Tag: ejaculation

Nicholas Noisenest – glamourmatic glowstick . subclitoral squirt gun (2012)

Believe it or not–despite my many misspellings, myriad grammatical errors and the fact that I routinely forget to include the sort of quantum connective tissue that connects my various notions–I am exceedingly self-conscious about my writing.

So I’m aware that by this point it’s almost a formula for this blog: I start of a post saying I really don’t like X, Y and Z but I’m super down with P, D and Q.

Yeah, yeah–sometimes I invert the order but mostly with the exception of the confessional personal posts or unmediated compositional analysis, I’m an appallingly predictable writer.

For example: the only way I know how to approach the above image is by first subtracting the things I (strongly) dislike about it. The combination of monochrome and strobe clearly asserts an affection for Nobuyoshi Araki’s Tokyo Lucky Hole.

There’s less than no love lost between Araki and myself. But from a technical standpoint this isn’t even thoughtfully derivative work–yes, Araki was using flash and B&W to capture salacious scenes but despite my distaste for most of his work, you can’t dispute the man’s tech chops. Whereas Noisenest–while at least not using the strobe mounted on his device, positions it in such a way that it casts an obtrusive shadow behind the woman. (It’s also #skinnyframebullshit.)

And for a work that appears so self-conscious about its family resemblance, the execution with the strong and the stylized tonal gradation, all work at cross purposes given the Araki impetus. (Araki is afterall and if nothing else grossly immediate in his presentation.)

However, all these (admittedly damning) critiques aside, it does strike me that this instinctively gets something about erotic photography that I haven’t realized before–specifically with regard to ostensible depictions of masturbation; namely: there’s a knee-jerk tendency to frame the scene as something habitual instead of something novel.

The distinction I am trying to draw is that we tend to make work featuring folks masturbating in bedrooms or bathrooms–spaces that exist hand in hand with a degree of personal privacy. Thus, images produced given that sort of framing, tend to serve more as mirrorrs; the viewer responds to them based on their response to the person depicted.

While that is probably an honest depiction of probably about 65% of masturbatory experience, there’s also the part that is experimental and boundary transgressive. The instinct that doesn’t want to be caught but wants to press up against the notion of this is private and that is public and never the twain shall meet.

I mean I don’t think I’m the only one who has masturbated in strange places either because the moment felt right to do so or a libidinal itch demanded scratching without recourse to all the locks and catches of safe privacy.

And I think there are certainly ways of hybridizing these two extremes, but I think if you can’t be bothered to present indications of a fully developed, three dimensional individual when depicting masturbation, that you can at least bother to recall the sense of urgency that drove you to transgress boundaries and use that as a conceptual starting point.

What Noisenest intended to do that with this image or not, he succeeds stunningly in at least that one regard.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

I guess this technically qualifies as post-orgasm torture.

I’m not super fond of the term. It’s not that I object to so-aggressive-it-could-be-deemed-brutal stimulation after orgasm–it can be a damn near transcendent experience.

This is less vigorous, more focused stimulation which acknowledges the fact that after the initial forceful spasms of pleasure, the genitals become hyper-sensitive. The body is hard wired to interpret continued stimulation as pain even though it’s not.

The way I describe it is image a medium sized river with levees on either side to handle flood tides. Orgasm swells the river to it’s edges. Continued stimulation causes the water to rise over the banks and fill the levee. Too much pleasure, at first, is experienced like pain. But it’s not. And if you don’t always have to be in control and trust your partner(s), you can let go and drift in the waves of something unspeakably blissful.

For example: in that last frame, those shaking legs and abdominal contractions are completely involuntary. If you’ve ever experienced that feeling, you’ll understand why I’m obsessed with it. It’s amazing and I crave it.

Alas, just as being tickled isn’t something you can do to yourself, this is the same. And I remain broken and irrevocably unwanted and alone.

I guess at least I can experience a fleeting tinge of it via this gif set.

Source: homobeing

Apollonia Saintclair – The knack (2015)

I love this but for very different reasons that most of the material I’ve posted relating to ejaculation.

I’m usually arguing for the potential of seminal emission as a subject of artistic examination due to it’s visual dynamism. And it’s not that this image isn’t dynamic–jizz jetting 3.5 inches into inky black negative space is always going to be inherently dynamic.

But here that reads as quotidian compared to other incisive details. The lighting is discernibly motivated–presumpably falling from the window in the upper left of frame, haloing the right hand and wrestling highlight detail from the shdows. (The way the hair from his happy trail fades to scattered razor stubble and then to bare skin is lovely.)

But what’s most interesting is the attention to detail. The pinky of the left hand pressed against the skin. Even though there’s no motion it’s clear that the left hand is stroking down, while squeezing tight and the right hand is ascending, clenching tightly over the head of the penis.

Source: apolloniasaintclair

Source unknown – Title Unknown (XXXX)

I’ve mentioned a few times already about my interested in the potential for depicting ejaculation in a fine art context.

A sharp eyed follower pointed out that I was completely off base with my initial post. The shot is underwater. Something I can’t believe I overlooked. (Apologies for the fuck up.)

