Tag: masturbation

Alina Senchuk (goodbyestockholm)

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— La petit mort  2011

It is difficult to speak the truth, for although there is only one truth, it is alive and therefore has a live and changing face.

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— Franz Kafka

Source: Flickr / goodbyestockholm

dirtyberd:

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Four years or so ago I watched The Work of Mark Romanek while tripping balls.

Beyond the a vague recollection of the occurrence, I don’t remember much of it except that the dish soap genie thing near the end of Fiona Apple’s Criminal video struck me as undeniably ejaculatory.

Since then I’ve flirted with making a picture not unlike this one on a number of occasions. But this steals practically my entire playbook with the black and white, flashbulb aesthetic.

Of course, I’d want a wider frame. Granted, this would diminish the apparent force of the seminal spay. A loss more than made up for by the flash freezing the trajectory in a floating, ethereal stasis.

Source: hotpornpics

This is exactlythe sort of thing I wanted to feature when I started Acetylene Eyes—something to aim a one finger salute in the direction of all the endless rehash of explicit imagery with only two criteria: keep the titillating bits visible in the frame and in focus; something with a modicum of consideration for composition, form and content.

As an image maker invested in questions of public vs. private—particularly as they pertain to the politics of graphic nudity and sexual tableau—this image fascinates me.

Its hallucinatory blush is reminiscent of the rotoscoped animation in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly and invokes the feeling of a memory which may have only ever been a dream.

…

During my junior year of college, I was assigned a room in a flat with six other students. I knew not one of them on move-in day. But nine months later, six of us were very close; two in fact, remain, very, very dear friends.

Another dear college friend enjoys describing me as “violently allergic strangers and bullshit;” so it was a bit surprising that I gone on so well with my flat mates.

All I can say by way of explanation is I have never been as comfortable in my own skin as I was sharing space with these people. Virtually everything I know about living in, participating with and fostering a community comes as a result of those nine months—everyone looked out for everyone else in the most simple and touching ways.

Within two weeks, no one locked their doors. Within two months doors were rarely closed and no one really knocked so much as peaked their head inside to ask if it was okay to come in.

One of the many amazing memories I have of this time has the same hypnogogic quality as this image.

It was toward the end of the term. I had come back from my morning class (Russian) to find the flat empty. My intent had been to nap but between the mild hangover from the night before and caffeine that allowed me to drag my ass out of bed in time to make it to class I couldn’t fall asleep.

The thought occurred to me that if I could get myself off, there was a better than average chance I might be able to pass out again. And it was one of those rare times, when as you get started you realize your body is ready and willing but the orgasm you are chasing proves elusive.

My eyes were closed so I didn’t realize Lela in the room until I heard her exclaim: Oh…

I suffered a litany of close calls as a teen but somehow no one had ever caught me in flagrante delicto until that moment. I stopped masturbating but more in the pausing the action instead of the trying to hide what I had been doing. It surprised me that I neither felt horrified or even a little bit ashamed.

I opened my eyes. Lela, all freckles and strawberry blond hair was standing maybe four feet away from me staring at me.

Wow.

Her right hand flew up to hover an inch or so in front of her eyes; her pale hand seeming paler against her reddening face.

Uh, hey, I need to ask you something. Um…could you, you know, definitely finish taking care of this but maybe put on a towel after and come out to the kitchen for a minute?

Instead of backing away room, she merely turned, dropped her hand from her eyes and pulled the door to but not closed behind as if she was just trying not to disturb someone who was sleeping.

I’d assumed I wouldn’t be able to finish but I quickly found my rhythm again and came like gangbusters in less than five minutes.

As soon as I could I slipped on a t-shirt and pajama bottoms.

Lela was sitting on the stool at the breakfast bar, still a little red faced, reading a photocopied packet.

Before I could say anything she had her arms wrapped around me.

There were no apologies because none were needed. No embarrassment or shame. For the first tim in my life just exuberant acceptance.

I inquired what the hug was for and she responded that’s what I came looking for you for in the first place. That and—sheepishly—to see if you’d let me borrow your car so I drop the donated food at the shelters tonight?

