Tag: voyeurism

Source unknown – Title unknown (201X)

I’m pretty sure this is a digital collage. (The easiest way to tell is to look at the top of the woman who hugging the tree’s right thigh–there’s a seam between her and the background. From there you can see that the light falling on the background is coming from a different angle as the light that is falling on the couple vs the light on the woman up the tree. In the case of the background the light is lower in the sky and you would almost certainly have the sun in frame if this framing was panned so that the left frame edge started where the current right most frame edge is. The sun on the couple is higher in the sky–probably roughly early afternoon; it’s still coming from beyond frame right at least. The woman hugging the tree, however, has light that would be coming from the opposite direction as the couple.)

There’s also some small issues with scale. The woman up the tree is further back and therefore should appear smaller but she’s easily head and shoulders taller than the boy.

I’m not sure this completely works as a composition but the Photoshopping is surprisingly clever–even if it doesn’t completely work. I’d be curious to know who made this originally.

Lastly, several of my dude preferring women friends refer to guys they find hot by saying: I’d climb that like a tree.

Falk Gernegroß – Twister (2014)

If I weren’t feeling as if–perhaps–I have insisted on being a bit to solipsistic and autobiographic in responding to stuff recently, I would likely talk about how I relate to the awkward girl to the right. (That was totally me at ten.)

But I think there are more interesting things to interrogate here–like how color adds to the sense of the painting.

You’ll note that the left-most young woman, the stripe on her socks is color coordinated to her cami. The middle young woman’s skirt matches the stripe of her socks. Whereas the girl who is my surrogate is purposely isolated not only by her position in the frame, her being blocked by the stretching leg of the young woman in the middle, but he outfit purposely doesn’t coordinate–she’s wearing white socks, one of which is up to her knee; the other which is pushed down to her lower shins. Further, her skirt is more orange the the yellow circles on the Twister board and her knickers are far more pink–the sort of bubble gum hot pink that you only find in juniors sizes.

There’s also the way that the two older girls are intertwined. They are positioned in such a way that they can’t really see anything of each other. (The angle of view offered the audience is what’s suggestive not what we’re seeing. I mean it’s clear that the young woman in the pink top can’t really see up the skirt of the young woman in the yellow top. She also can’t check out her figure because the girl in the yellow top’s right leg is blocking things.

Similarly the young woman with the braid can’t see up the young woman in the pink top’s skirt either. The situation is suggestive upon first glance–until it’s not.

The boy peering over the fence Wilson from Home Improvement style could be a surrogate for the audience or the painter. I’m inclined to believe it’s the painter. What makes me think that is that the women/girl in this are presented in a typical short hand: blond, brunette, redhead. Also: bun, braid, pony tail.

Still, I’m not willing to dismiss it because the colors and subtle gradations are just punchy af and the tableau is resonate.

This is the second time I’ve featured Gernegroß’s work. And I think what I’ve gotten a little bit better hand on is how he’s combining the tool developed over time in the pursuit of figurative painting and giving it a pop art nodding/Balthus inflected spin.

Source: bgr18-2-49

Peter Hujar – The Piers (198X)

“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world.”
—Jose Muñoz

I apologize in advance: this will be scattered. But by attempting to get at something I don’t really have any idea how to say, I’m fighting against my default setting of shying away from the prospect of saying things poorly and making a cluster fuck of everything.

The above quote came to my attention a little over a month ago when Andy Wachowski came out as Lilly. (The statement she released is exceptional and very much worth the read.)

Like any truly revelatory insight, Muñoz admonition has never really drifted much further than the periphery of my thoughts since then. I’ve thought about it as Republican controlled state legislatures enact hateful and hypocritical legislation against LGBTQ folk–or, as I think of them: my people.

A good number of these laws are couched with a simple premise–protecting religious liberty. Nevermind the fact that religious freedom is firmly and irrevocably protected by the first damn amendment of the constitution. Nevermind that these strictures are specifically designed to protect those who would chose to pervert their religious beliefs as a means of justifying indecency and bigoted hatefulness towards those with whom they disagree.

