after like swollen tide churning grey sand.
Part of Eve’s Discussion by Marie Howe
It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,
and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still
and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when
a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you
your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like
the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,
it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only
all the time.
Encouragement request
EDIT I: it has been brought to my attention that the young woman in this image is Kristine Kahill and that this image was originally posted on Sex and Submission (a Kink.com imprint). Sex and Submission interviews models before and after the sessions. In other words, explicit consent is given for the acts depicted in the subsequent images.
Furthermore, it seems the post can be read as suggesting being submissive is a ‘reprehensible’ behavior. I assure you, that was never my intention. As someone who is thoroughly hardwired as a switch–I am not down on D/s practices at all.
I am opting to leave the original post untouched. I make mistakes. And I am sorry if my comments offended anyone. It still concerns me, however, that this image is presented entirely disconnected from its original context. In the future I will make every effort to do better due diligence. That being said, all things being equal I do stand by my reading of the problematic aspects of this image as it originally presented to me.
EDIT II: Also, I neglected to mention this is some straight-up #skinnyframebullshit.
TinEye turns up two ‘matches’ for this: both in color, both cropped and both hosted by purveyors of violent porn.
But anything more than a glance reveals as much: the composition of the image says as clearly as if the image maker had drafted a memo and sent it to every viewer: women are nothing more than props existing for the sole purpose of accommodating male desire.
It’s a reprehensible ideology. And this picture does almost nothing for me.
Except the young woman’s face, hairstyle and how her eyes accentuate her expression bears more than passing resemblance to an erstwhile co-worker on whom I have a crush.
It’s not the first time I’ve chanced upon porn which reminds me of people I trust—and by that I merely mean someone who can touch me without causing me to flinch. Usually, I avert my eyes—much the way I would if a loose fitting top gaps and offers a glimpse of an elicit vista. It’s not that I don’t want to see—fucking Christ on Christmas, I exist to absorb sensory input.
I don’t feel the same inclination here, however; it’s a feeling that I am interested in explaining without judgment or justification—not because either does not belong here but because this response is such a fatherfucking anomaly.
Navigating boundaries is something for which I lack any talent. I don’t really understand them because for all intents and purposes I do not have any of my own. But I comprehend—at least academically—that other people do. I think of boundaries as privacy force fields. (Go ahead and laugh.) Privacy force fields are like whatever it is about a door that prevents a vampire from passing without being invited.
Looking down the front of a loose blouse or connecting a pornographic image with someone I trust usually causes me to feel like a vampire trying to enter a home without being invited.
It’s the same with masturbatory fantasies. Granted when I masturbate I don’t usually think about scenarios or exchanges so much as the process is something more like meditation or stretching my arm through cage bars towards a hanging key I can almost just reach.
On the occasions where I please myself while fantasizing about someone, it’s as a rule never someone with whom I am close. (Of course it’s a different story if the person consents—but this has only happened once with someone show I was never romantically involved.)
There are two notable exceptions. One is my crush.
Perhaps it’s not really an exception. I don’t fantasize about how she might touch me, how I might touch her in turn and where that might lead. Instead I try to picture her in the same room as me—she’s one of those women whose fundamental perception is of being unattractive. She’s not upset about it; in fact, she cultivates an image of herself as not being able to give less of a fuck of what anyone else thinks of her. Of course, this in combination with her vicious wit, talent and intelligence makes her even more attractive. Then I am in the same cell again stretching, reaching for, almost touch that hanging key that if I can only reach will unlock a treasure chest with a mirror that if she held up she could glimpse herself as I see her through my eyes.
Then I fall away, crawl back but fail.
I don’t know why I refuse to turn away in this case. But in so doing, I remain unashamed.
I’m iffy—at best—when it comes to choking and the whole glory hole fantasy is something I fail to understand (but to each her/his/their own).
All that is fine—what bothers me is removed as this image is any context, all that can be said is that it depicts reasonably rough sex; reasonably rough sex which the viewer must assumes is consensual based upon the mise-en-scene, gestures and expressions. In other words: non-verbal cues.
This is hugely fucking problematic. Consent CANNOT be assumed; it must be verbal, explicit.
But there’s also the fact that as much as the ambiguity surrounding consent in this image makes me uncomfortable; it also really turns me on.
As previously noted, I have a great deal of trouble navigating the boundaries. For example: if someone can touch me without causing me to completely freak the fuck out, then there’s a part of me that sees my body as belonging to her just as much as it does me.
It makes me sound irrevocably fucked in the head but if someone can hug me then if they wanted they could touch me like this too, or circle their hands round my neck as they push my face hard against a wall and who knows what else.
I trust wholly or not at all.
[If anyone happens to know, I am very interested in discovering the identity of whomever made this image.]
Acetylene Eyes 