Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

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The flowers that bloom on the 6th, tra la

September 6, 2021

My birthday — 9^2, 3^4 — rolls around again, in its relentless way, and people are sending me flowers. Well, electronic images of flowers. (Meanwhile, I’m wearing my, sigh, gay dinosaur t-shirt, and I had coffee ice cream for lunch dessert, because it’s my favorite and because 9/6 is, whoopee, National Coffee Ice Cream Day, as well as AMZ’s and the Marquis de Lafayette’s birthdays, 1940 and 1757 respectively.) Today, three floral compositions:

— a sidewalk-crack garden (on the street in Dovercourt Village, Toronto), posted by Randy McDonald on his Facebook page on 9/3 and sent to me by e-mail on 9/4 to cheer me up (despair lurks in doorways, ready to pounce on me and rob me of joy): cleomes and snow-on-the-mountain

— from Benita and Ed Campbell (outside of Denver), a Jacquie Lawson electronic birthday card, “Golden Chain”: laburnum (yellow), drumstick alliums (purple and blue), plus seven parrots and a peacock

— from Rod [Williams] & Ted [Bush] (in Oakland), a different Jacquie Lawson card, “Birds and Flowers”: an arrangement of flowers to be identified, plus several little chirpy birds, with the accompaniment of a much-abbreviated orchestral arrangement of Chopin’s Grande valse brillante

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Posted in Art, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and plants, Music, My life, Photography | 4 Comments »

A stone solid pro

August 31, 2021

(Largely about male prostitution, so distasteful to many, but not, I think, actually over any lines.)

A stone solid pro, a street hustling boy, plying his trade for a better grade of customers, comfortably indoors, in his sexy Water Briefs, at a pool bar:


(#1) [from the Daily Jocks e-mailing of 8/30; ad copy:] Skip through the beach club line ups and go straight to the pool bar in the new PUMP! Water Briefs. The wide waistband on this low-cut cut brief gives you comfort at the waistline. The customised multi layered leg elastic offers the ultimate support and accentuates the butt.

You don’t see an impudent cruise face like — not his real name — Joe Dallesandro’s every day. For the use of his body and his company, you pay $400 (cash) an hour (extra for a few special services), plus the cost of a hotel room at the beach club’s hotel and the expense of a background check on you (he’ll give you references from his regular clients, and, as part of the background check, he has ways of getting references from your previous escorts — JD’s an independent contractor, and a sharp businessman; don’t let that boyish face fool you).

Most high-end hustlers make contact with new johns electronically, but, having come up from working the street as a sassy teen — risky  but thrilling — JD still prefers the physicality of face-to-face negotiation. That also allows him to show his skills at figuring out your desires and fashioning himself into the man who will satisfy them. The cruise of death is just an opening gambit, a kind of best guess as to what you need; experience tells him that most men, especially successful and powerful men, want to be dominated and used.

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Posted in Art, Facial expressions, Gender and sexuality, Idioms, Male art, Movies and tv, Music, Parody, Photography | Leave a Comment »

Assuming the position

April 7, 2021

(Men’s bodies as sexual objects — women’s, too — and sex between men, all of this discussed in street language, with edgy images, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

At the intersection of the pinup-girl world (AZ Page here) and the premium men’s underwear world (AZ Page here), two recent ads from the Daily Jocks people: from 3/28, under the mail header “Model of the week: Freddy”, an ad for OnlyJox subscriptions, already of interest to me for its display of male buttocks as sexual objects for a male audience and for pushing the line between softcore and hardcore porn in doing so; and from 4/2, an ad for the DJ Easter sale, already of interest to me for its display of the front surface of the model’s body as series of sexual objects for a male audience, from the framing of his penis in a jockstrap though the sexualized presentation of his armpits, pectoral muscles and nipples.

The 4/2 ad is also quite clearly the photographer’s carefully composed re-creation of a classic pinup pose using a male model. And then I realized that that the 3/8 ad was in fact a bow to yet another classic pinup pose.

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Posted in Art, Facial expression, Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Language of sex, Male art, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Photography, Scalarity, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Men in Love 1850s – 1950s

February 26, 2021

The full title: LOVING A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s – 1950s. Assembled by Hugh Nini & Neal Treadwell (5 Continents Editions, 2020).


