Arthur Tress – [↖] Young Man in Burning Forest (1995); [↑] Bride and Groom, New York (1971) [↗] Boy with Cigarette, Albany, NY (1970); [←] Spinal Tap, New York, NY (1996); [] Twinka At Arles, France (1985); [→] Teenager Drinking on Telephone Pole, Bronx, NY (1969); [↙] Sex with Vice (1977); [↓] Untitled (197X); [↘] Male Nude (1970)
In ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined…
turns out to be the same world.
–C. Geertz
Those who peruse what I write will be aware of how much I loathe fucking gratuitous/illogical use of portrait orientation.
I never tire of calling that bullshit out. But, for the sake of avoiding redundancy and not beating a dead horse on the subject, I am going to henceforth distill these criticisms to a pithy hash tag: #skinnyframebullshit.
#skinnyframebullshit should be applied here. Further, the awkwardness is compounded by the top frame line’s amputate the young woman’s legs. (And if one was inclined toward hair splitting: an argument can be made that with the angle of light it would’ve been preferable to swap the position of her head and feet.)
Even with these shortcomings, I dig this image a lot. Mainly because it dodges the usual questions of subject/object and exhibitionism/voyeurism back loaded into visual depictions of masturbation. It has the sort of masturbation as punk rock/do it yrself sex positive vibe I adore.
Acetylene Eyes 