Generally–for me–photo manipulation is a turn-off.
It’s not that I find it inherently dishonest or anything like that–in fact, I find the conceptual implications of photo manipulation super intriguing; it’s the fact that it is so rarely attempted by someone with any real sort of well developed craft.
Although, Borsi’s Photoshop approach is almost certainly too clean and minimal for it’s own good–only an inept idiot would dispute that she’s got some goddamn mean fucking chops.
I’d be absolutely in love with this based solely on the interplay of color. (In that regard, it reminds me of Amanda Jasnowski; while avoiding Jasnowski’s tendency to favor high key lighting as a means of compressing shadow density.)
And I’m intrigued by the process. Yes, the orange heat blur is not consistent given the flames. However, there’s no way to get that completely 120% correct, so she adds just enough to sell the drama and then focuses on secondary details. (The subtle bluer around the right shoulder and the careful way the light given off by the flames cast on the body.)
But what floors me is what I see as one of the conceptual notions underlying the image: the burning vegetation recalls the shape of the lungs–and presumably having your lungs on fire is a pretty serious affliction.
Yet, with this degree of Photoshop mastery, Borsi could have made it look as if these were her lungs. She decidedly doesn’t. They appear outside the body.
And I begin to view this as a comment on how damaging it is to effectively set women on fire simply because society has sexualized female bodies.
What attracts me to the work–its restless + vital physicality as well as the way the images I like thrum with a dreamlike unbounded anarchic togetherness–stems directly from party line criticism: the fuel of charmed youth, the match of absented consequences.
Plus, the work is goddamn pretty as you please; and when you tall that with it’s unmediated immediacy–so rarely seen in galleries–and it’s cleary how + why McGinley became the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney.
What, to me, is off putting is the artist’s reliance on goosing the viewer’s reptile brain. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that McGinley is conceptually vacuous–but his work lacks anything even remotely resembling the conceptual sophistication of his predecessors (i.e. Nan Goldin + Larry Clark).
In the same breath, though, I can’t think of another imagemaker who so fairly divides his focus between male bodied and female bodied subjects. And that’s not nothing. Especially, given his impressive ability to unify contrived naturalism with an ultimately hollow aesthetics that still has the capacity to resonate deeply with the viewer.
The color of the wall is highly complimentary to her skin and emphasizing both the translucent white and indigo pattern in her wonderful bra as well as the reddened impressions of the straps on her back.
It reminded me of a similar image of marks left by a bra but more than that it reminded me of a pose figuring prominently in perhaps the second most transcendent sexual experiences of my life.
Acetylene Eyes 