Tag: sex

quatre48:

[19.07.14] Bedroom #05/ quatre48.com

Plume Heters-Tannenbaum – Bedroom #05 (2014)

Normally, I try to space out posts from a single artist instead of packing them into a thick clot. I am making an exception for Quatre48 because I’ve been returning to this series with unusual frequency in the last three weeks.

I still maintain there’s a desperate need for more strenuous editing. Yet, these images trade in a palpable immediacy; and while you certainly can’t argue any sort of inconsistency in that theme across the entire series, what gets muddled in the presentation is their unusual perspective and carefully cultivated artfulness.

What I mean by the former is that the perspective of the images is definitively female. We have what I can only presume are self-portraits–so there’s the explicit photographer documenting her sexuality but even without knowing that there’s an implicit non-normative (w/r/t to stereotypical presentations in porn) gaze.

I can’t help but comparing the aesthetic to Aeric Meredith-Goujon, only these manage to intrigue and fascinate while Goujon–honestly–creeps me the fuck out.

Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that I can’t decide if this is an exception that proves a rule or if perhaps it is possible to produce something intended to be porn that is also simultaneously art–because this accomplishes exactly that.

Source: quatre48

Source unknown – Title unknown (20XX)

This is an interesting picture. I’d have preferred if it were a bit more evening exposed–all the shadow detail in her hair is gone whereas there’s still hints of detail in the cabinet or table to the left of the couch; also, if the camera had been raised perhaps a foot and moved back by a foot, you’ve have gotten both of them more or less fully in frame and enhanced the visual dynamism of the shot.

And as nice as I think the little details are here–i.e. her hand covering his and helping to hold her legs in position, her tongue and clitoral piercing and the books behind her legs on the couch cushion (hell, even the presentation of his erection and testicles is aesthetically pleasing)–what appeals to me about this is the question it perpetuates in my brain: is there a relationship between symmetrical representation and subjectivity?

I’m not at all certain the following applies anywhere outside my own head but I know that there’s always been this rupture or disjunction between the vision in my head and the final print. Generally, the small that rift, the better the photograph.

I think the thing is we tend to look at the world askew. The human brain is amazing at filling in blanks unbidden–sometimes to our detriment (most optical illusions are such because the brain straight up accepts its own grandiloquent assumptions on the regular).

…

I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself. I need to backtrack momentarily.

Usually, I’m of a mind that there are two types of people in the world those that separate everything into two arbitrarily ‘oppositional’ extremes of a spectrum and everyone else who isn’t a pretentious douche nozzle. Yet, as blunt tools, things like Szarkowski’s windows vs. mirrors dichotomy do at least provide a set point of departure.

I think there’s another potentially useful distinction–images that are found vs images that are constructed.

…

It’s easy to just blame street photography as the singularity from which all found images emerge. Even in rigorously constructed studio work, there’s still an element of finding in the eventual edit. Yet, I think the distinction between objective and subjective, has something to do with symmetry.

Constructed work tends to flow outward from a place of symmetry. The trouble with symmetry is… well, it’s mostly an illusion. Spend enough time with a large format camera and you’ll begin to actually see the fruit of the whole Euclidean geometery projected into three-dimensional space. (In simpler terms: try drawing an equilateral triangle on the surface of a sphere. It’s impossible.)

…

When I’m trying to find an image, I’ll tend to see it but when I lift the viewfinder to my eye–the thing I saw that sparked my interest disappears. I sort of think it’s because what I saw came as a result of my brain projecting a symmetry onto the scene that either wasn’t there or was merely implied by what I saw.

When I experience this discrepancy between what I saw in my mind’s eye and what I see through the lens, I’ve learned to force myself to be patient. To do the heavy lifting, to search for something approximating the symmetry I perceived initially.

On the rare occasion that I succeed in finding it, there’s a sense that the image is less an image and more a window. The image maker steps aside in order to reveal the viewer the objective experience of seeing.

