Slinky Aleksandr – * * * (2017)
Although this is definitely a striking image, nothing else about it really makes much sense w/r/t logic of composition or in terms of visual grammar.
But–while on the topic of rooftops–photographer Wingla Wong is doing some absolutely fantastic work with nudes atop high rises in Hong Kong–try this, that and also this.
Terry Smith – Cory on the rooftop of LeStat’s here in San Diego, California (2006)
This isn’t an image you’d ever claim was ‘good’; the focus is soft, the pose is awkward given the composition (or the composition is awkward given the pose–flip a coin) and although it’s less frequently imposed in creating male nudes, this orientation is inherently tied up in an art historical tendency of the body as object, i.e. the dominant eye standing above a supine figure.
All that being said, it is interesting because everything I just finished criticizing is what ultimately makes the image interesting–the soft focus causes the the boy’s skin to stand out against the filthy rooftop, the pose is neither full passive nor entirely active (due to the right leg being elevated off the ground and the objectification is clearly a primary impetus for the picture’s creation.
Also, I’m taken with this because while I’ve never been to LeStat’s, several of my friends do frequent it and speak fondly of the place.
Magdalena Wosinska – LA, CA (201X)
Quite frankly, there’s a lot of entirely unmotivated nudity in so-called fine art photography. (Not to hate on nekkid folks–after all, I’m a fan.)
You hear a lot of talk about not wanting to have images tied to a particular historical epoch. Or, it’s insinuated that there’s some nebulous narrative impetus. (Only in both cases, those justifications are more get out of jail free card since the work to which they are applied barely/rarely supports them.)
That’s what I am in love with about Wosinska’s work: nudity in her work reads like it’s motivated by the same compulsion behind Walt Whitman’s sentiments early in Song of Myself:
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised
and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
Acetylene Eyes 