argonaut:

(via vooduude)

This photograph intrigues me.  It captures my interest in part because the boy about to be flogged looks out at me and catches me as a voyeur and implicates me in the ideology of pornography.  His look is knowing as if to say this isn’t real, it’s just staged, the other guy isn’t really going to whip my ass with that rope.  (And the other guy appears stiff like a mannequin.)  Or is that just his hope?  Is his look a plea for help or a change of mind, this isn’t worth it for the money.  Whatever, the look is, it breaks the diegesis of the image (however meagre that is) and forestalls the potential jackingoffness of the photograph.  It is neither pornographic (it will not make me cum) nor is it erotic (a bliss that endures beyond the cum shot).  It is an expression perhaps of the studium of pornography (and indeed the pornographic photograph always exists on the level of the studium.)  Perhaps it is a test shot before the real action begins and the boy looks to the photographer for his instructions.