Tag: masturbation

Source Unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

Although I am not especially into retro/vintage porn thing, I do kind of dig that this image was snapped, printed and published in a magazine that someone held onto long enough to scan and upload it in the Internet age. (Not to mention the way the center fold presents here resembles a similar sort of photo stitching used by someone like Accra Shepp.)

While from an art historical standpoint, it’s enormously problematic to suggest that part of what determines whether something is capital-A Art is survival–how many brilliant works have we already lost because the author wasn’t a white cis man?

Yet, there is something to be said for the test of time. This is an imperfect image–I really can’t overlook the way her legs have been amputated by the frame lines render her legs perpetually spread toward the viewer–not unlike a dead butterfly pinned through the thorax to felt under glass.

There are several allowances that while they certainly don’t mitigate the objectification, they do perhaps soften it: the young woman eschews eye contact with the camera, she’s wearing both a top (ostensibly her own, instead of a wardrobe piece), earrings and a watch; lastly, the three different textures of the back of the couch, the cushions and the carpet are sumptuously rendered in nearly synesthetic detail.

It seems as if the direction she’s been given is that she’s beginning to masturbate. As much as one can accurately judge an expression based on a fraction of a seconds representation of it, she seems very much on board with the notion; however, the contrivance of her pose and self-consciousness directly address the inherent on-your-mark’s-get-set-go! approach that underlies the majority of heteronormative porn.

I feel like if this wasn’t a porn shoot and the goal wasn’t based on a vague erotic notion of depiction of orgasmic paroxysm as narrative denouement, then this image–if it had been content to wait patiently and adopt a wider, less implicitly violent/objectifying frame–could’ve been pornographic art instead of artfully depicted porn.

It strikes me that current international literary cause célèbre Elena Ferrante (and feminist enfant terrible) is addressing something on a similar track when she points out in a recent interview:

Yes,
I hold that male colonization of our imaginations—a calamity while ever
we were unable to give shape to our difference—is, today, a strength.
We know everything about the male symbol system; they, for the most
part, know nothing
about ours, above all about how it has been restructured by the blows
the world has dealt us. What’s more, they are not even curious, indeed
they recognize us only from within their system.

Source: partialboner

I Feel Myself – literotic featuring Georgiana (20XX)

I am reasonably certain this hails from I Feel Myself–the lighting and overhead cam setup are all in keeping with their studio stuff. (If so then the gif has been desaturated and cropped into some #skinnyframebullshit, explaining why neither Google image search or Tin Eye can source it.)

And I’ll have you know that I really did try to practice due diligence by browsing through the first couple of pages of the studio section, but I am impoverished at present and the urge to just break down and subscribe to the site was so strong that I had to X out of the tab before I got myself into trouble by spending money I don’t have.

EDIT: A thousand thanks to wyyoh for sourcing both original and the progenitor of this particular gif.

Perhaps I’ve said it before but given an endless supply of energy and time, I’d run a blog separate from this one focusing solely on the politics of depicting masturbation. There’s a billion reasons I’m so interested in the topic–both related to my own photographic practice as well as my personal experience of sexuality. But if I had to put it in a simple and direct way, I’d probably spout something like: if the purpose of porn is to motivate masturbation, then imagery featuring masturbation is really one of the few things that actually functions in my case the way porn should.

But this image–despite being cropped and desaturated (two things I go out of my way to eliminate from my curation–really effing resonates with me. Yeah, it’s partly that I’m a nerd and a bookworm. So I can totally relate to laying there reading and removing undergarments in nearly an identical fashion to this. But I love how although this is unequivocally performative, it’s unselfconscious. The book and not the voyeur are the motivation.

It’s that last bit that I relate to with such a fierceness. Also, in keeping with the understanding that gender identity and sexual orientation are not necessarily concomitant, the feeling of this pretty much nails how I would foolishly hope people interpret my sexuality and gender identity in a vacuum. (As far as how I’d hope to be seen by a lover, it would be pretty much exactly like the lady on the bottom in this image.)

No wonder I’m terminally single…

Source: littlegirlvoice

Source unknown – Title Unknown (20XX)

I’ve been staring at this for an hour or so trying to untangle why–despite being a shitty image–it resonates with me fucking seismically.

Yeah, I totally get the essence of it. I distinctly remember the feeling of being so aroused that it was painful and my single all-consuming thought being alleviating some of that tension.

And this nails a sort of visual distillation of that experience. But it also reminds me of that line: youth is wasted on the young. I’ve always thought of that as a sort of vampiric sentiment; you know: if only they could figure out a way to bottle that feeling of urgent adolescence, all the things I could do with what I know now!

