Regarding the Pain of Others

I am fixated with this.

The abandoned Vice i found in a coffee shop--a rare treasure. The Fashion Issue 2008. I never know what to make of this...clearly it is attractive, full of waify anti-fashionable fashionistas, a lot of cursing, discomforting obscenities, startling and strange nude women and ad after ad of "edgy" t-shirt companies. This particular issue also has 4 pages of cats dressed in small hats and capes. There is some amount of stupidity and irony in it, but one can't quite get a good grip on it, as it has protected itself in an armory of insight as to the stupidity of other* things, and because it has an assortment of startling and strange nude people in it.

And this cover shot. It turns out to be the work of a rather famous, sexy photographer, who graces the New York Times magazine and undertakes ads for Puma. I thought at first perhaps the bear was nursing this man. I thought this because I hadn't actually drank my coffee yet. Correcting myself, i realized, the bear was actually mauling this man. And then again, i thought someone's death moment was still rather distasteful for a magazine cover, even for Vice (the magazine that no less once had a spread on Moscow prostitutes). In the end, i became fixated on the man himself, how delicate and beautiful he looked, perhaps because the bear was so much more powerful than he, or perhaps because whoever this young man was, he had had his hair impeccably styled before offering himself to a large and rather furious looking animal. That seemed rather brave.

You cannot see his face, but the photo is jarring...and...sexy. Many photos of women are strikingly beautiful, women are so frequently offered, stolen, caught by the camera: vulnerable, sexual objects...but done well, objects that move us anyway, in the way that dancers are not people, they are raw, transcendent, they are shapes they are emotions they are movement, whatever they are, they are not like us. But in photography, and i don't have a theory why, it can become so much more...sexual.

Just kidding, i do have a theory. It is because we are surrounded by images that try to sell us things, but very rarely surrounded by dancers. That's much too bad.

Here is a picture of just a shoulder, and a neck line that is prone, and no face. Anonymous, evokative. The light, the moles, its less-than-plastic. But clearly this fellow's torso is taut and masculine. The highly styled coif. And there is a motherfucking bear. Also the colors are nice.

The photographer is Ryan Mcginley. The magazine notes "That is a fully alive 450-pound black bear snorgling a wee naked kid named Brennan." I probably like this photo because i was fond of a young man who could easily look like the guy in the photo. He had the impressive audacity not to love me back. I hope he encounters a large furious bear. He would probably look just as exquisite.

See here: http://www.viceland.com/int/dd.php?id=611