Tag: cunnilingus

E. E. Spurrier – Untitled (2015)

This reminds me of something I witnessed in college.

There were two grocery stores within walking distance from campus. One was an off-shoot of a big chain but featured a better selection; the other was one of those football field sized containers for endless aisles stocked with crap food and the whole affair sick with dead light and saccharine pop music over the PA.

Everyone on campus went to the second place.

It wasn’t necessarily the draw of the place but one of the advantages was the store hadn’t yet discovered those wheel locks that rendered the carts immobile beyond a certain distance from the store. It was a pretty common occurrence to see classmates pushing a cart overflowing with groceries down the side of the road back to campus.

The carts that wound up back on campus were usually returned (eventually) to the store by campus security. However, during their time away from their usual service, they were drafted into all kinds of absurd shenanigans: grocery cart jousting, the hauling of care packages from home between the post office and dorm room and use sometimes even illicit prop in a drunken visual joke.

In my case, the young woman in whom I was interested–but stupidly didn’t realize for another three years didn’t feel mutually–would get extremely drunk off of vodka and would assume an atrocious Russian accent. She would insist that she was Svetlana and Svetlana was crazy and down for just about anything.

So this image reminds me of Svetlana and one of her friends (both straight and cis), climbing into a cart and miming lesbian hi-jinks for the boys looking on.

And I guess that’s what appeals to me with this–it certainly isn’t the image makers aesthetic which is pretty much hideous even if despite it he does seem to manage to frequently capture what appear to be earnest expressions of sexuality among close friends: this does not appear to be a coy, ostentatious mime for an audience.

I mean sure it starts off with that–the appreciative but toothily self-conscious grin is quickly replaced by the focus of surrendering to someone who you trust and who knows you as well as if not better than you know yourself.

Source: eespurrier

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

Ultimately, this isn’t technically a good photograph–it’s unclear what the woman at the extreme right of the frame is doing and given her position where the upper horizontal third of the frame insects with the frame edge and the dark shelf or curtain directly behind her, the eye drifts across the frame to her and her eyeline isn’t accurate enough to draw attention back to the act of cunnilingus.

Still I like the feeling of the image–the weary-yet-curious way she’s taken his hard on into her mouth, the way he’s watching her but also gently pulling her hair away from her face so that’s out of her way allowing him and the camera an unobstructed view. I love the way her hand is pressed against the other boys side–a means of communicating her own sexual response through touch since vocal cues may not be as readily interpretable given the present configuration.

Yes, everything is staged toward the camera but not in an overly winking exhibitionist sort of way. This is another example of an image where I wish I had been present with a camera to document things. (Although I admit, my personal preference would be for the woman and the boy going down on her to switch places. (MMF scenarios with bi-men are v. haute.)

Also, something that gets me about this picture and honestly any depiction of group sex is that seem to allow for something I feel stymied by in my day-to-day–namely, they allow a safe space for those participating to perform their sexuality in a way that isn’t intrusive, unwarranted or unwelcome.

That openness is something completely absent in my life and as much as the advice is: be the change you want to see in the world, this blog is really the only means I’ve found at maybe halfway accomplishing that feat.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

This is not a good photograph. Good or not, it is goddamn fascinating.

The color is positively garish–render skin tones livid with blue green bruising. The two tone yellow of the tub and wall paper certainly doesn’t help matters.

But note how the reflection of the flash off the mirror–while absolutely contributing to the fucked up color balance–is rather lovely when you only consider the reflection.

And I do love the way the cunnilingus giver is supporting the receiver’s hips with her hands, the soapy wetness of the skin and the despite the unflattering angle, how the receiver’s reflection appears so unfeigned in its blissed outness.

Source: partialboner

Source unknown – Title unknown (19XX)

I have a preference for graphic depictions of sexuality focusing on a woman’s pleasure. Thus, although clearly staged–this appeals to me with a particular intensity.

The intensity is amplified by the fact that I also find it alluring where nudity is not presented as a facet of a woman’s sexual expression.

What I am really trying to communicate is the completeness with which this had me from the start.

There are two things it refuses to clarify: is the woman’s thousand yard stare a by product of the obvious staging of the scene or is she fantasizing about another man–perhaps the one rendered as a ghostly presence in the background.

My suspicion this is the intended–as much as authorial intention bears any relationship to the audience’s reading/interpretation (which is to say little if any)–outcome; however, to me the image exudes a sort of aching physical desperation. And that feeling causes me to wander if the ghostly presence is perhaps actually corporeal–a third party waiting to be invited to join the proceedings. The positioning doesn’t really support this interpretation; but wondering about the position caused me to notice the pose and musculature is oddly posed–legs together and touching, abdomen perhaps stretched…

…and I can’t help but thinking if the woman is thinking about the Crucifixion–a notion that would certainly fit with the feeling of seething sexual desperation I get from the image.

It doesn’t have to be that. In all likelihood it isn’t; but the ambiguity within the work that allows such an obscene meditation appeals with glee to the stretching darkness in me.

Sapphic Erotica – Nicole Scott & Kimberly (2003)

Although hardly a good image, it at least contains elements that had they been deployed with a modicum of artfulness could have easily been great.

Part of what appeals is the scale, It’s what I’d call a medium shot and what other cinematographers would likely term a wide shot, i.e. it shows both women from head to toe in their particular setting.

