Tag: male nude

Chad Moore – [↑] Emma {pool} from the Bridge of Sighs series (2016); [←] Mollie & Ajax from Love is on the Dance Floor series (201X); [+] Ali {hickey} from Put the Book Back on the Shelf series (201X); [→] Untitled from Julia Montauk Hwy series (2016); [↓] Amy {sex} from I Studied You in History series (2014)

OK, so Chad Moore=my most recent photographer crush.

He cites Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdin and Nan Goldin as influences.

Those are all valid, even precocious influences. But there’s a couple things I’d like to point out: he gets closer to his subjects that Avedon, his palates are more naturalistic than Boudrin (skewing more towards the tonal or atmospheric a la infamous cinematographer Christopher Doyle) and while Goldin was also ostensibly interested in documenting counter culture–her impetus was more journalistic and driven by an existential imperative (seeing as proof of life, a document of that seeing as an ersatz memory established against the sting of time, the encroachment of death, a monument against the erosion of memory by seeking oblivion in any effort to feel a little bit alive again)–while his motivation seems more preciously nostalgic.

He apparently raced BMX bikes competitively as a teenager and between shooting fellow riders and people and places in his travels (with disposable cameras). In that way, he reminds me of Ryan McGinley. (Except his use of color is, unlike McGinley: more holistic; also: as much as Moore likes to refers to his work as that of a fly-on-the-wall perspective, he also dodges much of the criticism leveled–rightly–against McGinley with regard to fetishizing youth and beauty. His images inspire an emotional buy-in on the part of the viewer that can only happen if the photographer has invested in the proceedings with similar stakes.

Lastly, his color profiles are hugely reminiscent of Igor Mukhin’s exploration of transgressive youth culture in Russia.

I’m not accustomed to work this accomplished and nuanced with regards to interpersonal sensitivity from someone so bloody young. It’s damn impressive.

Source: chad-moore.com

Teenager in action – Machen wir es mit Musik (1982)

Every once in a while I see a configuration of bodies in porn that strikes me as especially visually dynamic. This is one such example.

I’m not wild about the rest of it but the pose is nice. And it gets me brain spinning up about the tension between explication and implication, esp. in porn.

I mean this would be more visually arresting with more varied, naturalistic lighting. The dead white door as backdrop is a total non-starter.

But even as great as the position is, I kind of wonder if it wouldn’t be better if her right hand was braced against his chest with her fingers splayed. If it was in the center of his chest, then it would block the line of sight with the cleft of her backside (which is something a pornographer would feel was important visual information to include in the picture). On the other hand, it would almost certainly be more implicitly intriguing if her hand were pressed against his chest over his heart and she was squeezing her right nipple between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

Also: (and this is being super OCD about things) seeing her left leg at least enough of a hint of it to suggest it’s position would contribute something as well. There are two strategies that could be applied to allow for that. Her left knee could be brought up just enough to replicate the V of his thighs. Or, she could fully straddle his right thigh. This latter option would be more compelling from the standpoint of dimensionality–however, it would also further complicate the positioning of the hands.

Anyway, the above picture comes from @musorka‘s blog. And I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. The sheer quantity of work posted over there on the daily is mind-boggling to me. The quality isn’t always there but there are definitely some real gems mixed in with all the dreck. (And remember, engaging with the dreck isn’t without value. Thinking about what works, what doesn’t and what you would do differently if given the chance is actually a valuable exercise for your creative brain. After all, invariably when you’re making something you get to a point where you feel like you’ve screwed it all up and you have to find a way to keep going and to fix it.)

Source: musorka

Julie van der Vaart – Untitled (2015)

A good percentage of folks reading this likelyknow that almost a month ago (at this writing) Ren Hang–one of the most ‘internet famous’ photographers–took his own life.

Now, I’m not now nor have I ever been a Ren Hang apologist. However, as–ostensibly a fellow photographer–who also suffers from fairly debilitating depression, the knowing in this case has not been exactly easy to process.

