Tag: male nudes

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

From a technical standpoint this image is garbage. There’s seemingly not logic for the composition, the way the guy in the background is decapitated, the guy being fellated’s left arm stretching awkwardly out of frame and then the bend of the elbow of the boy in the foreground could’ve been used to frame the sex act if he’d shifted his arms back and to frame right ever so slightly while sliding maybe a half inch toward frame right at the same time.

It is not, however, an uninteresting image. I really want the camera moved back and two the left about two feet; along with a shallower depth of field that instead of focusing on the boy sucking dick, the focus is instead on the way the guy in the mid-ground is looking back at the person whose hand he’s holding.

Nicholas Nixon – Y.A., J.S., Vevey, Switzerland (2000)

Viewing Nixon’s work I am reminded of Emmet Gowin. Both share an interest in portraiture and more-or-less abstracted landscapes.

I prefer Nixon’s trajectory more–as he’s pursued both tracks over the course of his career; whereas Gowin has all but stopped making portraits.

However, even though Nixon has made more consistently engaging work–it’s never quite managed to invoke the same intense and simple clarity as Gowin’s pre-aerial photography work.

The above frame is actually emblematic of what frustrates me about Nixon. He’s using a large format camera. Awesome. I totally support that and if I could afford to, I’d only shoot large format (although I prefer 4×5 over 8×10 because beyond a point, dragging large, heavy equipment around is a turn off). And I really like the way it toes the line with regard to a degree of gender ambiguity. (It took me almost 30 seconds to note the protruding scrotum of the little spoon.)

I just don’t think that ambiguity actually balances out against the lack of broader contextual clues as far as the setting. Nixon uses standardized naming conventions when titling his work. A brief description of what is pictures, where the photo was taken and the year it was produced. With much of the rest of his work it doesn’t bother me. (The tact is–after all–endemic in fine art photography.)

Here though, it reads like an effort to activate the work in a way that the purely visual does not.

Yet, then there’s the broader context of the work within which this photograph coexists–a project documenting amorous couples. This resonates strongly with the ambiguity of gender in the presentation. And while I don’t think it has the immediacy or empathy of other images in the same series it is nice to see effort made to represent the act of love as non-hetero exclusive.

Soapstones – foto para el nº de abril de 192 mag (2013)

I spend a lot of time thinking about the impetus for nudity in image making.

The easy answer is who doesn’t like looking at naked folks?

I think that’s a lazy and knee jerk explanation.

However, short of equally facile justifications (i.e. figure studies, ‘timelessness’ or porn), there’s precious few image makers who fixate on naked people and who also offer some sort of implicit notion of why the people in their images aren’t clothed.

Consider someone like Mona Kuhn who works primarily in nudist resorts skirting the Mediterranean. Or Traci Matlock, whose work when it involves nudity feels a little like the photographer is functioning like the person at a party who suggests everyone join in a game of strip poker and as soon as they’ve achieved near universal agreement, strips down before the game even starts to demonstrate a commitment to the journey and not the destination.

I have no idea who this Soapstones is–beyond that the person responsible for the photographs most likely uses male pronouns in self-identifying and seems to hail from Mexico.

The above probably isn’t the best image to illustrate my point about his work because it’s very staged and there’s a feeling that the two guys in the image probably weren’t already naked ahead of preparing to take it.

However, that’s the exception to the rule. Generally, you get the feeling that the image maker was less intrested in nudes as a subject and more interested in documenting the hijinks of his friends and acquaintances. But his friends and acquaintances are close knit enough that expectations for social propriety take a back seat to fully inhabiting the moment.

Source: soapstones

Source unknown – Title unknown (2009)

The above is an edit from a larger original image:

Apologies for the pixelation, but I can’t find the original so I had to screen cap the TinEye results.

This is sort of the opposite of my usual claim that less is more. The edit–although thoughtful for emphasizing the elbow, arm and side of the boys body as a window and presenting stylized skin tone as well as focusing attention onto the green yellow palate–is ultimately less engaging than the original.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

I could comment on this isn’t necessarily a good picture but at least the depth of field softejs in both the foreground and background.But mostly I have been sleeping like shit for the last week and am not exactly in a frame of mind conducive to critical/analytical writing. So I’m just leaving this here because I think it’s hot as fuck.

Source unknown – Title unknown (20XX)

When ever someone tells me: you write well. I always kind of look around with an expression like: I do?

It’s not that my grammar is atrocious–I made it through to my senior year in high school without ever being taught anything about the mechanics of writing. (My senior AP English teacher tried but eventually gave up and instead taught me how to hear something wrong in a sentence–which doesn’t really help as I am too impatient too go back and read 90% of what I write out loud after I finish it.)

But, writing is actually a painful process for me. I don’t particularly care for it but my soul demands it. What finds its way out onto the paper is usually such a poor approximation of the thoughts I struggle to fit to words.

The reason I mention all this is because for all my awkwardness and social phobias, I’m more comfortable with gestures–specifically using touch as a means of bridging the gaps between words and thought.

A hand placed on an arm in an unpremeditated way can have the effect that stylists will tell you saying the name of the person to whom you are writing can have in fomenting intimacy.

