Tag: lesbians

Kerstin Drechsel – Untitled from if you close the door series (2009)

With the exception of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I’m not all that fond of expressionism.

In fairness, I can’t imagine Drechsel fancies herself an expressionist. But I think there’s an argument to be made that while if you close the door starts off more classically photo-realistic as it becomes more enmeshed in the private experiences of loves, it begins to disintegrate into something that shares elements of expressionism.

I love how the work is at once both graphic and implicit. The sometimes fumbling awkwardness of the exchanges.

Take this image: I can’t get over the matching knickers. The way each partner is stimulating the other and holding the other at a distance. (The one on the left in an effort to watch her lovers body and the one on the right because she is approaching orgasm–note the way the partner on the right has her lips parted but at the same time this expression is partly elided by the clumsy shadow her partner is casting across her face.

I also really like the vaginal shape of the composition. It’s not at all subtle but in the context of the work it’s a powerful statement about whom and for what purpose the work was created (i.e. it wasn’t made for white cishet dudes to objectify).

Source: vane.org.uk

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)

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

Morgan Gwenwald – Untitled (1992)

All I’ve been able to learn about Gwenwald is that she was a photographer active in NYC primarily during the late-70s and throughout the 80s.

Most of her work appears to be documentary in nature. (The most comprehensive collection can be accessed via the Lesbian Herstory Archives.)

However, it seems that she was also very active in efforts to reappropriate depictions of the vulva from mainstream pornography. There’s mention in a couple of places about a notable image entitled Incorrect View of the Beloved. ( can’t actually find an example of it online, but there is a reasonably specific description here.)

Source: lesbianartandartists

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.

Source unknown – Title unknown (20XX)

Given that this looks as if it perpetuates the extraordinarily problematic trope in hentai where consent is gained through sexual coercion, I am probably guilty of bad faith by posting it.

But… :::avoiding eye contact::: I’m not sure how but independent of context this depicts not only something uncomfortably close to what I experience both physically and emotionally when someone brings me to orgasm, it also conveys what I feel when I bring my partner to orgasm.

The fact that they are both women that present varying degrees of femme-ness is crucial. As is the fact that the third woman down the alley has been alerted to their actions. I think I probably could explain why the third party contributes to the concreteness of this feeling, but I’m not sure if perhaps that’s maybe too personal for this venue. (Those of you who’ve been following for a while can probably venture some prescient guesses though…)

Andrej Lupin (for Sex Art) – Apple Pie featuring Silvie Deluxe and Whitney Conroy (2014)

I stumbled across this video as a result of a production still that crossed my dash today.

In theory, sapphic desire is among my principle interests. In practice, meh. My eyes have never bled out from the repetition of rushed, clumsy oral by gay-for-pay porn vixens.

And although in the aforementioned still there is definitely an awkward lack of familiarity–which can read as discomfort–in the positioning of either women’s hands. However, the still does convey an unusually clear since of space; and that was enough to motivate me to take a closer look.

I am glad I did. Yes, there’s some of the rushed, less than passionate oral sex that so frustrates me. (Along with rote indicators that this video was made by a man for consumption by other men–absence of pubic hair, deploying fingers less as strategically penetrative stroking implements and more as ersatz erections.)

Normally, those things would be a major turn off. They aren’t here though. And I think that’s partly due to the fact that although the lighting looks like a cross between the overly dramatic look of a daytime soap and Breaking Bad, at least some thought/effort/time went into thinking about light before shooting began.

The kicker is not so much that the women do a better than average job selling the throes of their pleasure, it’s that the extreme closeups of each woman’s genitals are used sparingly. Instead, closeups are used to focus on touch, gesture or expression. Further, in most of the wide shots both women are framed so that their entire bodies are contained within the boundaries of the frame. (No amputations/decapitations, hurrah!)

But this scene above is not only the one I orgasmed to while watching, it represents something I’ve never seen before– a director setting up a scene where everything is played toward the camera but instead of going for the closeup, we are forced to take a step back and watch from a distance. It’s a move that not only very much appeals to my own personal aesthetic but also feels unusually reverent.

Lastly, no matter how contrived I am all about the fact that the two flirt before things get hot and heavy and then the easy cut away after they’ve both supposedly gotten off is ditched to offer a sort of unwieldy afterglowing intimacy.

Jacques Biederer – Women in Love (1930)

If your thing is top shelf vintage (think 20/30s & not 60/70s) erotica and porn, drop everything and check out The Venusberg. (Note: the URL is mispelled, the ‘u’ and ’s’ are inverted.)

The Venusberg came to my attention due to another breathtaking menage a trois post. It deserves far more attention than its received but the sense in this of unabashed intimacy is something for which I am craving desperately tonight.

While in Amsterdam, I happened upon this billboard proclaiming Maika Elan‘s 2013 Pride Photo Award win under the documentary category for The Pink Choice (2012).

I nearly walked right by it as I was stoned, ravenously hungry and reasonably well on my way to getting drunk–not to mention it being tucked away in the plaza abutting the Heineken brewery.

Somehow, the bare legs of the young woman balanced on roller blades snagged the corner of my eye from across the street.

Upon closer inspection, my first thought was this belongs on my blog. I retrieved my phone and snapped several images of it.

Two months later, I don’t question my instinct to share this: it belongs alongside the other images on this blog. Still, I am hesitant to post it. Why?

My initial thought was including the image would provide a great occasion for a sex positive, yay-for-gay post. Now this strikes me as a naive notion at best and more likely disingenuous, lazy and intellectually dishonest.

Issues of sexual orientation certainly overlap with issues of sexuality but the two are not interchangeable.

Being ostensibly a sex blog  I don’t think it’s a good precedent to take the path of least resistance especially when to do so overlooks the fact that what initially fired my curiosity about this image was essentially libidinous– a young woman in her underwear.

As much as that is a problem–the cultural prerogative of sexualizing the female body–it isn’t the image’s problem; if anything, Elan succeeds by offering the viewer so many diverse avenues of approach: attraction, narrative, absurdist humor (seriously, wtf is up with blow drying the cat + who roller blades in doors), inversion of the mundane (aka whimsy) as well as a sense of authentic experience.

And it’s not really something I know how to other than to point out that despite what drew me to the image when I finally turned and lopped south, away from Marie Heinekenplein, I was struck by two realizations: first, I was now just as attracted to the second woman as the one wearing the roller blades– or perhaps more accurately attraction had blossomed into curiosity about them, the nature of their relationship, how they interact with one another, etc.; second, as a terminally unrequited individual, I am frequently and bitterly jealous of ‘happy’ couples, but while this image did make me feel a little sad, it also made me strangely grateful to be alive in a world where love is possible.