What I know of the man behind the work suggests he would vigorously disagree with my characterization of his work as ‘audacious’ and ‘brash’. It seemed very much like he was struggling to feel some sort of connection, any sort of connection (however ephemeral) to the world around him.

And on those grounds, he certainly succeeded–insofar as his photos presented a seamless stylistic imperative of casual confrontation and conceptual extremity.

My gut feeling is that history will likely not be especially kind to his work. And I would be fine with that were it not for a handful of things I think he did that were of crucial importance.

I can’t look at his work and not think of Terry Richardson’s bright strobe with the subject frozen against a milk white background. Hang unquestionably ‘wore’ it better and to more stunning/less predatory effect–harnessing the immediacy of a snapshot and anchoring it to a fine art formalism.

It’s unlikely that he intended to comment on questions of pornography vs art but there’s a way in which his work bucks the trend to which Rebecca Solnit points about how the balance between highlight and shadow is–in pornography–skewed away from the more typical human experience of sexual intimacy.

I have no way of knowing definitively but there are a handful of up-and-coming image makers that seem to have internalized the fetishized conceptualization of technique in Hang’s work and applied it exquisitely to their own work.

I’m thinking here primarily of Ao Kim Ngân [aka yatender], who for my money is one of the best upstarts actively making new work. But also van der Vaart. The hyper-bright, edging on over-exposure vibe is reminiscent of Hang–especially given his exterior, night work. However, the technique folds together seamlessly with the concept. The pose is at once confrontational and demurely modest–hiding as a sort of revelation.

Although I have objections to cutting off body parts with the frame edges and think there are far better ways to preserve anonymity without decapitation–this actually is an exception to that rule. There’s a logical consistency to the presentation here.

The point is I think Hang’s work is a long way from done with the world of fine art photography and the milieu of internet famous image making.

Source: julievandervaart.com

Source unknown – Title unknown (200X)

This appears to be an earlier image from the same sequence as something I posted way back when Acetylene Eyes was just a baby blog. (The similarities run beyond both being taken in a truck cab: that’s the same boy and the pattern stitched into the upholstery is an exact match.)

But there’s other similarities, stylistic overlap. I noted in the early post before #skinnyframebullshit was a fully qualified thing, that the vertical orientation was counter-intuitive given the tableau.

The astute reader will pause here to inquire but aren’t you being disingenuous? You’ve said on a number of occasions that whether the eye scans left to right over the image or top to bottom can be a part of the logic governing the decision between landscape vs portrait orientations?

I have two responses.

  1. You have to distinguish between actual 3D space and how three dimensions are rendered in 2D representation.
  2. I noted that about the previous posted image as well: the top 20% of the above frame and the bottom 10% contributes nothing to the compositional logic. (It’s negative space that doubles down on information that would otherwise be conveyed to the viewer even if it was cropped out.)

Let me expand that first point a bit further: from the standpoint of visual grammar, the image is telling the viewer that it has something to say about elevation. But that isn’t supported by the image. One only sees, what a meter of elevation from the low point of the stitched seam in the lower right almost corner to the halfway up the open passenger side door? (Depth of field, i.e. front to back representation of 3D space in 2D vs top to bottom orientation for the purpose of emphasizing a sense of concern with the relationship of various elevations are not interchangeable.)

Also, whereas I commented that the previous image would benefit from slight shifts in the poses, I think that a horizontal oriented frame would add a narrative denotation to the reading of the image. (Something which is conceptually appropriate given that the question what constitutes narrative is so similar that it runs virtually parallel to questions of the mechanics of eroticism.)

If her right leg were braced against the door frame instead of bent as such, it would open the frame up more. From which point it would be logical to cheat her a little bit further towards the edge of the passenger side bench, reposition the camera with a bit more of a down-tilt so that you can see a bit of the grassy shoulder outside the car door and perhaps something of what he’s doing with his hands–his current position above is hell of awkward.

