Dmitry Chapala – Title unknown (201X)
I like the idea here. Porting body rituals undertaken in private into a public setting is always going to be something that gooses me.
The problem is: this is almost certainly ripping off an incontrovertibly better image–this photo by Igor Mukhin.
Plus the execution is sloppy as fuck. There is flat out no goddamn reason this image should’ve ever been anything other than horizontally oriented. It’s some offensively egregious #skinnyframebullshit.
Pierrine, waiting in the woods
Canon AE1 & Kodak TRI-X 400
(expired film from 1969, found on a flea market)
I’m a fan of Chill’s work. So much so that a bit over a year ago, I interviewed him.
He continues to do breathtaking things with color. (This recent image is not only one of my favorite of his, it’s an exceptional example of color as intrinsic to both composition and legibility of the image.)
But I wanted to take a minute to draw special attention to the above image. Consider the parenthetical note about how this image was made on 46 year old analogue film. Looks good, no? A bit grainy but Tri-X has always been super grainy. (I dig how the focus is ever so slightly behind Pierrine. Lovely.)
Here’s the thing: even expired B&W film renders better results than digital. Yeah, yeah. You can get ‘passable’ B&W if your camera allows you to shoot in monochrome natively–if you are shooting in color and then desturating in post, it’s my humble opinion you have no business anywhere near B&W.
The reason B&W film will always be the only way of shooting monochrome is simply this: digital’s Achilles’ heel is that it lacks the depth of black that analog provides. Film renders a depth of black exceeding what can be read by the human eye. But, operating off what the human eye can interpret, given the existing digital frame work, the math is something on a scale of given 0-255 as a range of black, you’d need a theoretical bit depth of 256 to get you to within spitting distance of what the human eye sees. Digital flat out wont scale to anywhere near that level… (And for the record, I realize I’m playing fast and loose with science here; this example is intended to be descriptive not empirical.)
let me give you a taste
I posted an image featuring this pair back in early December.
It’s cropped and the colors were mangled to hell—can someone explain to me Tumblr’s pervasive affection for the offset slider? I continue to dig that image and stand by my original comments.
Thus I was excited to happen upon another image featuring the same pair even if it was clear although the colors were better the composition was decidedly less inspired. Still, I have do have a soft spot for erotic imagery that leaves the man more exposed than the woman.
Then I noticed the boy’s expression which reads to me as a sort of haughty bitch-why-aren’t-you-deep-throating-my-shit-already pout. Uh, hello Fuckwit. She has her soft, warm tongue on the most sensitive part of your anatomy. Please die. Now.
I should have left it at that. But no, I am trying to be a more thorough curator. I just had to query TinEye.
And le sigh, it’s true the images are part of a series. It’s hosted on BeataPorn. (There’s a FREE PREVIEW of the series but probably unnecessary spoiler: it’s the same old eyes-bleeding-from-uninspired-repetition-of-the-routinzed-hetero-normative suck-and-fuck charade.)
Ravens (54 of 72) by Najva Sol
Sol’s website proclaims: “Life is NSFW.”
Brilliant put, slogan as a dialectic tool: a widely held, seldom considered thesis (i.e. facets of life are deemed appropriate for consideration by workers performing their day-to-day functions) as well as the antithesis (i.e. the messy exigencies of living may be so cleanly bifurcated is absurd/fascist).
At first blush, the work suggests an uncomplicated simplicity—a muddy, lo-fi admixture of reportage and editorial imagery.
Yet, what keeps surprising me is the degree to which her images operate in much the same fashion as her slogan: saying and unsaying—in circles, in cycles. There is something immensely appealing in her unflinching willingness to allow her subjects an autonomous dignity—playfulness tempered by the gravitas inherent in possessing a limited, fragile body.
Acetylene Eyes 