PhotoBearUK

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune of meeting a photographer whose work I absolutely love. He asked me if he could take my picture. Much of his work fits the category of gay male nudes, which I normally run a mile from. Much of the fetishistic gay male glamour photography stuff bores me to tears--there is already tons of it around. I find much of it all surface, no depth. It perpetuates the myth that gay man are, or at least should be, hypersexualised always-ready-when-you-are totty. I have to confess here that I do not even like most porn; it simply does not turn me on--it usually has a sense of deja-vu, and it remains too distant from me, certainly more than my own fantasies or experiences. All in all, I do not often find gay male nudes very interesting.


Vincent's are different. They are less nudes than naked portraits. The models are not passively consumed by the viewer, but actively engaged as most of the pictures are shot dead pan. The quality of the lighting and the detail lend the images depth and palpable presence. They can be sexy (and most of the men in them are sexy to me), but they are so without negating the sitters' individuality and personality. 


So, I agreed. I was wearing an orthopaedic boot after some foot surgery, which was not an obstacle to doing these pictures apparently. I am by now reasonably comfortable posing in the buff though I am not that confident physically. But I actually like these pictures very much. There are two pictures of the session here, but there are hundreds more (and of much more attractive models) on Vincent's Flickr site where he operates under PhotoBearUK. He also takes a huge variety of pictures, from flowers to landscapes, and a trawl through his Flickr site is hugely rewarding. 


Check out his websites:
PhotoBearUK
mascularstudio

easyjet bauhaus vunder

In easyjet's in-flight magazine November 09, I read an article titled bauhaus vunder--a fashion shoot in front of "Bauhaus" icons in Berlin. So, what's not to love?

Leaving aside that these fashion pictures (fashion + models) look to me like the sort of 80's horror that I hoped had died along with Duran Duran, there is nothing bauhaus about them... and wunder is still spelt with a "w" inspite of the many reruns of "'ello, 'ello". Some pictures are taken in front of Daniel Libeskind's German-Jewish museum, others at the Holocaust Memorial. Libeskind's structure is anything but Bauhaus--it is a building that is designed to disorientate and surprise. It has nothing of the cool form-follows-function predictability of Bauhaus. 

I am generally not a big fan or friend of memorials--they have a tendency to be instrumentalised by calculated piety and "Berufsbetroffenheit". Racist, homophobic, genocidal, or corrupt politicians of all colours are scrambling to be seen laying wreaths at the feet of these memorials without batting an eye lid. As a rule, if there is a TV or press camera around, the original meaning of such a memorial is turned into its opposite. The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin has always felt different to me; rather than being purely symbolic, it is a sensual experience. One can lose orientation amongst its hard, relentless monoliths. There is no way of predicting what is around the corner. It is about modernist dreams turning into nightmares, a merciless machine that swallows up men, women, and children. It does require a moment's reflection and attention to appreciate the horror, which it reminds of. No such reflection for our "bauhaus vunder" crew. The genocide of 6 million Jews (plus the many other victims--Sinti and Roma, gays, communists, people with congenital illnesses., Russians...--whose memory has been excluded from the memorial by its planners, but which remains inseparable from it) to them is just a lovely backdrop for a little fashion sale. Shame they did not go all the way... morbidly anorexic models with shaven heads in striped suits, for instance. I bet someone was just doing their job...