Remembrance of things handsome…

Postcard early 20th century…

I love the fake backdrop, the sitter’s swanky boots and his almost pompador hairstyle…

As Roland Barthes would say, “That-has-been!”  What a story that we can never know.

Two attractive, handsome young men pose for the camera either before or after a casual game of baseball. It is the 1920’s or 1930’s. I’m not sure. The setting is perhaps a small town, a park in a residential area. Private homes and trees are in the background of the photograph.

The two men stand close together with their arms around one another in a gesture of intimacy. There is an ease to their embrace. The man on the left wears a hat and has a baseball glove on his left hand. The man on the right holds a baseball in his right hand. They wear the clothes of their time and place. They stare out from the past at me the viewer…

Read the rest of the blog post here:  http://www.thegreatwithin.org/2009/07/notes-on-photograph.html

queering:

French Maid,postcard,c.1920s

Wonderful image.  The doll staring out at the viewer in the right background is a bit creepy and unnerving.  It is the “punctum” of the image as Barthes would say.  In a sense, it catches me, the viewer objectifying the figure and implicates me in the ideology of the French Maid.

Engraving of Captain Nemo in the Nautilus 1870

“…all ships in Jules Verne are perfect cubby-holes, and the vastness of their circumnavigation further increases the bliss of their closure, the perfection of their inner humanity. The Nautilus, in this regard, is the most desirable of all caves: the enjoyment of being enclosed reaches its paroxysm when, from the bosom of this unbroken inwardness, it is possible to watch, through a large window-pane, the outside vagueness of the waters, and thus define, in a single act, the inside by means of its opposite.” -Roland Barthes

The Nautilus is my life, if only I had a submarine…

edwardianera:

Circa 1913. Empress Alexandra of Russia.

What an odd photograph.  A snapshot yet posed?  And what is the fabric or article of clothing drapped haphazardly over the railing?  Why is it there?  It seems out of place.  It is the punctum.  It stands in contrast to the regal stance and meticulous dress of the Empress as she holds onto her string of pearls.  This piece of clothing drapped over the railing seems ominious to me, a symbolic representation of her brutal murder in just 5 short years.

Snapshot of German soldier circa 1939-45

I am entranced by the luminous triangle of light that is the neck of the soldier.  It is for me the punctum of the image.  It fosters my desire beyond the knowledge of the photograph and takes me outside of the image.

http://www.thegreatwithin.org/2009/10/notes-on-photograph-german-world-war-ii.html

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.

sissydudeomen2:

kobako:

(via dudetube)

I find this photograph incredibly erotic in the Barthesian sense.  It lasts and endures; it is generous unlike the pornographic image.  It continues beyond the cumshot.  There is a look of vunerability to the figure intensified by his clenched fists and the incongruity of the sheer apron he wears.  He is all to human and not just a pornographic fetish or idol.  I cannot discard him as an object.  My desire goes beyond the image.  Who is he?  Where is he now?  Could you just imagine!

New Blog Post on this photograph by Ben Bale.

http://www.thegreatwithin.org/2010/02/barthesian-notes-on-photograph-naked.html