Source: newkidsonmycock11

Those who peruse what I write will be aware of how much I loathe fucking gratuitous/illogical use of portrait orientation.

I never tire of calling that bullshit out. But, for the sake of avoiding redundancy and not beating a dead horse on the subject, I am going to henceforth distill these criticisms to a pithy hash tag: #skinnyframebullshit.

#skinnyframebullshit should be applied here. Further, the awkwardness is compounded by the top frame line’s amputate the young woman’s legs. (And if one was inclined toward hair splitting: an argument can be made that with the angle of light it would’ve been preferable to swap the position of her head and feet.)

Even with these shortcomings, I dig this image a lot. Mainly because it dodges the usual questions of subject/object and exhibitionism/voyeurism back loaded into visual depictions of masturbation. It has the sort of masturbation as punk rock/do it yrself sex positive vibe I adore.

Source: veryhot

While I know this is likely a behind-the-scenes production still from one of those ‘feminist’ sites who employ female image makers to work with their models—i.e. Abby Winters and the breathtaking I Feel Myself—I still can’t help but impose a bi-curious-art-student-enlists-lesbian-friend-and-girlcrush-to-masturbate-on-camera-in-their-dorm’s-laundry-room narrative to it. (Lest you think my grip of situational realism is faltering due to excessive porno consumption: I attended a prestigious liberal arts college where that was exactly the sort of thing happening on any given Tuesday.)

And truth be told I asked my fair share of girlcrushes to masturbate on screen in my various student film efforts—more than half agreed with little if any reservations.

Coming from a conservative Xtian high school where boys were expected to be boys interested romantically but not sexually in girls who were girls—wholesome, chaste and asexual—such openness was refreshing but also a little unnerving.

I never actually filmed any of those who agreed to masturbate on camera. Part of it was my own shyness but it was not shyness as a result of shame. (Whether or not I filmed it, I would do just about anything to be permitted to watch one of my friends bring themselves to orgasm.) The truth is, as I have mentioned before: visual depictions of masturbation present a thicket of critical concerns with regard to exhibitionism and voyeurism.

Instead of mirroring, this image employs a surrogate to de-emphasize exhibitionist facets, underscoring the voyeuristic intentionality. A beautiful young brunette leans against a wall while sitting astride a washing machine (which I imagine is mid-spin cycle). Bokeh renders her in blurred focus: her pants pushed down around her shins, her legs and bares knees akimbo, right hand reaching down across her taut stomach, disappearing between her thighs; erect nipples showing through the thin white cotton of her t-shirt and an expression that is a bit of a Mona Lisa smile– somewhere between feigning orgasm and the actual shift where realization dawns that orgasm is imminent.

A young woman—barefoot and clad in a blue sundress with small white polka dots, has climbed on top of the row of washing machines also and monitors her friend with a video camera. Her face is hidden by her long golden hair. She seems thoroughly engaged with her friends experience.

The videographer is in sharper focus than her friend but the sharpest focus is reserved for the foreground. This is fascinating as you essentially have the exhibitionism of the masturbator cancelled out by the videographer’s surrogate voyeur which is subsequently transformed once again into an exhibitionist tableau in turn cancelled out by the depth of field’s inferential reminder to the audience that they are voyeurs.

With that in mind, I must mention that skinny frame contributes NOTHING to the image. Whereas, a landscape orientation would have firmly placed the happenings within a public laundry facility; more fully integrated the lines of molding in the lower left of the frame and the darkening far corner above the videographer’s head into the compositional logic of the image and further emphasized that depth of field by including the foreground washing machine; not to mention, you wouldn’t lose the tail of the blue polka dot dress which would further balance the weight of the masturbators naked right knee.

All things considered this is a goddamn gorgeous image succeeds in its own right but truly shines by what it manages through implication. Less is more, after all (and always).

On the list of things I’m not into hentai ranks just below the term alpha male used in any non-zoological context and slightly above asparagus—seriously those mini-pine tree-looking shits embody the worst aspects of celery and olives.