If one examines this impetus from the standpoint of armchair psychology, it’s easy to dismiss hate as a defense mechanism against engaging with difficult questions regarding individual agency, institutional sexism/homophobia, what the fuck notions of gender and sexuality actually entail in theory and/or practice.

I don’t buy this perspective. If nothing else that famous study that Chomsky was involved in where he suggested that with the depth and complexity of the ability of your average everyman to engage with sports statistics suggests that the galling lack of familiarity with world politics among the average citizen has less to do with any inherent ability and more to do with a lack of engagement.

This is something I encounter frequently with my family–who are all very conservative if not also fervently religious.

For example: my mom and I argue all the time about this or that consideration. Invariably, she adopts the stance that the end of the world is nearing and there’s nothing to do but get right with ‘God’.

I think that’s really the larger problem. The focus of so many people is on the destination–instead of the journey. So many folks are innured with this belief that a life of piety leads to eternal reward.

It’s not that I don’t buy that–being raised in an Evangelical Xtian milieu really programmed some fucked up shit into my head that I’ve had a hard time completely shaking; no, it’s more that I object to the lack of personal agency and responsibly this perspective seems to very nearly universally foster.

But what does any of this have to do with Hujar’s photography?

I think it’s easy to dismiss his work as hedonistic and transgressive for the sake of transgression (not that the later is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself). Yet to do so, seems to be to miss an opportunity to study the world through someone else’s eyes.

There’s an unflinching, non-judgmental immediacy to Hujar’s work. The ugly, the beautiful, the graphic, the mundane–and always a reverential quality to the gaze, employed with rigorous consistency across the work.

Hujar always manages to find the few glowing embers scattered among the ashes–not unlike the mythical phoenix.

…

Finally–on a personal note: I’m extremely interested in the way both Hujar and Tress use doors, apertures and other openings as a means of interrogating notions of participation vs voyeurism. Additionally, I find their impetus for exploring abandoned, ruinous locations to be starkly different from folks nowadays who seek to document similar scenes as a means of projecting an internal state externally or as a means of serving a particular tonal ambiance or aesthetic.

As someone who dabbles in urbex activities, I feel a resonance with the queer use of neglected spaces far more than I do with the glut of shooters making highly stylized nudes in empty warehouses, asylums, etc.

To me there’s something extremely gratifying about people seeking out liminal spaces to not shrug off or externalize their feelings of marginalization but to feel connection in spite of them. I may be projecting but there is something thrilling about embracing what it is to be alive and free and to stage that in an environment which so clearly exemplifies death and decay so perfectly resonates with the little death some of us pursue as a means of coming to terms with the on big death towards which we inextricably slip.

Untitled shot on a Mamiya 645 by Heidi Systo

Every now and again I crush hard on internet famous photographers. For example: Kimmie Eliot Fung, Traci Matlock (aka Rose) & Ashley MacLean (aka Olive) and Lynn Kastanovics.

With Ms. Fung’s shift to more textile oriented work and Traci and Ashley’s ‘breakup’ the last three years have remained crush-less. (Even if Ms. Kastanovics never chooses to exhibit her work again, she will always hold a place in my heart not unlike the one occupied by Francesca Woodman.)

But the drought ended when Muss4You posted this photo created by Pratt undergrad Heidi Systo.

Ms. Systo describes herself on her website as:

[A]n artist living in Brooklyn who uses medium format photography to explore issues of identity and voyeurism in the era of social media.

She is who she appears to be.

As far as artist statements go the above hits all the right notes: simple, unadorned and streamlines.

