Tag: public vs private

[↑] Lisa Yuskavage – Reclining Nude (2009); [↖] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↗] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [+] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [←] Helias Doulis – Untitled from Blossoms of Solitude (2016); [→] Alexandre Haefeli – Untitled from The Company of Men series (2016); [-] Source unknown – Title Unknown (2014); [↙] Ismael Guerrier – Sacred Garden #1 (2018); [↘] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↓] Source unknown – Title unknown (19XX)

Follow the thread.

[↑] Hardcored – Title unknown (201X); [↓] All Fine Girls – Title unknown feat. Amia Miley (201X)

This was originally supposed to be a juxtaposition as commentary post.

That, however, shifted when I discovered that the version of the top image posted by @partialboner (who blocked me, for some reason, apparently–which sucks since he runs a damn fine art porn blog) was a crop of the original.

My initial reading of the crop version of the top image was: this is aggro but fucks with notions of public vs private in a way that this is more edgy than uncomfortable–even the extra color saturation enhances the feeling that what we’re seeing has been carefully negotiated.

The uncropped original skeeves me out because of the production company whose water mark it bears. (I’m fine with BDSM–I’m a switch–but BDSM demands a baseline minimum of respect for boundaries and hinges upon complicated questions of verbal and non-verbal consent. (More on this in a bit…)

The lower image is more visual complex-yes, it’s still very porn cliché-y but it’s at least less flat than the top image.

Initially, I wanted to feature this as a juxtaposition as commentary post in order to underscore varying degrees of visual legibility, as well as how the top scene is ostensibly public and the lower one is obviously transpiring in the privacy of a boudoir.

Also, I wanted to create a comparison/contrast between the way panties (an object) are employed in a manner for which they were not designed–a gag and a penetrative object, respectively.

The post would get close to going up and I’d kick it down to the bottom of my queue because I knew it belongs here but the framing of juxtaposition as commentary seemed too toothless a means of engaging with it.

Part my initial reluctance to post this was a direct result of allegations made by Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon… and, well: nothing about the scenes they are speaking out about are acceptable things to not have explicitly negotiated boundaries/consent in advance.

I think the problem I have with these runs much deeper and has everything to do with objectification. You wouldn’t be out of line to respond: methinks the lady doth protest too much–after all she does run a sex blog that frequently showcases graphic and/or explicit depictions of sexuality.

In for a penny, in for a pound, you’d think; except…

Porn deals in fantasy. You can argue until you’re blue in the face that a person who sees a pornographic video and goes out and treats the video like a how-to guide is a full psychopath. I mean how often has the pizza deliver guy shown up holding a pizza with his schlong just hanging out and the scantily dressed woman who answers to door just pulls him in and starts using his member to probe her tonsils. The world doesn’t work like that and you’d expect that most folks would realize that’s not how things work IRL; except…

Increasingly folks do not have access to fact based, reliable, comprehensive and honest sex education. So in some ways the argument that it’s all fantasy and everyone knows that and only a real fuck-up would think the world operates like that doesn’t follow here because part of porn being a fantasy involves the suspension of disbelief.

Beyond the absurdity of some of the scenarios porn features, what is someone who lacks strong sex education to believe and disbelieve? It’s dangerous to assume and not assuming makes things very thorny.

Generally, I think you can argue that in most porn you can presuppose that the participants have consented. However, I think it’s EXTREMELY dangerous to extend that presupposition to more BDSM elements–since those sorts of scenarios demand additional verbal consent as a result of the escalation.

And I realize I’m applying my impression of the one studio to all of their work; except…

I don’t know it’s hard to read either of these images as if the women are anything more than objects for sexual gratification. And honestly that’s where my primary beef sits: I think there is an onus on porn producers whose bread and butter involves scenes of women being manhandled and acknowledge as little more than warm, more or less moist orifices to penetrate really do have a responsibility to convey something with regard to an awareness of and respect for consent.

It’s definitely easier to do that in a video–I’m not sure how you do it in a single, static frame (it would likely be difficult to impossible and would dramatically slow down production).

But I do think we really have to do better about being mindful of consent when producing this kind of content, fwiw.

Fan Ho – [↑] Title unknown (19XX); [↓] Sichen Concubine (19XX)

I had never heard of Ho until he passed away in June of 2016.

Above are his two most recognizable photos [left] Private (1960) and [right] Approaching Shadow (1954).

I could go on for the better part of the afternoon about all the little things which distinguish his work as simply effing extraordinary. However, for the sake of brevity–which they tell me is the soul of wit (perhaps they are implying I am witless)–I’m going to mention two things and before scooting along to my primary point of order.

First off, both of these photos have a similar quality to Vermeer’s best paintings. What I mean is when I look at a Vermeer canvas I have this tendency to forget that I’m standing in a crowded museum to an extent and I get this weird feeling that I’ve been strolling around Delft and while passing a window in the street, I catch a glimpse of this scene before me and I am frozen watching it; it always feels like at any moment the frozen people are going to resume whatever they were doing–and probably very soon after realize I’m staring out on the street staring at them through their window.

