Dmitry Chapala – Anastasia Scheglova from La Mégère apprivoisée series (2015)
The composition here is so muddled and dunderheaded that I don’t even feel as if I can weighing in on whether or not it qualifies as #skinnyframebullshit–maybe, maybe not? What is even with this perspective? Are we supposed to interpret that bed as positive space and the Ikea shelf–why does everyone I know have this shelf, it’s ugly af–floor and rug as negative space? :::shrugs:::
Why am I bothering with this picture then? More specifically: why am I bothering with Chapala’s work at all? (It’s not like he’s especially good at what he does… he lacks the edginess/audacity of Giancomo Pepe and there are times when I effing swear he’s genuflecting in Marcel Pommer’s general direction. (Not to say he has never produced interesting snaps… he has a handful that are almost good. I simply feel his work is nearly completely derivative. He seems to be this breed of image maker that insists upon himself and his ‘fine art bonafides’ and folks just go along with it because the work superficially conforms to some arbitrary median threshold…)
Again, why bother? Well, in this case, there are two reasons. First, it seems as if every snap from this session is available online–a sure indication of less than adequate editing rigor.
I want to circle around to two of the more widely circulated shots from this series; both echo each other as far as composition–far more sensible but it still doesn’t entirely work. In one the woman has her eyes open, in the other her eyes are closed.
As far as order goes there’s a sense that the picture above preceded the other two. The falling trajectory of her left hand across the three images suggests that the subsequent order is eyes open then eyes closed. (You’ll notice–also–that the other two have had the contrast dialed up compared to the one above.)
The angle of view and the position of the ugly Ikea shelf contribute a feeling that the viewer of the image has walked into a room with which they are familiar and have found a beautiful, naked woman comfortably stretched out on the bed.
The second image is Playboy softcore-esque; the third is more unsettling given the first and second image. It suggests that either the woman is no coyly pretend as if she’s napping or worse–that this is sort of an on the fly revision, a sort of masturbatory fantasy change on the fly. (”I walk in and she’s stretched out on the bed, gazing coquettishly at me. Wait, no… she’s alseep…” Yeah, I like that better.”)
Point number two w/r/t why bother with this image is despite the litany of flaws with the above image, it does actually do something a lot of fine art nude work fails stupendously at: aligning a candid perspective with actually candid body language.
I recently realized there’s a way to describe this as long as you don’t mind a minor digression. Okay? Cool.
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books I’ve actually had to read on three different occasions across years of schooling. As you’ll recall, Huck runs away, encounters Jim and then hears about a drowned body found on the river. He wonders if it’s his father so disguising himself as a girl, he approaches the abode of Mrs. Loftus to seek information.
Mrs. Loftus quickly puzzles out that something isn’t quite right and so she challenges Huck to three tests: she has him toss a lump of lead at a rat, thread a needle and finally the old woman tosses a lump of lead into his lap to note how he catches it. He fails each test. His aim is true with the rat, he thoroughly botches threading the needle and instead of opening his legs to let the material of his dress act as a trampoline to catch the lead, he slams his legs shut to avoid the potential of getting his gonads struck.
There’s a way in which supposedly candid shots always seem to have this demureness that undercuts the scene. As humans we carry and arrange our bodies different based on whether we are in public or in private. In public, we tend to favor decorum over comfort, in private, it’s the other way ‘round.
In other words: there’s a tendency with the sexualization inherent in the male gaze, frequently candid work features extremely stylized and self-consciously demure poses. In effect, there’s a tendency for the subjects in candid fine art nude work to make the same mistake as Huck–responding instinctively instead of naturally.
This doesn’t do that–which despite it’s numerous flubs–is actually to its credit. However, I will admit that the two subsequent images sort of screw with that by subverting the comfortable naturalness to the end of something that I can’t help by read as holding some sort of unsettling psychosexual implication.
Acetylene Eyes 