Tag: strobe

Nicholas Noisenest – glamourmatic glowstick . subclitoral squirt gun (2012)

Believe it or not–despite my many misspellings, myriad grammatical errors and the fact that I routinely forget to include the sort of quantum connective tissue that connects my various notions–I am exceedingly self-conscious about my writing.

So I’m aware that by this point it’s almost a formula for this blog: I start of a post saying I really don’t like X, Y and Z but I’m super down with P, D and Q.

Yeah, yeah–sometimes I invert the order but mostly with the exception of the confessional personal posts or unmediated compositional analysis, I’m an appallingly predictable writer.

For example: the only way I know how to approach the above image is by first subtracting the things I (strongly) dislike about it. The combination of monochrome and strobe clearly asserts an affection for Nobuyoshi Araki’s Tokyo Lucky Hole.

There’s less than no love lost between Araki and myself. But from a technical standpoint this isn’t even thoughtfully derivative work–yes, Araki was using flash and B&W to capture salacious scenes but despite my distaste for most of his work, you can’t dispute the man’s tech chops. Whereas Noisenest–while at least not using the strobe mounted on his device, positions it in such a way that it casts an obtrusive shadow behind the woman. (It’s also #skinnyframebullshit.)

And for a work that appears so self-conscious about its family resemblance, the execution with the strong and the stylized tonal gradation, all work at cross purposes given the Araki impetus. (Araki is afterall and if nothing else grossly immediate in his presentation.)

However, all these (admittedly damning) critiques aside, it does strike me that this instinctively gets something about erotic photography that I haven’t realized before–specifically with regard to ostensible depictions of masturbation; namely: there’s a knee-jerk tendency to frame the scene as something habitual instead of something novel.

The distinction I am trying to draw is that we tend to make work featuring folks masturbating in bedrooms or bathrooms–spaces that exist hand in hand with a degree of personal privacy. Thus, images produced given that sort of framing, tend to serve more as mirrorrs; the viewer responds to them based on their response to the person depicted.

While that is probably an honest depiction of probably about 65% of masturbatory experience, there’s also the part that is experimental and boundary transgressive. The instinct that doesn’t want to be caught but wants to press up against the notion of this is private and that is public and never the twain shall meet.

I mean I don’t think I’m the only one who has masturbated in strange places either because the moment felt right to do so or a libidinal itch demanded scratching without recourse to all the locks and catches of safe privacy.

And I think there are certainly ways of hybridizing these two extremes, but I think if you can’t be bothered to present indications of a fully developed, three dimensional individual when depicting masturbation, that you can at least bother to recall the sense of urgency that drove you to transgress boundaries and use that as a conceptual starting point.

What Noisenest intended to do that with this image or not, he succeeds stunningly in at least that one regard.

 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.

Chadwick Tyler – Ali Michael for P Magazine (2015)

I get a lot of guff from people when it comes to my notions of what constitutes logical framing decisions.

I suppose my two responses to that would be something like:

  1. The received wisdom that one needs to learn the rules before breaking them applies, and
  2. That I am aware that I tend towards dogma with regard to certain aspects of image making–so take what I saw with a big old boulder size grain of salt.

In truth, I don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about it. The proliferation of lens based imaging methods has democratized visual culture only insofar as anyone who can lay hands on the equipment now claims to know what they’re doing. In my experience, however, the predicted increase in vitality of work turned out to be a trumped up pipe dream.

I really don’t like this frame. It’s clearly trying very hard to seem like a shot from the hip, every second of living the hip lifestyle obsession circle jerk is pure fashion poetry waiting to be memorialized by a snapping shutter. (If it was legitimately that, I’d be non-plussed but generally accepting of it.)

I don’t like that this is so carefully posturing as that but it’s difficult to hold the grudge since the Michael’s pose is so spontaneous and clearly unintended. (The fashion/glamour everything that’s not airbrushed must go aesthetic, infuriates me.)

So I find awkward poses like this–when they ever see the light of day–to be endearing. It’s like an admonition to remember that people are beautiful not only when they are trying to be or not succeding at being, they are beautiful because they are people doing the best they can with what they have.

The pose also reminds me of another image I had saved as a draft but I didn’t know how to address.

Source: pmagazine.co