My point is it’s a reasonably good notion for a image that unfortunately muddies matters when it comes to thoughtful execution.

There are some technical considerations to belabor, too. Gun to my head, I’d say this was shot digitally and desaturated in post. Shutter speed is below 1/30 of a second. My gut says its 1/8th of second given the slight motion blur of her left leg.

I can’t really quibble with the overall exposure across the image. Yet if this is, in fact, digital, then you’d want that highlight contained just inside the upper limits of the histogram.

Then you’d have room to selectively dial things some detail back into the some of the heavily shadowed areas in the frame.

Source: letmedothis.com

Source unknown – Title unknown (201X)

I’m going to attempt to coin a hybrid word: demi-sequitur. (And yes, I realize I could just use medium sequitur but conjugation will always be the part of language learning with which I struggle–and since I’m not in the mood for some snarky classics major (E.D., all classics majors are snarky af), I’m just going to opt not to conjugate and instead invent a hybrid word.

Anyway, if you’ll excuse my coining a hybrid word, Imma get back to this image but first I need to indulge a bit of demi-sequitur exposition.

…

One of the struggles I have with writing is sorting through a constant barrage of information in my head.

It’s not without use to think of it a bit like this. You’re in a store, purchasing a toasted bagel with scallion cream cheese and tomato. The cashier plugs your order into the register and tells you that your total is: $3.87; behind her someone scurries to shove a bagel into one of those toaster ovens with a metal grill conveyor belt.

You open your wallet and realize you only have $3 ones and it’s NYC, so get bent trying to get them to let you charge anything under $5. You turn to your friend and are like, hey, can I borrow a dollar.

But instead of them extracting their wallet and handing you a one or four quarters, they reach into their pocket and pull out a handful of change and throw it directly into your face. It scatters on the counter, shelves containing chewing gum and candy bars.

There’s a long line of people behind you and, the cashier is impatiently waiting for you to pay but you’ve gotta pick all the change up at some point so while it would make more sense to look for zinc plated change as opposed to copper, you just have to get all of it. (Trying to count as you go.)

…

Every moment my senses are not impaired, deranged or otherwise altered feels like trying to count out change from a handful of coins that have been tossed at velocity directly into my face.

A practical example: I was with a friend in a grocery store. We’d gone in to purchase beer. I was carrying a 6 pack, she was carrying a 6 pack. We were standing in the express 12 items or less line. Being in NYC, it was a very small space. You had to be careful to not knock over the snaking lane dividers that keep everyone in an orderly line. The loudspeakers were blaring Maroon 5 or some other intolerable pop fodder. There are people everywhere. Standing, talking on phones, chatting with others. Elbows, glasses, ironic facial hair, colors, textures–all of it registering, demanding focused attention.

My friend started kicking me in the shin. I did my best to keep my voice level but she was offended by my tone. See to her, she felt bored and under stimulated, so she did that to help distract herself. Whereas the kick to my shins was the stimulus that broke the camel’s spine.

…

I flew out to Los Angeles on Feb. 15th.

I love the food and climate in L.A. I detest everything else about the place. But as someone trying to cultivate a patina of legitimacy w/r/t my fine art photographic aspirations, I end up out there a couple times every year.

Also, I have friends there. Two amazing models: Marissa Lynn & Kathleen Truffaut (who I was able to collaborate with), as well as a friend from my time as an undergraduate.

My college friend is having a really difficult time. An ex recently pulled some of the classic cishet male bullshit where he was like I dumped you and my life without isn’t working out how I planned so I’m gonna make you feel like shit to feel better about myself. Also, her beloved pet Boston terrier is having pretty serious health issues.

So the trip was a good bit heavier than I anticipated as far as emotional labor and needing to be responsible/supportive.

The point is when I headed up to Oakland on Feb. 21st, I came down with whatever the fuck upper respiratory BS is going around out there at the moment.

