Tag: male nude

fpr1 – Untitled Submission to NN (2015)

A simple, straight forward and pretty image.

I deploy ‘pretty’ with intention–there is something about the pose that suggests androgyny. to me. Yeah, yeah–I know body hair–but I’m increasingly discovering that I really dig the anarchist femme folk with the short shorts and unshaven legs trend. It radiates a zero fucks given mentality that’s super attractive.

Yet, let’s not heap idle praise–there’s some interesting stuff going on ‘under the hood’ so to speak. The lower frame edge hints at the drop off at the bed’s edge. I’m betting the image was originally supposed to only feature the bed. This would’ve worked compositionally since the subject is essentially isolated in the top two-thirds of the frame. The inclusion of the bed’s edge actually unifies the darker ranges of the composition, drawing the eye inward from the outer edges of the frame to the body and further emphasizing the oblique position of the light source.

The impetus behind this image recalls this libidinous offering from the ceaselessly-astonishing-in-her-explicit-evocation-of-female-sexuality Rita Lino. However, in this case, although Lino’s image is bluntly absent with regards to equivocation and as thrilling as that always is to encounter in lens based visual culture, I am convinced the above is ultimately the more enduring record of wrestling with notions laying along a parallel conceptual track.

Source: nymphoninjas

wonderlust photoworks – Echo from Address the Void series (2009)

To my Darkness and my Light,

I
unfold myself; you, in turn, call to me with your warm and aching
mouth— its tongue, a delicate command I will not long withstand.

Your lips spill sighs; I drink until your thirst is sated.

Trembling
hands steady me beneath you.  You guide me toward your deepest
acceptance.  I find a center in you; you grasp me and gasp.

(You
shudder— hands bracing the afternoon light dying against such white
walls.  I see your ineffable Beauty with the eye of god.  I fall and
place this feeble kiss to caress the spine as I pass.)

With you I experience annihilations most will never know.

After
I am restless; you know what I want is what I will never achieve
alone— you coax from my every ending its next beginning.

We must map these new and nameless oblivions together.

Source: wonderlustphotoworks.com

Source unknown – Title Unknown (20XX)

Despite this being a terrible image–what exactly are those bars behind them and is that a curtain in the background?–I’m into it.

A good part of the reason I’m into it has to do with it avoiding both the usual MMF cliches of dude bros frat studs high-fiving over a coed they’re having their way with as well as the default tender sentimentality of more bi-curious tuned fare.

There’s something more primal to it.

Admittedly the image doesn’t read as clearly as it could but if you look closely you’ll notice that the woman has semen on her neck. It’s very likely that he started to come and is now finishing in the other guy’s mouth.

The way heteronormative porn handles ejaculation pisses me off and I think we should treat male ejaculation closer to female ejaculation in that… oh, that was cool but we’re just getting started here. (I don’t know about you but the best sex I’ve had has always happened after I’m sure I can’t physically handle further stimulation and then my partner(s) demonstrate to me that I most unequivocally can handle a great deal more than I think I can.

Also, I really love that everyone is so into what’s going on. The guy having intercourse with the woman is clearly into sucking cock and the woman appears to be enjoying herself. (I also really like that her braid is coming unraveled on the wood floor.)

Seeing this makes me feel like maybe there are people out there in the world who fuck the way I think people ought to fuck.

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 (201X)

When an image is founded upon a solid idea, it’ll with stand a great deal in the way of poor execution without losing efficacy.

This is total #skinnyframebullshit and the production design was clearly meant to be Botticelli-esque but ends up looking half-assed. Further, even though equipment limitations probably resulted in both boys being decapitated by the frame and I’m guessing preserving anonymity was important, lopping off their heads is just ugly.

What I like is the intimacy of it even though it is very much in public. But what really flows like an electrical current through this image is the way they are both almost grasping each other. :::shivers:::

Jacs Fishburne – And the stars falling cold in the river vales where we found ourselves again (2015)

We need to talk about how absolutely in-fucking-credible the work Jacs has been doing lately is.

‘Breathtaking’, ‘spectacular’, ‘the level beyond the next level’: pick a top shelf superlative and fill in the blank. I promise no matter the word, it won’t be overstating the matter.

Miguel Villalobos – Deer Slava (2008)

Like anything else photography has loosely defined genres, i.e. street photography, fashion photography, landscape photography, etc., etc.

There’s Ansel Adams–a stollid landscape photographer; your street photographers–Cartier-Bresson or Winogrand; and portraitists a la Arbus.

Additionally there are those artists who migrate between genres over the course of their career–probably the best example being Emmet Gowin, who started out as a portraitist who subsequently took up aerial landscapes of the American west as area of focus. Similarly–and ultimately unsurprisingly given her noted affinity for Gowin, Sally Mann has sort of been all over the place.

What’s interesting about these authors whose work shifts over time is that although the approach and overall aesthetic remain more or less constant, there’s always a lot going on between how they see and how they represent what the see. In other words, we recognize them by their creative trajectory rather than their constancy of vision.

What I find stunning about Villalobos–besides his bold use of dynamic black and white with a downright confrontational use of flash, is that although he favors edgy portraiture… there’s a consistency of seeing across his work regardless of genre.

His work seems to exist as if perpetually experiencing the trough between crests on a slightly sinister acid trip.

The Eye of Lamar – Beneath It All (2015)

As far as focal length goes, this is hell of wide–I mean the door way is bulging due to barrel distortion meaning were probably (given a 35mm equivalency) at around 16mm.

Normally, I’m a detractor from ultra-wide angle but here I’m rethinking my objection–at least in the case of this image. I mean the warping grows more noticeable toward the outside edges but since the illumination falls off, the vaguely parenthetical bulging of the door frame diminishes the effect of a frame within a frame.

I’m not sure that the two objects (it looks like a counter and a wall decoration of some sort) were meant to show up. That they do is kind of providential as it serves to balance the frame left-to-right in a way that probably wouldn’t have been as compelling with them.

Source unknown – Title unknown (200X)

Make no mistake, from the standpoint of technique this image is inexcusably inept as far as execution goes–there’s neither rhyme nor reason to the composition (the slight leftward cant in combination with the proximity of the camera to the wall distracts from the action by emphasizing the visual clutter of the curtains, TV and radiator) and the focus is most likely set to infinity and as such the foreground goes a bit too soft.

For all its fumbling, the image does succeed–if I you can call it that–in several small but notable ways:

  1. It’s firmly grounded in an ephemeral moment, i.e. this couple in this room with a view of the winter landscape through the windows;
  2. Despite the idiocy of the composition, there is a sense of acknowledged and subsequently subverted voyeurism, i.e. it feels less like the couple is photographing themselves and more as if there a several other people in the room watching the events unfold and this image just happened to be snapped by the person closest to the action;
  3. The couple is clearly more interested in what’s happening between them than the fact that they have an audience, i.e. her focus on how the movements of her hand are affecting his arousal, the way he’s touching her shoulder in a manner that is both romantically possessive and simultaneously a plea not to stop what she’s doing to him. (Also, you gotta love the way his ass is clenched and the sloppy grins on both their faces.)