Tag: public

Katya Clover – Title Unknown (2016)

I’m of two minds about this image. It gets me painfully hot and bothered. So it at least has that going for it. The trouble is it’s a garbage image.

There’s no sort of compositional logic. It’s #skinnyframebullshit. There’s no rule of thirds, no golden mean; it’s merely the camera turned on its side as a means of most easily fitting the most information pertaining to Clover into the frame and (also the slimming effect that a vertical frame can impose.)

What makes the image attention grabbing is the super saturated skin tone, magental of the blanket and organ of the carrot against the bland straw and blah sky. (This is about as first rate an example I’ve ever seen of how faithful rendition of color does not guarantee a good image.)

I do like the concept–quite a lot, in fact. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Further, I love the giant wet spot on the blanket. If we knew a bit more about where she was, the image might be improved. Is she near a garden? Is that where the zucchini and the carrot came from? But there’s not enough of an indication to go anywhere with these questions. (Another short coming of the image.)

I’m not sure her pose works. It’s a little awkward but it does at least seam to be in service of what she’s doing. (I adore her expression.) Even though it is interesting, in that I feel most images like this would go for an angle more aligned with a straight on view of her vulva and anus. I always tell people that one can absolutely include graphic depictions of vulvas in one’s work, but if one want to know a general real for what’s objectifying vs what’s depiction, imagine the vulva is an eye lid, if the eye opens and is looking straight ahead is it making eye contact with the viewer? If so, there’s a good chance the image will end up being objectifying unless a good bit of other work is put in to avoid it.

Looking at this I’ve realized another thing about the difficult in using masturbation as a subject for art. It’s really a question of visual depiction of an experience versus staging the experience for a voyeur and by extension–due to the unfortunate white cishet male history of art–the male gaze.

If I can find someone interested in posing for it, I would actually very much like to reinterpret this concept as a fine art photograph–’cause I think there’s that sort of potential to the concept.

 Evgeny Timofeyev – Nightlife (2015)

Although I’m not fond of virtually all Timofeyev’s work, I adore this picture.

It’s very in-the-moment, both philosophically as well as self-consciously aware of the flavor of the week with regard to prevailing trends in fashion and editorial image making  in 2015.

The flash contributes a (false) feeling of documentary immediacy–this scene is very obviously contrived. Yet at the same time the way the head is turned away–which can be interpreted as either the result of being in the throes of self-pleasure or (probably) more likely an acute preoccupation with retaining a degree of anonymity. (Really, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times–putting in the creative labor necessary to figure out how not to decapitate the subject with the frame edge pays off in spades. And if you need further examples besides this, @thewillowrae has been goddamn fucking killing it lately.)

Clearly, this shot is intended to imply a masturbatory scene. At the same time it has this feel that both the photographer and the young woman, have maybe had a little too much to drink and the suggestion is made that a picture feigning masturbation be attempted. There’s a sense that while this is staged, that it’s teetering on the line between staged and actual by nothing more than the virtue of a strong willingness to entertain the premise.

Finally, I don’t normally like images where the verticals take on such an intense angle. Here it may be the thing I like most about the image is the fact that the tilt is motivated by the way which the woman is pushing her hips forward and leaning backwards against the wall to engineer a non-horizontal/non-vertical angled plane.