…

In the above image, there is a literal asymmetry. It’s not so much interested in the ordering of physical space as the conveyance of the moment. Yet, in that it is very clearly subjective. The camera’s focal plane is not a window but instead an approximation of some observer’s perspective.

…

The thing about symmetry is that we think of it as bilateral–in other words, vertical and horizontal mirroring in one point perspective. But symmetry can exist without centering.

I actually think that is what the brilliant street photographer Paul Graham means when he says:

I have been taking photographs for 30 years now, and it has steadily
become less important to me that the photographs are about something in
the most obvious way. I am interested in more elusive and nebulous
subject matter. The photography I most respect pulls something out of
the ether of nothingness… you can’t sum up the results in a single
line.

His work is full of found images that are more window than mirror and as much as Graham wants to chalk it up to elusive and nebulous subject matter, his work shines because of the way he finds a meta symmetry that doesn’t get in your way, doesn’t distract you from what your seeing but instead functions as a feeling.

The distance between the subjectivity of above image and the window-like objectivity of Graham’s best work is identical to the distance separating artful porn from pornographic Art.

Source: letmedothis.com

X-Art – Young Love featuring Maryjane (2011)

If you want you can watch a lo-res upload of the full scene here.

You don’t need to, though. No, really: you don’t–whomever curated this .gif set pretty much grabbed all the best bits.

I’m posting it here for several reasons. While it’s certainly not as pretty as the Sex Art scene with Silvie Deluxe and Whitney Conroy (I’ll honestly never understand the Janusz Kaminski wall of super white light aesthetic… shit PISSES me off)–and glosses over any explanation of who these characters are and how they relate to each other when they aren’t fucking–this scene manages to be extremely graphic and heteronormative without making me feel super skived out.

I think it’s beyond dumb that he pulls the I’m going down on you so you’ll return the favor bullshit typical straight boy routine. And I appreciate any straight porn where the stud getting off doesn’t involve a facial. However, by the same token, it’s really awkward the way you don’t even know he’s jizzed until the tacked on post-coital cuddling. I mean the typical male gender role demands a certain stoicism, but damn boy–would it kill you to vocalize a little? It’s not as if her parents are in the next room.

Le sigh.

Inside Flesh – bad dream ii (2014)

Credit where credit is due: although I’m not especially interested in visual depictions of fellatio, I am consistently captivated by Inside Flesh’s treatment of the motif. (Fig. 1 | Fig. 2)

My fascinating has always and unfortunately been tempered by the post-industrial-detritus aesthetic and the monotonous mechanically repetitive sex they tend to favor.

In that way a glitched .gif loop addresses half my problem with their method of exhibition. And, I’m pleased to see them pushing their leather/latex/balaclava fixation in more religio-mythical directions. (Here: I love the fuck you, True Detective insinuation, the way the light accentuates her skin and dramatically emphasizes the cavity between her sartorius and gracilus muscles–which in turn emphasizes she’s doing most if not all of the work.)

Source: insideflesh

k.flight – [←] in the back of the bus (2008); [↑] we thank you for the spirits that dwell in us and all things (2008); [→] P1080259 (2011); [↓] good morning (2008)

I don’t know what to say.

I’m just… I mean… fuck me, whoever k.flight is, she has a perfectly, omnivorous eye. I didn’t know it was possible to be in love with images but, well, yeah… learn something new every day.

Not to sound like a twitter tween but this, this right here is fucking everything.

Absolutely perfect.

Go ahead and do whatever you want with what’s left of me. And also, if someone knows who k.flight is I would do anything, and I mean ANYTHING for the opportunity to collaborate with her at some future date.

Source: Flickr / ladyalpha

Source unknown – Title unknown (XXXX)

Here’s an example of a vertical frame that isn’t #skinnyframebullshit.

Why? You ask, Isn’t it just echoing form of the subjects?