All the while there are days I’ll not crawl out of bed all day and spend those hours wishing I had a time machine and I could go back and find myself at 19 and have just a few minutes to explain how the fear comes on its own. Don’t borrow it ahead of time, don’t wait on it. Just step out into the void and let yourself fall. Because there’s only falling. It’s not ours but it’s all we’ll ever get.

But I’m not sure I’d listen. Not sure I’d even know how to talk to the myself of so many years ago. And I think if I went back to me at 13, maybe then I’d know what to say. But what could I say: be less afraid to make mistakes because it’s not the mistakes it’s how you respond to them that will define the boundary between who you are and who you want to become.

It all comes down to the simple fact that although it does it shabbily and with less technical acumen that I prefer…this image’s raison d’etre exists in the boundary between where my work is as a photographer and where I want it to go.

The feeling underlying it has something to do with they way I always mishear that Neutral Milk Hotel line as: the miracle of their dark thing.

As has been said: Light is easy to love. Show me your darkness.

And the angles sing: How? What is the appropriate way? I’m trying. I’m trying and failing and falling, always falling.

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.)

Andre-O – Untitled (2013)

I’m usually super skittish when it comes to images which amputate, decapitate or otherwise maim bodies in the imposition of a frame on a scene.

What makes me uncomfortable is the history of using the frame to decontextualize. A body in space becomes disembodied by way of what is included vs what is excluded. You have a veritable litany of images wherein bodies are essentialized to a metonymy–where a part becomes an objective referent intended to represent the whole.

My eyes practically bleed from the repetition of images wherein the autonomy of the subject is de-emphasized as a result of the simple fact that his/her/zir is rendered immobile by the removal of feet, legs.

I admit amputation isn’t always dehumanizing/violent; however, I consider an image that manages it is the exception that proves the rule. (Decapitation is. Always. Do not cut your subjects head off at the neck. Ever. There are literally ten thousand other (more creative ways) to preserve anonymity.)

This image doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’m rather fond of it–surprising given how fucking irredeemably terrible the rest of the image makers work is.

What makes me okay with this image–I think–is the relationship of her right knee to the lower left frame edge in tandem with the fact that she is leaning into the focal plane with her left shoulder and her head is counter balancing away from the camera. (Here I’m okay with the partial decapitation because it fits logically within the composition. Further, the exaggerated lulling of her head is more than a little reminiscent of this study of Bernini’s masterpiece Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.)

I’m doubtful she’s actually masturbating but unlike many other O-faced imagistic insinuations of similar ilk, the dynamics of motion are consistent enough that she could be.

Source: ahtommy

April-Lea Hutchinson – Untitled (2012)

Underlying Hutchinson’s work is a visual equivalent of the restless energy which motivates a lion to pace back and forth behind the bars.

There’s a sense that she shares a strong connection with those she photographs. I don’t know anyone who manages to capture Tanya Dakin in such an assured and sultry state– bearing in mind that by the word ‘sultry’ I mean it in much the fashion as my dear friend who was born and raised in the deep south and always tells me that southern ladies never sweat, the merely become increasingly sultry. (Of course, she said this as she was visible sweating through her linen dress…but her point was well taken.)

She also manages to summon an affected coyness from Johanna Stickland that you never see anywhere else in either of their respective work.

It’s interesting that she happens to be close friends with both. As if the history of mutual understanding that fostered the relationship, provides a basis wherein either party is comfortable trying on and shedding whatever roles or perception of self seem to fit in the moment without judgment or consequences.

And that freedom in the moment, seems to be an effective tool in work that is consistently and unapologetically erotic.

X-Art – My Best Friend’s Boyfriend feat. Katka and Mikah  (2011)

There are like a fucking million and half things I don’t like about this scene. Let’s start with the fact that it typifies the heteronormative porn trope that all women are bisexual and the cisgender male gets to reap the benefits. (And that’s not to shame any sort of bisexual women who have negotiated consensual best girlfriend sharing with their boyfriend arrangements–I say more power to y’all.)

I don’t like the implicit assumption and the subsequent straight cismale entitlement is particularly intolerable.

Honestly, those more social justice oriented objections get the volume turned way the fuck down on them–at least in this gif, less so in the full scene–because I’m so fucking captivated by the reverence with which Katka watches Mikah and her open and unselfconscious masturbatory response. (I think that’s part of the attraction I have to group sex scenarios, the notion of being in a safe space where you are invited to contribute your own individual sexual expression in a fully consensual and accepting environment is a big part of why I bother with this blog–as it allows me to express thoughts and facets of my identity for which there is no outlet in my life AFK.)

I know it’s staged in such a way that she’s splayed out for the benefit of the stud and the traditional male gaze but her authenticity subverts all that–at least for me.