I feel that about these too. Like what are the man and the woman talking about in the stairwell. The location seems to suggest it’s a conversation they want privacy to conduct. (This is–of course–emphasized by the word private inscribed on the sign.) The wash of white on the exterior wall is almost perfectly identical in tonality through the entirety of the picture plain. (That is unbelievably difficult to accomplish in a traditional darkroom, y’all.) But the fact that the only shadow tones are at the base of the frame and through the window–there’s a sense that the conversation is a bit sordid. This is emphasized by the gender of the two conversants and is further tweaked by the way he stands over her and leans in toward her. The way the slats from the window in the background behind them physically separates him from her–so the sense of something potentially sinister is slightly diminished. We’re supposed to think that it’s probably a dicey situation but that she is safe.

In Approaching Shadow, there is a sense that the woman is experiencing a moment of quiet reverie and is unaware of how the world around her is drawing attention to her. (It’s worth mentioning that apparently Ho added the shadow via darkroom trickery–an easier feat than the white facade in Private but no less impressive in its execution.) When I’m looking at this one I figure if I just watch her long enough the shadow will move and she will eventually walk away. (Interestingly with this one I do wander how the shadow will move–will it cover her or creep slowing away from her; also, which way will she walk away–left, right or towards the viewer.)

The second thing I want to point out is that virtually all of Ho’s work features vertically oriented composition none of it is #skinnyframebullshit.

Interestingly, Ho was not only an acclaimed photographer. He was also a notable filmmaker. (As someone who came to photography via studying filmmaking, this is probably yet another reason why his work resonates so much with me.)

Bonus thing: he considered himself a street photographer but I suspect he meant that less in the sense of Henry Cartier-Bresson or Garry Winogrand and more in line with Atget.

Anyway, the above color photos are interesting because Ho worked almost exclusively in B&W. There is some color work available–most slide film from the look of it, that despite having chunky, ungainly grain, demonstrates a sensitivity for color and light that is truly rare to encounter.

Of the two photos, the bottom one is definitely Ho’s work. The top one–although originally posted by someone who is generally very careful when it comes to attributing work to the correct artists and also appearing to be shot on positive stock–could be Ho’s work but also it seems a bit too modern for me to comfortably state that it is his.

If it is, I would be incredibly interested in knowing if there’s more work that he did in this less street photographic style, more off-the-cuff manner.

Source: partialboner

Source unknown – Title unknown (1959?)

I’m intrigued by this photograph. (So much so, in fact, that I’ve spent several hours I don’t really have right now trying to learn something about it’s provenance; sadly, there’s nothing.)

The curious thing is that a lot of the blogs that have posted this generally have a lot of overlap with my own personal interests. And I have some–if we’re being polite–offbeat interests.

As far as just looking at the photo as it’s presented, I feel a lot of the things about controlling context with regards to Valerie Chiang’s All info is in the image applies equally here–even if it does work to a different end, i.e. in this case the control of context isn’t in service of clarifying anything, it’s intended to emphasize a certain enigma.

Like what I do know is that this is most likely a photo made with a 50mm lens–based on the angle of view–operated at a narrow aperture. (The focus between her chin as it’s tilted back and the ridge line in the distance suggests a wide depth of field & imposes on her a sense of being a part of the landscape a la Duchamp’s Étant donnés.)

It’s either a page from a photo album or is meant to resemble one. The 9659 is unusual. It could be a date. Sept. 6, 1959 in the US or 9 June 1959 in Europe–and to me the landscape looks straight out of central casting for Alpine Europe.

Beyond that I haven’t the foggiest. However, I do think what I find some mesmerizing about it is the contradictions it contains. There’s a level of very personal and therefore privileged/private intimacy occurring–yet the viewer is asked by the photo to bear witness. There’s the way that there is a sense that the grassy slope and trees are in the distance but with her head back like that, the distance is compressed substantially.

Also, compositionally this is absolutely the opposite of #skinnyframe bullshit–it’s intended to be read up and down and is arranged in such a fashion as to facilitated the parsing of such a reading. consider how it’s divided into five distinct horizontal bands: the sky, the trees, the area between the crest of the hill and her shoulders, between his middle finger and pinky finger with his pinching of her nipple drawing attention to both nipples and the area below watch band wrapped around the wrist of the intruding hand.

It’s a really compelling construction. And although I can’t find fuck all out about this I would very much love to know more if anyone has any pointers.

Marie Tomanova – [↖] By the Waterfalls (2016); [↗] Green Tenderness (2015); [↓] Untitled (2016)

The Museum of Sex here in NYC (as opposed to the one in Amsterdam and there may be more I don’t know about) is running an exhibit called NSFW: Female Gaze.

I’m not a fan of the venue or the current bandwagon curatorial trend otherwise known as ‘the Female Gaze’–it’s generally preposterous (at best) and mistakes inversion for subversion (at worst); also, the people who actually go out of their way to embrace the notion pretty much to a one make godawful work. (However, like the term ‘post-rock’–which operates similarly: a pretty reliable shortcut to some great music when you weed out the bands who refer to themselves as post-rockers and focus on the bands who eschew the distinction.)