A hug can been domineering, as a means of trying to draw someone out of an emotional morass, and (counter-intuitively) a way of giving yourself permission to let go of someone.

Meeting others who speak this language of–for lack of a better term–gestures, is rare. They are always fighting to convey something of the immense silences of being a person who has lost full access to their first language and instead always fumbles for the almost right words in a faulty second tongue.

I love this .gif because of the way his lips twist at the most sensitive spot. The way the coating of saliva on the cock glistens. But most of all I have the way the stroking hand says all at once: “what you are doing to me feels divine” and “your skin is beautiful and soft” and “every part of you belongs to me”.

:::shivers:::

Source unknown – Title unknown (200X)

Netflix’s Sense8 was renewed yesterday–the shared fictional birthdate of the series eight protagonists.

I’m not sure why I gave it a chance. The reviews were middling at best and I already have arguably too full a plate of shows that I follow with something not unlike religious devotion.

And truthfully, I spent the first three episodes frustrated and highly critical of the proceedings. But something shifted right around the 4 Non Blondes full cluster sing-along–I found myself weeping uncontrollably.

It’s not a perfect show but it is in my opinion a great one for all the ways it’s daring to challenge the conventions of what we should expect from entertainment.

One of the things that it manages–one thing which despite some of the notably sexist conventions of say the Matrix–is to push the Wachowskis’ tendency for inclusive diversity in casting to a heretofore never realized extreme. But beyond that, there’s a decidedly queer bias to the program. Virtually all the sex is either group sex or queer sex.

The image above reminds me of one of literally hundreds of scenes that have subsequently become stuck like a splinter in my mind. In it two gay characters, begin to make out. Things escalate rapidly and they forget that there dear female friend is watching them. She slides her hand down her stomach and into her bikini, beginning to masturbate while watching her friends fuck.

Under the direction of less attentive storytellers, it would have easily seemed creepy or inappropriate. But what shines through the scene is a respect for both an honest, unguarded personal expression and respect arising from deep connection and understanding of the boundaries of others.

It’s that feeling that I’m frequently trying to channel through this project. I think I fail more than I succeed. But I do hope that sometimes you feel it, too.

And truthfully, although I know it’s just a silly sci-fi show…Sense8 does make me feel marginally less abandonded and alone. I think that’s one of the reasons I cried when I found out it was renewed. Because I desperately need more Riley, Sun,  Lido, Nomi, Capheus, Kala, Will, and Wolfgang in my life.

More fabulously open and forward thinking depictions of queer sex are just a stellar fringe benefit.

Source: ouledsoltane

fotocracker – two young men in bed (2015)

This is waaay overexposed–note the highlight at top center is indistinguishable from the white frame. Also, again–intermittently–along the upper right edge.

Same thing with the man kneeling on the bed–his skin is effectively three tones–shadow with no detail, overexposed with minimal detail and overexposed.

It’s a clumsy visual metaphor–shadow becoming light; probably due to the use of a high contrast Polaroid stock. (Although, I very much dig the mussed sheets being the only part of the frame with any trace of mid-tones–another visual metaphor and one that actually functions.),

As dynamic a sight as the the lad’s erection appears, I feel that the extreme contrast detracts from the enthralling composition. I mean ditch the painting on the brick wall and offer a more balanced exposure and this would be a world class photograph.

Which is not to say I don’t like it as it is–I’m just interested in the texture of the scene and the aesthetically wondrous hard-on and this prioritizes the latter over the former.

Source: fotocracker

Tony Patrioli – Title Unknown (19XX)

It’s not the first thing I notice so much as the fourth or fifth, but this photo was almost without a doubt taken in the same area where act one of Antonioni’s beautifully shot L’Avventura unfolds.

I say “not the first thing” because I have all kinds of complicated feels about this and I am not entirely sure how to convey them. (That’s not entirely true… it’s more I can’t seem to work up the courage to put it all into words would could potentially be turned against me.)

Part of these feelings relate to my suspicion this was likely made in the mid-70s when Patrioli was fixated with shooting single, hetero, cis-boys who weren’t opposed to playing along with the photographer’s homoerotic vision.

It’s a sloppy conceit–and I say that as someone convinced that it’s just barely on the grey side of immoral to ask someone to enact something in front of a camera that they wouldn’t also willing ask of you were the roles reversed; but the resulting trilateral tension is fascinating: the homosexual photographer having straight boys play at being gay, the straight boys who aren’t DTF but who don’t mind going along for the ride and the audience who subsequently  can’t take either party quite at their word.

The premo genderfuckery appeals to me. I mean really, really, really, really, really (that’s five really’s) appeals to me. But there’s also the likely unintended side-effect of decoupling physical arousal from sexual ideation. That’s the part I don’t know how to talk about…

I’m mostly opposed to the metaphor wherein sexuality is equated with hunger–that path skirts a little too close to notions of privation and entitlement. But I am willing to go so far as to say that there is at least a correlation insofar as if I say that I’m hungry, I’m asking not because I expect the person with whom I am conferring to feed me or even that their hungry. It’s because I’m fucking hungry and I need to do something about that shit, pronto and I know that I’m not the only one who is capable of experiencing hunger.

Source: jihelle