couple – Page 4 – Acetylene Eyes

Liv Carlé Mortensen – Title Unknown (200X)

There isn’t much I can find about the artist; except for her sounding like my favorite kind–one who views art as an avenue for terrorism.

And as there’s even less information on this image, I’m left with nothing except my impressions to interpret.

First, of all I think knitphilia’s #thisiswhatlovelookslike tag applies.

Second, to my eye, Mortensen essentially excises the extreme detachment from subjects that features prominently in Nan Goldin’s work. With that as a starting point, Mortensen borrows heavily from fellow Dane Fred Huening adding the edgy balance between danger and dread, that I always feel his work is bereft of. (Also, while we’re on influences, the liberal dose of Ana Mendieta-esque calculated aggression should not be overlooked.)

This is exactly the sort of work I think lens based visual culture so desperately needs. It’s vital, real and alive.

Source: fuckyouverymuch

Our Naughty Adventures – Submission to Let Me Do This To You (201X)

There’s this essay that’s been bouncing around in my head for more than a year. It has to do with the junctions, disjunctions and ruptures in the terms ‘erotica’, ‘sexual explicit imagery’, ‘pornography’ and ‘Art’.

I have some 30 pages of notes but sitting down to write in earnest is a real struggle for me.

It’s a shame, really–being able to call on such an essay in the analysis of this image would pay rich dividends in the case of this image, especially given that I’d be inclined to label this as both ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’ but less willing to attribute any strong artistic merit or suggest that depicting and erect penis precludes sexual explicitness.

What’s sexual here is the position of the female body in relationship to the male. The image clearly captures a moment prior to the commencement of sexual congress; in other words, the image titillates through implication.

There is a sense of artistic pretense–high contrast, black and white, shot with a strobe there’s also the feeling that what is presented is a crop from a larger image; or, what should have been a composition centering on a wider angle of view.

Artistic shortcomings aside I do find this image to be highly erotic as it includes a number of things that dampen my undies: the fact that although not wearing a stitch, the female bodied participant is presented in such a way that her nakedness is hidden at the same time the male bodied participant is visible for all the world to see. (In this case I also really dig the acute angle of his erection and way the flash draws attention to the texture and tone of his foreskin.)

There’s also something intangible about the image that conveys for me a sense of craving a lover’s body so much it causes physical pain. And with that aching transforms the carnal union into not only an approaching of ecstatic bliss but a drowning of pain in pleasure.

Source: letmedothis

Ida Oppen – Pale Afternoon from The Wicked Innocent series (201X)

Ida Oppen is an early twenty-something freelance image maker hailing from the suburbs of Oslo.

Her work transcends the perfunctory reproaches I customarily present. Honestly, I am profoundly impressed with her sophisticated compositions, precocious attention to scale and use of color.

Thus, the bifurcation into two mutually exclusive bodies of work–the editorial/‘fine art’ and the sexually explicit–really fucking baffles me.

From the standpoint of commerical viability, this is understandable: ‘professional’ clients are unlikely to appreciate graphic presentations of genitalia, intercourse and sexual effluvia.

What fails to track is the degree to which Oppen’s approach varies between disparate oeuvres.

The painstaking craft of the editorial work loosens in favor of a grittier immediacy. Not that craft is by any means lacking–pay attention to the precision of the framing (especially in the multiple image assemblages reminiscent of analog contact sheets), the manufactured multiple exposures and the–admittedly less astute–digital chromatic interventions.

Oppen admits this is what she’s after in her artist’s statement for The Wicked Innocent series. And there really isn’t much room for argument. She knows what she’s doing as well as how it is going to be read by an audience.

But as a member of that ostensible audience I would like to be pushed outside of my comfort zone and confronted a little more directly. Honestly, I mean that less as a criticism and more as a misguided compliment because although I know Oppen does not conceptualize this work as pornography, it offers me everything I look for–but rarely find–there. It’s partly that there seems to be a great deal of overlap between the kinds of sex with which Oppen is preoccupied and my own interests. But that is only intensified by the fact that vulnerability and trust factor so prominently into the process of making the images.

Viewing the work there is an unshakeable sense that the openness is equally if not more arousing than that which is explicitly depicted; the feeling that I am seeing what I am seeing not because there’s any expectation that it will turn me on but that it is a record of what gets someone else overwhelmingly aroused.

Merel Wessing – Title Unknown (200X)

I’m not 100% as far as the attribution on this.

Google Image search best guesses as Belgian model Merel Wessing.

With the galaxies of freckles on her forehead and around her eyes, this is almost certainly the same young woman.

It seems she’s a photographer too. Or was, at least–there’s a Flickr account bearing her name and the The Way Back Machine shows updates between 2007 and 2011.

Unfortunately, none of those images are cached. Anywhere as far as I can tell.

Excepting the above, another photo from this same ‘shoot’ and this, her work has been scrubbed from the Internet.

