Tag: erections

Eric and Chris Phillips – Porn Resistance | Berlin for Pornceptual (2016)

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.
                   —Duane Michals

Nudity is an art.
Besides, art is only nudity. There’s no more art, only too much
civilization. Art is barbarious. Art is loneliness. Nothingness is
perfect nudity.
                   —Raúl Ruiz

Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.
                   —Andy Warhol

Ren Hang – Untitled (2013)

It’s a depressing truth: Acetylene Eyes includes far, far too few of Hang’s images. In fact, I’ve only posted one previously–it’s worth revisiting as it’s a damn fine picture but also because I absolutely stand by my commentary.

The confrontational constancy of the work is less off-putting to me now. Yes, it’s trangressive as a hot goddamn. I’ve come to not only admire Hang’s Negative Fucks Given™ tact but to find humor in it.

The humor comes when you realize that he actively lampoons Internet famous photographers. His use of strobe is all Terry Richardson. The work in his second 2014 gallery takes brutal pot shots at the obvious disparity (and disingenuousness) between the public explanations and private intentions of folks like Noah Kalina and Ryan McGinley.

And what I’m realizing is his work also integrates color into not only composition but the image as a whole in ways that very few people since Eggleston have managed.

Claire Milbrath – Groin Gazing (2014)

There’s room to quibble about the technique–the overexposure/offsetting contributes fuck all to the work; mostly though, this is an intriguingly simply experiment in subverting the assumption of a male gendered gaze.

Without equivocation: more work like this is desperately needed.

Unfortunately and this cannot remain unsaid: Vice Magazine is astonishingly reprehensible.

I am not usually one to moralize. Hell, I believe morality is at best entirely arbitrary in determination. The issue I have with Vice is their sanctimony. They routinely court controversy–not a bad thing in and of itself. But regardless of whether they’re publishing fashion editorials featuring female writers who killed themselves, profiting off journalism featuring wobbly (at best) ethics or continuing to employ fabulously untalented sexual predators like Terry Richardson, they dismiss criticisms–particularly allegations of exploitation–with a sanctimonious don’t-blame-us-for-being-clear-eyed-enough-to-show-you-the-truth.

Yes, there will always be a need for journalist who brave outrage and condemnation to bring truth into the world. All too often Vice mistakes its gleefully transgressive raison d’être for integrity. And it causes them to come off exactly like a fuckwitted privileged straight white male hipster who cracks a racist joke to prove how post-racially aware he is and then can’t understand how anyone could ever think he is a fucking racist piece of shit.

Source: Vice Magazine