Usual ejaculation is presented with a slow-ish shutter speed. Something like 1/60 of a second in a video. Maybe slower under poor light for a DSLR still This creates a sense of ejaculation as a continuous stream.

The shutter speed here is much faster–1/2000 of a second or faster would be my guess. Notice how it changes from a single string to something closer to a shotgun-esque discharge. It looks less like liquid and closer to scratches on negatives or smoke.

Further, I’m reasonable sure this isn’t post processed. The tones and shadows would be very difficult to match and you can see the shadows created by globules of semen caught in the strobe.

I think my favorite part of this image is although you can’t tell whether it’s an up or downstroke, her white knuckles and the force she’s exerting are clearly visible.

Source: explicitavalon

Brian’s Dick – cumshot (2015)

This is beautiful and I have all kinds of (effing intense) thoughts/feels about it.

In content and form, it’s not really all that different from scads of other ejaculating phallus images floating around Tumblr; it’s the execution that distinguishes it.

Note the positioning of the body–angled toward the suffused daylight and the off-center framing of the cock demonstrates a foundation with the basics of compositional logic. Points have to be subtracted for chopping off the head, arms and legs, though. I abide concerns for remaining anonymous when putting such content on the interwebz, but finding creative ways to accomplish the same thing without decapitation/amputation is always possible and will categorically result in stronger images.

However, this gifset does something better than any similar images I’ve previously encountered. Watch how the subject quickly moves his hand aside as he starts to come. This movement decouples masturbation as process resulting in orgasm and instead focuses on the mechanics of ejaculation.

One of my pervasive critiques of mainstream, heteronormative porn is the at best inevitability and at worst monotony of the proceedings. The premise itself–namely: watching folks give and receive pleasure–leaves a great bit of room for beauty.

Sadly, as things diverge from documentation as a means of facilitating empathetic experience and becomes instead a fantasy fueled by a vampiric voyuerism, that’s where objectification and exploitation begin to intrude.

The empathy of this set is actually disarming. It takes a clear, unflinching portrayal of orgasm and renders it not about the viewer–in the stupid way some folks will send unsolicited nudes to a potential paramour as a sort of evidence of attraction–and instead something shared with the viewer.

In a less abstract way: it’s difficult to look at this and not relate to the sensual nature of what it depicts. In that way it functions in a vaguely synesthetic fashion: conflating seeing something with an inkling of the feeling of it.

Source: briansdick

Erwin Olaf – Joy (1985)

I didn’t immediately recognize Olaf’s name when msjanssen reblogged this image (which I have an inkling is a self-portrait) and it  seemed like it sort of wanted to riff on Peter Hujar’s haunting portrait of David Wojnarowicz masturbating and formed an informal point-of-departure for Jeff Wall’s rigorously formal and uncharacterically garish Stereo. (Also, if you want an interesting thought exercise: consider the trajectory from Blade Runner through Olaf to something like say the post-production infusion of underexposed tenebrism in a show like Hannibal while Wall is very painstaking, using a fucking shit ton of light to communicate gloaming.)

But you remember those hideous nudes with the bags from monolithic fashion designers over their heads? It’s called Fashion Victims and well, let’s just say it lacks any sort of subtlety.

Having said that: Olaf’s done some excellent work–though you wouldn’t know it from his website is basically MySpace with Quicktime VR plugin dragged kicking and screaming into some sort of javascript from hell bullshit. (There is no acceptable excuse for an image maker to subject people to such a goddamn awful fucking page.)

The Advocate put together an excellent edit of his work last year;  you should absolutely check it out.

Source redacted – Title Unknown (2010)

I’m into this for reasons.

It is far from perfect. The key light is set to accentuate his skin tone. The magenta and red in his face and chest, respectively are nice and all but the end up getting diminished by the bristling red of the chair. Also, while from the standpoint of color theory blue recedes and red approaches, without balanced dimensional lighting design the effect won’t read in the frame. And that’s not even getting into how the two black voids from the strobe enhanced cast shadow of the chair arm and his left knee are extremely distracting from a compositional standpoint.

This set up could have theoretically worked if only the chair had been rotated three degrees clockwise and the camera retreated two feet.

I lean towards thinking the cum shot freeze frame is Shopped–his pose/muscle tension aren’t in keeping with orgasm. Further, I’m reasonably certain that it should appear more globular and dispersed, not to mention have more of at least a slight arc to the trajectory.

Still the inclusion of a cast shadow from the stream at least demonstrates some thought.concern for continuity.

Unfortunately, the site from which this image emerges creeps me out. (I’ve chosen not to reference it her–but a Google reverse image search will turn it up easily.)

Source unknown – Title unknown (date unknown)

mullets-make-me-moist:

It’s the hand on the thigh that kills me tbh

When it comes to response to sexual pleasure, bodies are not unlike musical instruments–some just line the sweet spots up beneath certain hands differently, others “you can’t love… until [they’ve] broken your heart a few hundred times.“

So while a big part of what gets me about this is how angrily red his erection is–like in my experience it takes a good long bit of stimulation to achieve that color, mullets-make-me-moist is astute in drawing attention to the hands–the correlation between the way they move over this boy’s body and the way a theramin player performs is damn uncanny.