Now–to put forward a crucial piece of information I’ve been withholding–my friend Amandine lives out there. And really: while, yes, I did go to L.A. to see my college friend, eat some of the best food in the damn country and work with amazing models, I mostly went to spend time with Amandine.

I was running a 102 fever when I woke up on Feb. 22nd.

Add to that my office–which wasn’t supposed to contact me during this leg of the trip–blew up my phone because one of our senior analysts thought his personal laptop had been infected with ransomware.

It wasn’t an especially great space to occupy–being extremely ill, being insanely stressed, not to mention anxious about the will-they-or-won’t-they questions with regard to the mutual and insanely complicated feelings between Amandine and I.

…

Confession: I’m growing increasingly put off by–it’s probably fair to say–most of the porn that crosses my Tumblr dash. It’s not that the production value is lacking. (I actually have an upcoming post on how a certain subset of porn displays a fetishization of quality that is both consistent and remarkably aestheticized.

And, yeah full disclosure I’m not super into heteronormative porn. So that means 90% of the stuff crossing my dash isn’t ‘made’ for me.

But things like this just seem repetitive, mechanical and focused on orgasmic release. (I do like that he kisses her after she sucks on him post-orgasm–there is nothing in the world like kissing your partner(s) post coitally and tasting your orgasmic juices mixed with theirs.. the taste is freaking intoxicating.)

On the other hand I do have a backlog of threesome/group sex stuff that I love and have been struggling over how to feature in a contemplative fashion. For example: this gif of three studs masturbating in a triangular form, one who has already orgasmed while a second boy ejaculates with impressive force while the third watches both his friends; this vintage image of an FFM threesome outdoors; this von Trier-esque image that vextape reblogged a while back; a lot of FMM stuff (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), FFM stuff (1, 2, 3). Want FFF? I can point you in the direction of one. MMM? Don’t mind if I do. FMMM, I even have one of those. All female orgy? Aren’t you glad you asked?

…

I feel like once you move beyond the strict binary interpretations of physical intimacy, things automatically become more sensual. I mean that’s my experience, yes. But also, from a strictly pragmatic perspective, it has to. I mean, yeah, if you’re, 22 and having mad group sex, it’s probably cool. You can get off again and again and again without much muss or fuss.

As you get older, your body changes–late 20s are amazing, late 30s–meh. I’m not to my late 40s yet, but yeah… I’m banging on that door and I do not like how things are sounding from behind it.

That means that you learn to become a little like someone who is going with friends to dim sum. You know not to fill up on just one item–you want to try a bit of everything. But you really like this dish and those dumplings, so you over eat a bit but you also get to try everything. It’s about the different tastes/flavors but also a bit of discipline allows you to walk away feeling fully satisfied.

…

So I’m in Oakland. I have a 102 and change fever. I feel like death. My stress and anxiety is through the roof. Everything feels like it’s falling apart and I’m supposed to hang out with Amandine for part of a day so that we can catch up and clear the air.

See Amandine is only the third person in my life who I’ve ever been like I have feelings for you and the person’s response has been anything other than no, run away. She basically said: I feel the same. It scares the crap out of me and I wanted to run away, I even tried, but I can’t; there is too much here that I want to explore. We just need to move slow. This is new for me. I know what I want but I need to figure out how to reconcile what I want with the life I’ve made for myself.

I somehow managed through sheer force of will to be more or less operating at 85% that day. I was still definitely under the weather but I managed it so that she hardly noticed.

We had a fancy breakfast. Talked about her art. How things are going with my suicidal ex. In the process of updating her, I realized for the first time that we’re not taking a break like she’s said–that even if she were willing to discuss all the shit that’s transpired between us that I’m fundamentally unconvinced that what we have is worth the hell it will require walking through for months to work things out. Amandine held my hand while I sat at the table and openly wept; she said, you’ll figure out how to be fine again. It’s going to take a while. Longer than you think. It’s going to be hard. But you won’t have to do it alone this time.

We went for a hike. Saw an egret and snapping turtles. Then had coffee at a snooty cafe in Oakland.