(#1) Front cover of the book

From the introduction to a Queer Review interview by editor James Kleinmann with the authors (11/1/20):

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Posted in Facial expression, Gender and sexuality, Male art, Photography | 1 Comment »

Sweet and fuzzy 4

January 8, 2021

My favorite in this series so far, because it presents me as not only sweet and fuzzy but also as contemplative (if you know me, you know that I am not only a very playful nice guy, but I am also deeply serious about what I see as my work and almost relentlessly analytic, about pretty much everything):


(#1) Once again, I  have no idea about when this photo was taken or by whom; the shirt, with its horizontal stripes of charcoal and purple, turns out to have some history, however

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Sweet and fuzzy 3

January 7, 2021

I continue to find Nice Guy photos of me projecting a sweet and fuzzy persona; apparently, lots of people I know find this presentation of self attractive (and have done so for at least 20 years). They have a point.

Here’s the latest, me at the Ramona St. condo:


(#1) Photographer not known; and date not known, but it was before the diningroom table (in the top center) became my work table and the desk (on the right) became a storage surface

This image of me is very much like #1 from my 1/5/21 posting “More sweet and fuzzy” (from 2001), but with a head tilt. Both differ from the image in my 1/3/21 posting “Sweet and fuzzy, from 2006” (the first in the series).

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Posted in My life, Photography | 1 Comment »

More sweet and fuzzy

January 5, 2021

Another Nice Guy photo of me from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky’s stash:


(#1) The origin of this photo is currently unknown — but note that it was taken in a public place — an eating place? — with other people visible in the background

This for comparison to this 1/3 sweet and fuzzy photo from 2006:

(#2)

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Posted in Language and the body, My life, Photography | 1 Comment »

Sweet and fuzzy, from 2006

January 3, 2021

A photo of me stashed away in my photo archives and not previously posted, showing me in my sweet and fuzzy guise:

The photo turns out to be from 6/7/06 — I was 65 at the time — from the year-end celebration of my year (2005-06) at the Stanford Humanities Center. Only 15 years ago, but it now seems like an image from a long-ago time.

Readers who know me know that I am wary indeed of photographs, since I believe they mostly present me — only too accurately — as funny-looking, but if they can capture my sweet and fuzzy side, then I am pleased. As here.

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Posted in My life, Photography | 10 Comments »

Deconstructed hamburgers, exploding in layers

September 28, 2020

Another spinoff from my recent postings on still lifes, leading to photographs of food, in particular an earlier posting today, “Breakfast with Francesco Tonelli” (the food photographer). And that led me to a genre of food photography I hadn’t known about: the exploded view, deconstructed, flying, or food-layer hamburger. (Any sort of sandwich or layered food could be treated this way, but hamburgers tend to have more parts than most, and they’ve spread as everyday food through much of the world, so they’re especially well suited to this photographic treatment.)

An introductory example: a photo by David Fedulov (Дэвид Федулов) in Moscow:


(#1) Managing to get the dressing separated like that is the real trick here

Here I guess I should remind you that the stuff in lots of wonderful food photography isn’t food at all, but some simulacrum that will stand up under hot lights and long exposure times. Tricks of the trade. Making actual food gorgeous in still shots (as Tonelli does) is quite an accomplishment.

Five more examples, from all over the world.(We’ve already got Russia.)

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Posted in Art, Language and food, Photography | Leave a Comment »

Breakfast with Francesco Tonelli

September 28, 2020

Having posted recently several times on still lifes involving foodstuffs, I’ve been getting lots of suggestions from Pinterest of food photography in general (and when I post this, I’ll get even more). Striking among these suggestions: Francesco Tonelli’s album of breakfast photos (on his website, here).

These turn out to have an informal snapshot quality, as if we’re just catching these foods in the act, combined with an extraordinarily sensuous presentation. For example, breakfast PJ&B (peanut butter and jelly — or in this case, jam, which is much more intense than mere jelly):


(#1) Peanut butter and jam, aroused and about to hook up

Now, more from his breakfast album (and then the About page from his website, about who  Tonelli is and what he does).

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Posted in Art, Language and food, Photography | Leave a Comment »

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