Although there’s no way to qualitatively assess her abilities based on three photographs, the images–especially this one–justifying a strong curiosity with regard to the rest of her work.

I have an itching suspicion she was/is very good, if not flat out phenomenal.

Source: lovelyporn

Source: Unknown

As best as I can tell, this image was originally from one of three different photo shoots featuring this couple.

It was probably commissioned by one of those dime-a-dozen paid membership amateur porn sites who tout the ability to download unedited photo sets as a selling point.

A certain Motherless user–who I am not going to even bother identifying–shunted the images over to his account on Halloween 2012.

From there, a Serbian tech geek added all three sets to his lo-fi website.

I spent about an hour and a half browsing through them the other day–that time may or may not have featured two self-love sessions–and although they aren’t what I would call ‘good’–heteronormative sex doesn’t really do much for me–there are some things I appreciate:

The boy at least seems somewhat mindful that the staging of the scene is runs counter to his partner’s needs–even if he doesn’t really go to any great lengths to compensate for it;
The money shot in every set avoids the ubiquitous porn facial that I so hate; she brings him to orgasm via fellatio, letting just a little bit of his semen dribble between her lips to visually signal ejaculation;
There are some awkward and poorly planned shots but they come off as strangely sincere and maybe even awkwardly endearing.

Maybe a handful of the images make for pretty decent photography–this is probably the best of the bunch and marginally not #skinnyframebullshit to boot.

The image I’ve posted is not the best-the tile seam between their heads is distracting and emphasizes the frames questionable compositional logic.

What I like are the nuances in their interaction. Her along with her face is flushed; the fringe of her hair, damp. Due to her position, her center of gravity–three inches below her navel–in under his body; her shoulder is turned in to his body.

The way her right hand is holding him is not conducive to anything greater than a teasing level of stimulation. This combined with the way she is cradling his testicles conveys a profound sense of bodily acceptance but also simultaneously proclaims you are mine and I will do what I want to you; you can’t stop me and you are completely safe in this space.

The way he is reaching towards her, kissing her with unfeigned, intoxicated passion is lovely.

The nakedness of the wanting and being wanted is always something I find incomparable erotic.

Source: 91.210.216.1

Source: Unknown

There are several dozen reasons this is a really lovely image but I would like to focus specifically on its careful use of tonality.

It is meant to be scanned left to right. The skin of the male bodied partner is exposed a hair below complete overexposure and loss of highlight detail. (Making a traditional darkroom wet print, you would probably have to split grade and burn the edge in with a 4 or 4.5 filter.)

The male bodied participant is rendered an ethereal specter; his body only begins gaining form and dimension in relation to his proximity to his partner.

The right half of the frame is heavy with a mid-to-dark range of tones. The female-bodied partner’s teeth represent the only tone in from the highlight range. This balances against the dark tones of the pubic hair in the left half of the frame–in a way the skin and high heel encircle the penetrative sex act, highlighting it.

The darkest areas of the frame are in the armpits of his t-shirt, the area shadowed by her left thigh and his right forearm and her hair.

Thus the tonal composition reduces to a figure not unlike: 0>.

What is interesting to me is the discrepancies from the figure and how they actually enhance the image. If you follow the highlight of her blown out high heels suspended in midair–a porno trope I loathe but that serves here–your eye is led in the direction of his face (where his eyes are locked on his erection as it is consumed by her body); whereas, if you are following the mid-to-dark tones, your eye descends to note the way her knees hook into his elbows.

All that definitely appeals to my aesthetic sensibilities. But it’s the way that despite the emphasis on the graphic depiction of intercourse, that I am entirely preoccupied with her calm and beautifully meditative expression.

Source: Unknown

This is not an objectively ‘good’ image. Overexposure leaches color from an already truncated palate; while the framing–presumably orchestrated to preserve anonymity is painfully awkward. (Scooting the camera back as little as two inches and squaring the level would have done wonders.)

Still to my eye there is something magical here–although I am not entirely sure how to explain my meaning.

It seems–in my head, at least–more of a still from an amateur sex tape than a discrete image; I keep imagining how things will proceed from here.

Not knowing the source, it seems inappropriate to project my own sexual predilections onto an image that has fuck all to do with me, instead of reading and interpreting things at face value.

Here’s somethings things that grab my attention:

Both are smiling in playfully curious/knowingly smirking way,
He is laid out, open and on display while she is more curled into herself,
His pubic hair is carefully trimmed,
Her red lacquered nails draw attention to the slightest bit of motion blur, suggesting teasing strokes,
Her hair is a mess, having what could be a either bed head or post-coital, shower wet hair that has dried unevenly over the course or further lovemaking sessions,
And, she’s wearing what may well be a wedding ring.

All of it taken together suggests to me the crucial distinction between the taking of pleasure and the receipt of it. One is a central tenet, the prerogative of patriarchy; the other: demands a willingness to surrender, to become vulnerable, to let go and in letting go, letting another.

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.