We got ready to part ways. I told her that she was one of the most amazing, kind and radically empathetic people I had ever known and that I was in love with her. She said, I know. I’m just hoping that you know you are all of those things just as much as I am. I said I know. She said: and I love you, too.

I walked her to her car. She hugged me. It was quick, perfunctory. Guarded.

I think she thought I was going to cling to her. And that’s not an inaccurate premonition. I wanted to. But I didn’t. And I think that surprised her. (I can occasionally be self-possessed enough not to shoot myself in the foot several times every day.)

She returned to me and wrapped her arms around me again. She pressed the curve of her midline body mass into mine. Pulling me toward her that were her arms positioned differently, would’ve knocked the wind out of me. I stroked the back of her Guatemalan sack dress, could feel that underneath she wasn’t wearing a bra, just a cotton shift. She held me tighter. I could feel her muscles straining over her bones. As if she was trying to fuse her soul with mine.

She let go and looked at me. Then turned and walked to her car. I said, wait a second. She turned and I made a show of kissing my finger tips and them touched them to her forehead. She giggled, hiding her smile behind her hands and angling her face downward. In that moment, I warned with all the constant influx of information I suffer under, why I couldn’t stop time and memorize every single one of those marvelous laugh lines that wrinkled up her young face like an old newspaper balled up for kindling, spared at the last minute, unfolded and pressed flat against a table top.

…

You honestly deserve a medal if you’ve read this far.

I said I’d get back to the image and I plan to. But I feel like now, I don’t need to explain it to you. I feel if you bothered with all this you’ll understand why when I look at this I can see past it’s short comings: the over exposure, the flatness of space, the fact that the genders presented don’t actually match Amandine or my own.

But it’s profoundly relate-able because I can’t think about it without thinking of how it felt to hold someone like that for the first time in my life.

Source: casanovaserstereise

Mr. Instant Photography – Gorgeous poetic Ginger (2016)

The form of this recalls the Arseni Khamzin’s photo I featured last year–the down tilt of the camera, the balancing between positive and negative space.

I prefer the sharp, 3-D affect of Khamzin’s work but the way the muddy lighting renders the subject above so that it appears his skin tone is actually being leached from his body by the white-white of his surroundings. (I also love the insouciance with which he’s aware of the camera but trying to appear as if it could only be so lucky if he granted it even the most ephemeral of eye contact.)

The model’s pose is in keeping with the sculptural traditional of contrapasto–one leg is weight bearing and rigidly position, the other is more expressively position, whereas the arm one the opposite side from the weight bearing leg is active, the second arm (opposite the non-weight bearing leg) is also less active and more focused on balancing the composition. (Here those traits are reversed as the left hand and right foot are the ‘weight bearing’ anchors and the right arm and left leg are more expressive and distributive of weight.)

There’s also a nice dynamic to the pose, where it seems as if he rolled away so that he’d be more visible to the gaze interrogating him but also at the same time, he’s protecting  his body with his hand across his belly and bracing to potentially have to roll back towards the viewer.

From the standpoint of visual grammar, although I agree that the frame edge can be used in such a way as to imply a continuity of space between what is in the frame and what remains unseen just beyond the edge of the frame, the frame edge is usually inviolable.

The frame edge here is inviolable. Thus with the exception of half of his thumb, all of the fingers on his right hand are removed and his left leg is amputated mid-shin.

To my way of reading this speaks to an intrinsic acknowledgment by the image maker that the subject retains a degree of autonomy despite the photographers imposition of the boundaries of a frame upon the scene.

Source: mrinstantphotography

Santy Mito – Choke de fuerzas… (2016)

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite.  Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong.  We say bread and it means according
to which nation.  French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure.  A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment.  I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can.  Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling.  And maybe not.  When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records.  But what if they
are poems or psalms?  My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton.  My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey.  Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body.  Giraffes are this
desire in the dark.  Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map.  What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

–Jack Gilbert, The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

Source: santymito