Well, it is doing that but in this case a landscape orientation contributes little additional context to the image. As it is we can tell it’s a small bedroom, demonstrating exactly how small it is–if anything–belabors an already clear representation.

The trick that makes a skinny frame work here is the narrow triangular form of the overexposed motion blur adorning his hands and her left side would–in a wider frame–be subject to de-emphasis. Further, the vertical framing draws attention to the discarded clothes piled on the bedside table and likely Russian electrical outlet.

Source: urbansexbrigade

Merel Wessing – Title Unknown (200X)

I’m not 100% as far as the attribution on this.

Google Image search best guesses as Belgian model Merel Wessing.

With the galaxies of freckles on her forehead and around her eyes, this is almost certainly the same young woman.

It seems she’s a photographer too. Or was, at least–there’s a Flickr account bearing her name and the The Way Back Machine shows updates between 2007 and 2011.

Unfortunately, none of those images are cached. Anywhere as far as I can tell.

Excepting the above, another photo from this same ‘shoot’ and this, her work has been scrubbed from the Internet.

Although there’s no way to qualitatively assess her abilities based on three photographs, the images–especially this one–justifying a strong curiosity with regard to the rest of her work.

I have an itching suspicion she was/is very good, if not flat out phenomenal.

Source: lovelyporn

Source: Unknown

There are several dozen reasons this is a really lovely image but I would like to focus specifically on its careful use of tonality.

It is meant to be scanned left to right. The skin of the male bodied partner is exposed a hair below complete overexposure and loss of highlight detail. (Making a traditional darkroom wet print, you would probably have to split grade and burn the edge in with a 4 or 4.5 filter.)

The male bodied participant is rendered an ethereal specter; his body only begins gaining form and dimension in relation to his proximity to his partner.

The right half of the frame is heavy with a mid-to-dark range of tones. The female-bodied partner’s teeth represent the only tone in from the highlight range. This balances against the dark tones of the pubic hair in the left half of the frame–in a way the skin and high heel encircle the penetrative sex act, highlighting it.

The darkest areas of the frame are in the armpits of his t-shirt, the area shadowed by her left thigh and his right forearm and her hair.

Thus the tonal composition reduces to a figure not unlike: 0>.

What is interesting to me is the discrepancies from the figure and how they actually enhance the image. If you follow the highlight of her blown out high heels suspended in midair–a porno trope I loathe but that serves here–your eye is led in the direction of his face (where his eyes are locked on his erection as it is consumed by her body); whereas, if you are following the mid-to-dark tones, your eye descends to note the way her knees hook into his elbows.

All that definitely appeals to my aesthetic sensibilities. But it’s the way that despite the emphasis on the graphic depiction of intercourse, that I am entirely preoccupied with her calm and beautifully meditative expression.

Bryce Louw – [↑] Skin | [→] Hold | [↓] Pull (201X)

Despite being graphite drawings, the first thing I notice here are the colors.

In fact, I am fighting the urge to create the sort of palate swatch sidebars that seem to be de rigueur–a la this and more insidiously ingenious this. (Note: I lifted both links from popotum; who has a murderously precise eye for immaculate graphic arts ephemera.)

Beyond color, I am not really sure what to do with these. There seems to be a stylistic disconnect between the more minimal blitz sketch (what I prefer when faced with drawings) in the left half of Pull and the more overwrought shading in the fully rendered work.

It’s not that I don’t dig the full renders–there’s a sense of gorging on carnality to beat back an all-consuming visceral desperation which I find appealing.

But, at the same time, I am not comfortable with the amputation of 2 out of 3 female bodied figures left arm by the fourth wall. And, I find it odd that all the left hands/arms are dismembered. Could this have something to do with the factoid about Classical Latin: the adjective ‘left’ (sinister/sinistra/sinistrum) also meaning ‘evil’ or ‘unlucky’?

Source: gaksdesigns