Although it’s part of a tendency toward exploiting gender bending for extreme and kink potential, this image gets me very hot and bothered.

The style of hair, clothing, shoes, breast and body language all suggest a teenaged female bodied individual. Yet, this teenage girl is stroking an erect penis protruding from between her legs. She has already come everywhere but still propulsive semen spews out of her.

As I do not even pretend to read Japanese, the context of the scene is lost on me. However, I think its functions better that way—at least for me. I imagine this girl is hearing her older brother fucking his girlfriend and the thought of what the bodies meeting is too much for her to take so she squats, hikes up her nightgown and begins to masturbate.

And while certainly such transgressive impetus appeals to me, also there is the pleasure she clearly derives from her behavior—which seems much more than simple auditory voyeurism.

I can’t help thinking she is not fantasizing about the act of sexual intercourse or having sex with the participants she is overhearing en flagrante delicto. No, it seems as if she is imagining someone claiming her body with such reckless abandon.

chichispalabanda:

Artfully depicting masturbation is not an easy feat.

The act is private, sequestered. Thus, the question of how one came to be able to witness such goings on becomes a central—is it voyeurism, exhibitionism or a bit of both?

The more voyeuristic the image, the less intentional it appears and the more it relies upon the reputation of the image maker to supplement its ‘artistic’ merit.

The more exhibitionist the image, the less artful it appears. Exhibitionism being rooted in self-consciousness; the efficacy of the work of art being so frequently measured on its ability to dissolve notions of self and other.

These clips of a larger piece suggest an altogether ingenuous way of subverting this dichotomy: fuck with the distinction between subject and object. What’s the easiest way to do that? Point the camera at a mirror. (And I do not mean any of this teen-girl-shooting-her-reflection-in-the-bathroom-mirror Tumblr noise. I fucking HATE that shit!)

Now, I will not for a second argue that she is unaware of the camera—I am almost certain she is. But is she looking at it or looking at herself in the mirror? This becomes about the spectator watching her watch herself cause and experience her own pleasure.

For me it also has the effect of focusing me on her growing arousal—which while certainly mirroring my own is continually refocused on hers.

Source: tiendadeabarrotes.blogspot.com

Nan Goldin Bobby Masturbating 1980

For all the shit that gets thrown at Nan Goldin very little sticks.

Initially, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency seemed to me random, sloppy and enormously irresponsible. Six years later, I am beginning to see my criticism reflected more of my own insecurities than any true response to the work.

What I missed then, I think, was that the “glamorous, ambition-fueled despair” permeating these images was not a celebratory endorsement of a high risk lifestyle so much as unflinching reportage.

That these images originated in a time and place regularly mythologized for the filth and depravity it dealt in and how that filth inspired a motherfucking rock music renaissance muddle matters further.

As I see it the distinction between exploitation and providing a ‘view from the ground’ of an extremely outlying experience is as slippery as it is crucial.

For example: this image with its ontological title is all lurid flash bulb and exposed sweating skin—very fucking rock and roll. A boy lit up, frozen in the act of massaging his testicles with his left hand and stroking his erection with his right.

It’s hard to tell if he’s on drugs. Although with his heavy lidded eyes, if your starting point is looking for exploitation it is easy to think that Goldin took a junky, propped him up and snapped his picture.

Does the image read like that? I don’t think so.

It seems more likely that Nan and Bobby stayed in the same squalid Lower East Side squat. Late one over hot night, feeling extremely horny he slipped away to find a dark corner to get himself off where Goldin roaming around with her camera like always found him.

And while normal folk make an attempt to hide themselves when they are caught– just as the encroaching party averts there eyes, you are forgetting these aren’t normal folk. Both Nan and Bobby suffer from “ambition fueled-despair”.

I know something of this disease. And when you meet another who understands what it is like to be so trapped, you don’t look away. We may lower our gaze– knowing that the other will watch or they won’t. Either way they reserve their judgment because they are deeply aware that if the situation were reversed there is no doubt of reciprocity.