Tag: masturbation

Source unknown – Title unknown (201X)

I think the point of what’s being depicted here is arguably better presented given the following reframing:

You lose the distraction of the handles on the bathroom cabinets, power outlets and although I do love the angle of the top of her foot perched on top of the counter, the angle of it and the way it aligns with that brighter area from the window behind her (and the way that lines up in the original with the side of the window) is super distracting.

You are losing the view of her bum but for me what appeals to me is what happening with her face. I’d have likely framed it so that the inner thigh of her left leg dictated the left frame edge. But you’d have needed either a slight shift in the camera position or a different lens to pull that off. (I could’ve just cropped it but I did make an effort to preserver the original aspect ratio.)

Honestly, I’m much more intrigued by what her arm is doing in the mirror than I am by actually seeing-not-seeing what she’s doing with her fingers. (That sudden gasp/jaw drop at the loop point is tres adorbs.)

Ethan James Green – Connor Wall for Arena Homme+ (2016)

Green started as a fashion model but he eventually moved from in front of the camera to behind it.

I can think of several others who have followed a similar trajectory: Ellen von Unwerth and Lina Scheynius, specifically. What’s interesting about those two names is that I actually mostly dig both their stuff–because I adopt a particularly dim view when it comes to self-proclaimed fashion photographers. (Looking at trash like Helmut Newton; also, even though Annie Liebovitz calls herself a portraitist, her practice is thoroughly rooted in practicum and I have a strident dislike for both her and her work.)

But I feel like folks who start as models and then transition to roles as photographers and image makers, I feel like they are more inclined to bring clearly negotiated and carefully realized considerations about the nature and purpose of photographs and images to bear in their work. (It’s kind of analogous to a contention I’ve had for years–namely: if you put a dancer, i.e. someone who learns choreography and performs piece focused on notions of contemporary movement, into a room with a digital image maker and introduce a the topic of interrogating conceptual art; the dancer will crush the image maker at a rate which would render the occasional triumph of the image maker as statistically inconsequential.)

What former models bring is not so much a more organic sense of pose and presentation–although that is definitely the case with Green’s image of Connor Wall. Mostly there’s this emphasis on the physicality of the body. The one hand on the splurtting hose the other down his boxer briefs is a clever visual pun. But really that’s set dressing.

The hose explains the wet skin. The frame is composed in such a way that the light grey of the skin of Wall’s upper body stands out in a pronounced fashion–as does the water emanating from the hose. (A sort of emphasis speaking to the constant inconstancy of physical form.)

I don’t think this is perfect. Wall’s eyes are too deeply set and the way they just sit there like slitted event horizons and the way the top and left side of his head have no separation between the background stand at odds with everything else. Still, I am far more interested in this in 99.2% of fashion photography.

Source: akaixab

Eric and Chris Phillips – Porn Resistance | Berlin for Pornceptual (2016)

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.
                   —Duane Michals

Nudity is an art.
Besides, art is only nudity. There’s no more art, only too much
civilization. Art is barbarious. Art is loneliness. Nothingness is
perfect nudity.
                   —Raúl Ruiz

Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.
                   —Andy Warhol

[↖] Jean-Baptiste Huong – Untitled (201X); [↗] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↑] Source unknown – Title unknown feat. Victoria Daniels (201X); [←] @graveyrdslut – Title unknown (2017); [→] Source unknown – Title unknown (2013); [+] Erika Lust – XConfessions Vol. 4: A Talk Too Dirty feat. Poppy Cox & Dean Van Damme (2015); [↙] Abby Winters – Title unknown (2005); [↘] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↓] Fabio Baroli – Sujeito da Transgressão #4 (2011)

Follow the thread.

@coffeemugcc – Untitled (2017)

An argument that I’ve made multiple times through this project is that I don’t think there’s every any reason to decapitate someone. This goes triple for folks making work where they want to remain anonymous–it’s really just lazy and sloppy for you to position yourself with your head just beyond the edge of the frame. It limits what you can do compositionally and just signals a lack of willingness to do some planning and or problem solving.

I’ve forward the idea of excising faces of folks who want to remain anonymous–a la Bellocq’s Jesuit brother.

This was before I spent any time on Instagram–or, as I insist the kids are calling it The ‘Gram. The Gaussian blur over nipples and genitals is incredibly distracting and detracts enormously from the images. Thus: I will concede that I didn’t think this all the way through. Short of the effect that liquefy effect that @lisakimberly uses so fantastically, masking faces in post is probably not the best approach.

Point being: it’s good to have some kind of idea what you are going to do with an image after you make it. Case in point: the image above.

Ostensibly it’s the picture of a young woman, hands covered in papaya juices with her finger disappearing into the soft core of the ripe fruit. It brings to mind both masturbation and lesbian fucking.

It’s also 100% compliant with The ‘Gram’s standards. It’s arguably that the depth of field would’ve rendered the fact that the model is naked from the mid-riff down but the right little finger protrudes in such a way as to obfuscate any sort of consideration that the creator is trying to sneak something by the censors.

And really that’s what I should be emphasizing instead of completely poopoing any one strategy for addressing concerns over what to show, what to hide and what to excise–there’s almost always a better way to do something than what first occurs to you. It’s always wise to know your own limits as well as the limits of those you work with as well as the forums where you disseminate work.

This does just that and does it masterfully.

image

[↑] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↖] Zishy – Arya and Bailey Room Mates (2016); [↗] X-Art – Raw Passion (2016); [+] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [←] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [→] Source unknown –  Title unknown (201X); [-] Source unknown – Title unknown (2015); [↙] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↘] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↓] Nubile Films – Title unknown (201X)

Follow the thread: GIF Exception Edition

Anja Gea Sladič – Title unknown (2013)

I can’t say I’m all that into Anja Gea Sladič‘s work but this is a magnificent photograph.

This is ostensibly a photo of someone with a penis masturbating. However–and I am not sure if it’s by design or because my brain is a little bit funky, but it exists as sort of a pareidolia for me; I don’t first see it as someone masturbating or even as a flower (which is actually what I thought it was at second glance), I see it–at least at first–as like one of those scenes from a Terrence Malick project where the characters are passionately and newly in love and they sensually embrace each other in the cream white light transmitted through windows in archetypal middle American single family homes.

The masculine presenting protagonist stands behind the feminine presenting love interest and they kiss and caress and at some point, hands touch her neck and circle under her chin as she’s plied slightly backwards and positioned at the best possible angle for a languid and longing kiss given the angle of the light, etc.

This clearly isn’t a chin–it’s genitalia… but for some reason I have to think of it in terms of a sensual embrace (which isn’t wrong) and as something flower-like before I can see what it is.

It’s maybe not always the best strategy to present the viewer with something it takes them a minute to parse–after all: getting someone to linger over work, to engage and think about what they are seeing is one of the prerequisites of art. This is an instance where I feel the multiplicity of interpretations actually contribute substantively to what is so effective about this piece.

Source: radarcollective.com