So I was surprised to find another expanded statement on her Flickr profile:

Since the era of social media, photography is more accessible than ever. From the perspective of teenage girls it is a tool used to gain attention through provocative imagery posted on sites like Facebook, Flickr, ad [sic] Tumblr. My work explores the relationships between photographer, photograph, and ultimately how it is consumed at various levels in the realm of social media. I portray these attention seeking girls at different levels of development, from passive and curious, to sad and aggressive. As an artist, I am shifting the power away from the viewer and on to the subject. No longer an object to be either discarded or idolized, she now becomes a window into the unsettling viewer’s gaze.

This again towers over most undergrad artist statements—which suffer from the default ego-tripping blather setting; but a young artist whose work is so precocious, edgy, technically savvy and stands on its own, doesn’t need to be explanations.

Unless the statement is meant to reveal the artist is fully aware of what she is doing—and given the swaggering confidence of the photographic voice, doing so seems unnecessary/redundant. (Then I am admittedly kinda anti-artist statement…)

Regardless, I cannot recommend her work highly enough. Definitely check her out. Just don’t tell her I sent you. The lesser known fourth law of thermodynamics holds that: beautiful women render [me] incapable of managing fuck all more than stuttered, incoherent ramblings.

I’d rather not come off like a total heel to someone whose work I admire so much.

While I know this is likely a behind-the-scenes production still from one of those ‘feminist’ sites who employ female image makers to work with their models—i.e. Abby Winters and the breathtaking I Feel Myself—I still can’t help but impose a bi-curious-art-student-enlists-lesbian-friend-and-girlcrush-to-masturbate-on-camera-in-their-dorm’s-laundry-room narrative to it. (Lest you think my grip of situational realism is faltering due to excessive porno consumption: I attended a prestigious liberal arts college where that was exactly the sort of thing happening on any given Tuesday.)

And truth be told I asked my fair share of girlcrushes to masturbate on screen in my various student film efforts—more than half agreed with little if any reservations.

Coming from a conservative Xtian high school where boys were expected to be boys interested romantically but not sexually in girls who were girls—wholesome, chaste and asexual—such openness was refreshing but also a little unnerving.

I never actually filmed any of those who agreed to masturbate on camera. Part of it was my own shyness but it was not shyness as a result of shame. (Whether or not I filmed it, I would do just about anything to be permitted to watch one of my friends bring themselves to orgasm.) The truth is, as I have mentioned before: visual depictions of masturbation present a thicket of critical concerns with regard to exhibitionism and voyeurism.

Instead of mirroring, this image employs a surrogate to de-emphasize exhibitionist facets, underscoring the voyeuristic intentionality. A beautiful young brunette leans against a wall while sitting astride a washing machine (which I imagine is mid-spin cycle). Bokeh renders her in blurred focus: her pants pushed down around her shins, her legs and bares knees akimbo, right hand reaching down across her taut stomach, disappearing between her thighs; erect nipples showing through the thin white cotton of her t-shirt and an expression that is a bit of a Mona Lisa smile– somewhere between feigning orgasm and the actual shift where realization dawns that orgasm is imminent.

A young woman—barefoot and clad in a blue sundress with small white polka dots, has climbed on top of the row of washing machines also and monitors her friend with a video camera. Her face is hidden by her long golden hair. She seems thoroughly engaged with her friends experience.

The videographer is in sharper focus than her friend but the sharpest focus is reserved for the foreground. This is fascinating as you essentially have the exhibitionism of the masturbator cancelled out by the videographer’s surrogate voyeur which is subsequently transformed once again into an exhibitionist tableau in turn cancelled out by the depth of field’s inferential reminder to the audience that they are voyeurs.

With that in mind, I must mention that skinny frame contributes NOTHING to the image. Whereas, a landscape orientation would have firmly placed the happenings within a public laundry facility; more fully integrated the lines of molding in the lower left of the frame and the darkening far corner above the videographer’s head into the compositional logic of the image and further emphasized that depth of field by including the foreground washing machine; not to mention, you wouldn’t lose the tail of the blue polka dot dress which would further balance the weight of the masturbators naked right knee.

All things considered this is a goddamn gorgeous image succeeds in its own right but truly shines by what it manages through implication. Less is more, after all (and always).