Now, from the standpoint of composition, this image makes no sense. There’s all that open space in the left and although the texture of the wood siding is interesting (not to mention, causing both women to stand out from the background), the side of the house being more or less vertical with the center of frame demands the women be positioned at or between the vertical third lines and the frame edge. That is unless, you align the side of the house with one of the vertical thirds–bearing in mine what the presence and absence of the sun dappled open field does. (If the side is aligned with the left vertical third, a sense that the two are engaged on the sly; whereas aligning it with the right vertical third includes more of the field and conveys that they are perhaps on vacation at a remote cabin and unlikely to be seen by anyone. Applying the question of scale to either of those suggests that in the former, the camera might ought be further back that it is here and in the latter closer. Of course, you could mix and match depending on how the frame is likely to be read by the audience and how such reading is in-line and/or diverges from the desired reading.)

But for me the thing that sells it is the fact that it’s a little awkward. I can’t say I attribute it to any artfulness on the part of the photographer. It’s likely these two were just initially a little self-conscious of the camera. Yet, instead of awkward it reads here as a vestige of the fact that so much of how sexuality is portray is hyper-stylized when in reality–when it’s at it’s best–it’s clumsy, messy and while always alluring it’s not always pretty as a picture.

I actually tracked down the video which apparently served as the impetus for the photo set from which these images emerged. The quality is awful; but it does illustrated another beneficial lesson for pornographers: if the individuals in your scene have real chemistry between them, the foreplay can be just as hot if not more so than the fucking.

Libby Edwards – there are no boundaries anymore/just purity/just us (2012)

You know that smart ass quip that there are two types of people in the world: normal folks and then those who separate the world up into two types.

Yes, there’s certainly a kernel of truth there–things in the desert of the real rarely divide cleanly or suggest such neat polarity with easily navigable spectra between.

However, as long as either/or dichotomies are invoked as a genesis point (a means to an end instead of an end in and of themselves), I think they can be useful.

Take this image. It’s crossed my dash probably several dozen times in the nearly two years I’ve run this blog. Technically, it has a heavenly choir of problems: the camera’s slight up tilt combined with counter top reinforcing the lower frame edge draws attention to the asymmetry of the corners where the walls meet on either side; I would wager this was taken with some sort of matrix metering setting–resulting in the skin tone being what I’d call a Zone IV instead of halfway between Zone VI & VII.

In other words, it’s technically flawed.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the technical interests me. I would even go so far as to say I consider quality of craft a major turn on. Still though all the technical know how in the world doesn’t count for fuck all if there’s no mojo.

What do I mean by the oh so technical term ‘mojo’; heart, honesty, integrity. For example: I can’t fucking stand Monet but you’ll never hear me question the importance of his work. Just because it doesn’t appeal to me doesn’t mean I can’t be convinced through and through that the way he painted was a painstaking effort to share the wonder he say in the world.

But back to my original notion–for the sake of argument: let’s say that there are two sides of the image making equation; namely, the technical and the spiritual.

This image is off-the-goddamn charts in terms of presenting the truth of a discrete moment. It’s technique could be improved but there’s enough merit to it as it is that it sort of diminishes any potential criticism that can be leveled here.

Source: sofuckinghot

Max Švabinský – Paradise Sonata IV – Early Spring (1918)

It’s almost impossible to glimpse this and not think it depicts Adam going down on Eve.

The presence of ‘paradise’ in the title reenforces such implication. As do the undeniable influence of Albrecht Dürer, William Blake & Dante Gabriel Rossetti on Švabinský’s work.

But it reminds me of two curatorial comments I encountered in Madrid’s Museo del Prado. One referred to altar pieces’ heavily favoring a vertical compositional orientation. Another underscored the horizontal orientation of Venetian narrative painting (istorie).

It’s almost as if the mechanics of a vertical composition draw the eye heavenward while the eye scans across that which is horizontal–sacred vs. profane.

I am certain a great many humanist artists knew this and purposely executed profane work in a secular style as a subtle subversion.

I think there’s a bit of that at play here. And while I almost want to criticize Švabinský for his ambivalence towards a definitive context, I feel the work was a little too slippery for even him to completely control in much the same way the customary atheist proverb isn’t wonder enough? conveniently misses the truth that the experience of wonder is the experience of being in the presence of God. Just not the god as placeholder for transcendent experience that bear names like Allah, praise be upon him, Yahweh, Krishna, Buddha, etc; names and obtuse back stories that facilitate parallel reciprocity at the expense of relationship.

Source: Unknown

While I object to the sepia tinge, strobe vignetting and canted frame, the pervert in my is intrigued by this image.

I have certain reservations about imagery depicting threesomes; therefore, I appreciate how the above eschews the typically stultifying heteronormative script.

I read something about fluid sexual orientation. Namely, I don’t stop to ask is that boy gay or bi. (Although I admit that with the way his head is being forced into the woman’s pubis, I could understand that reading.)

Does it really matter? Everyone here is clearly enthusiastically engaged/invested in the proceedings.

‘Straight’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘genderqueer’ are words, labels. Increasingly, treated as if it were a discrete street addresses: 123 Main Street, Podunkville, ID.

I don’t think it’s that simple. At best, ‘bisexual’ is comparable to one New Yorker telling another she lives in Brooklyn–as opposed to Manhattan, Queens or the Bronx. (As far as I’m concerned there are only four boroughs.)

Saying I am a bisexual woman who prefers women to men is analogous to mentioning that she lives off the Lorimer L stop.

If she really trusts the person with whom she is talking, she might say: I’m on Ainslie between Leonard and Manhattan.

Even that falls short. Each of us manifests a singular sexual persona; labels are broad, vague and ambiguous, they will always fail to summarize the intricacies of our desires. Words merely facilitate communication by nudge us toward a better heading, towards the truth.

Source: st8guy4mf