(And to be clear–I don’t object to women who are photographers. This blog strives to favor women photographers and image makers in such a fashion that 60% of the posts are created by women; what I object to is the idea that we can correct for the art historical problematics of the male gaze through nothing more than paying lip service to more diverse representation without actually acknowledging a multiplicity of factors beyond just male photographer vs female photographer….)

What appeals to me about Tomanova is the quality of her work. She’s working with a Canon dSLR and a hotshoe flash. Yeah, I know… her results are pretty incredible.

But in the video trailer for the exhibit, she mentions that her motivating notion is the idea of “how nude is too nude?”

It’s an interesting question. (That is supported by her work, incidentally.)

The other thing I notice from her video is that her way of working is much more unrushed. As someone who is also interested in notions of public vs private and nudity, I have to say that I find her process fascinating. Usually, if you’re shooting nudes in public, you set up the shot, strip and get the shot as quickly as possible–so that you can get dressed again before anyone stumbles upon the scene uninvited.

You get the feeling Tomanova sets the camera up, gets undressed and then experiments. Trying out a bunch of different poses and frames before getting dressed again and breaking things down to move on.

There’s something very audacious about her work. (I would LOVE to be able to work that way, honestly. It’s not that I’m worried about people sneaking up on me while I’m naked and more what happens as a result of someone potentially stumbling upon me…)

I recall how Szarkowski divided fine art photography into two parts: mirrors and windows. I’ve never really agreed 100% with him but I do at least see the utility of his taxonomy. It strikes me that there’s another dichotomy in photography: reproduction vs discovery.

Reproduction would be where you have a very clear picture in you rmind of something you want to make into a photographer or image whereas discovery is more organic, you don’t know what you want but you are aware that you’ll know what you’re looking for when you see it.

I think the best work does both at the same time. But I think Tomanova is decidedly in the discovery camp. And honestly I think if it’s a choice between the two, I’ll take discover over reproduction any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

wonderlust photoworks in collaboration with Lyndsie Alguire – [↑] The Right Light; [^] A Piece of the Sky; [+] Fever Dream; [v] Invisible Syllable; [↓] Annunciation (2016)

Nothing short of pure joy to work with @suspendedinlight and I could’ve easily included double the images here. (About half turned out really damn well.)

These were the most intriguing and distinctive to my tired eyes, though.

I am already very eagerly anticipating the opportunity of work with Lyndsie again in the future.

FTVGirls – Tiny in Big Ways featuring Megan Rain (2015)

If someone were to tell me hey, there’s this clip where a girl uses an eggplant as a dildo, you’d be wise to bet on the fact that I’m going to find and view said video at my earliest available convenience.

What I would expect given the above description is a preoccupation with the extremity of the action and a tone that shifts mercurially between coy and so over-the-top with awkward enthusiasm that it’s vaguely uncomfortable.

That is exactly what you get from these production stills.

And while I can’t argue this is a good clip, there are some interesting elements to it. The action isn’t played directly toward the camera–and although it’s still hell of graphic, the graphicness seems more consequence than motivation.

The distinction seems important. Unlike the stills, this scene plays as if we’re getting to watch someone experimenting. The experiment isn’t necessarily for the viewer, it’s merely something the viewer is allowed to witness.

Also, it really appeals to me how obviously public this location is. And I feel like that ties into the effectiveness of this gif. After all, masturbating like this in such a public location renders ambiguous that line between the risk of being seen vs. actually being seen. In my mind, that heightens the sense of voyeurism and despite the close proximity of the camera to the action this framing allows for a suspension of disbelief as far as whether or not Ms. Rain is masturbating or pretending to masturbate for the benefit of the camera and subsequently the consumers of this content.

Chih-Han Hsu – IMG_4363 (2009)

I know it the young woman in the fuchsia dress is almost certainly wearing some adorable undies beneath her dress and her genitals are not especially near her friends mouth.

Regardless, I would do almost anything to switch places with the young woman in the white dress.

From the standpoint of image integrity, I am not at all fond of the way her legs are cut off by the bottom frame edge. And despite the the careful balancing the inside of retaining wall with the vertical sidewalk seam, there is no reason whatsoever for #skinnyframebullshit.

The reason this image works are the supremely digable little detail flourishes: dark nail polish against the greywhite concrete, the ring on the girl in the fuchsia dress’ left middle finger that draws attention to her left knees delectable skin tone and how she is kneeling on the other woman’s hair.

I am not sure the funereal hands crossed over her chest is the most convincing pose. Her hands could be any number of places, doing any number of things depending on the degree of comfortability of the two models with each other.

But really the image works mainly because of the ambiguously coy Mona Lisa smile which could just as easily be read as look at this transgressive thing I am allowing myself to be seen doing or this is the first time I’ve let another girl taste me and it feels so much better than I had ever imagined it could.

Source: Flickr / chihhanhsu