Below you see three pictures Wolfgang-Tillman’s upcoming exhibition at Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Berlin. The gallery will be showing an installation of Tillmans most recent works, which in the invitation is describes like this: “After his last exhibitions which were characterized by abstract pictures and object-like aspects of photography, his gaze is now directed to the ”outside” again. Less focused on his immediate social environment, these new works were to an increasing extent done during the artist’s travels, combining urban and rural life in an apparently globalized world dominated by technology.” The opening of the yet untitled exhibition will take place at October 1st.
Second part of the feature. Click here for the first one.
“TJ”
“I met TJ one early afternoon on Adam4Adam, a gay hookup website. I went over to his place near the University of Minnesota campus. His roommates weren’t home; when I got there he started sucking my dick right away. Then we moved to his room, just so that we wouldn’t risk getting walked in on. He mentioned that he was still hung-over from the night before, so was I. We 69’d on his mattress; I ate his beautiful ass while he sucked my dick. I had set my glasses aside, near the mattress, as we changed positions TJ managed to step on my glasses, new glasses at that. So after he shot a large load on his stomach I asked if I could take his portrait. I got the impression that he didn’t want to but did so because he had just broken my glasses. My camera was in the other room. As I reached for it someone, his roommate was getting home and I think he caught a glimpse of my bare ass as I scurried back into the bedroom with my camera. Adrenaline was running high. So I quickly put on my broken glasses and tried to focus my camera at the same time. Snapped a few shots, had him sign a model release and then said goodbye. It all worked out, this is one of my favorite shots.”
“I first started documenting my intimate moments with a Polaroid Spectra camera. It was a way for me to document my sexual escapades. For me it was creating and keeping a memento from an otherwise lonely sexual experience that usually wasn’t satisfying at all. I was having a lot of sex, meeting guys online through sites like Manhunt and Adam4Adam. Of course not every man that I met was okay with me taking instant photos of our sexual encounter. If I had a photo of every encounter I would have a shit ton of images!
Eventually I became an escort and as the money rolled in I was able to buy and upgrade my equipment and buy more and more Polaroid film. Around this time I also realized that I truly had a passion for photography and documenting my intimate moments – I then started shooting on film with my Pentax 67II, the camera that I hadn’t touched since college, and that is how the “Men“ series came about. Since I was shooting on medium format film it was a little more work, and required more patience from the subject. With that in mind I began photographing friends as well as lovers and random online hookups. This is a project that I intend to keep working on, even as I start new projects.”
“Kael”
“I had never met Kael in person before I photographed him. I knew of him through mutual friends. Something about him intrigued me; I think it was that he looked so sprightly. I eventually met him at his apartment; he was full of energy and had a great smile and laugh, it was refreshing. He was very comfortable in his own skin and didn’t have an issue-posing nude for me. Kael has an amazing body – and a great ass! He had shown me these really sexy photos of himself that were taken on a trip to Iceland. The ones that stood out were close ups of his ass half submerged in water- the water lapping at the roundness of his supple bubble butt. It was difficult for me to not get an erection as I photographed him that day. I took his portrait in his roommate Jesse’s bedroom, I liked how the windows were covered in newsprint so I made him a paper hat to wear, and it just felt right. Kael was fun to work with. His confidence in himself really turned me on!”
Kuku Smigun is a French artist from the city of Lille who uses the internet as his main platform to spread his work. You find most of his photographs and collages on his Flickr account, his blog or his nicely designed MySpace page (a lot of the stuff is in the blog on the right side of the page) and a little interview with him here. While you scroll through his stuff I recommend listening to the “Fantômes” record, an improvised, athmospherical album he has recorded a while ago in collaboration with the Polish musician demonszy for a nice Polish label called Pitu Pitu. You can listen to it on the tumblr of the label, I also posted the soundclould player below the pictures.
L.A.-based photographer Paul Rodriquez, whose music video for the Former Ghost’s song “Flowers” I posted here in January has just released a book called “Final Notice”, which offers an overview of his work by showing selected photographs taken between 2006 and 2009. The book was an uncommercial project limited to 100 copies and is not published in a printed version any further, but you can download a digital version of it for free on the artists website. Here’s a little preview of what awaits you.
The Smartees are a group of young fashion designers from Soweto/Johannesburg who due to the lack of affordable brand name clothing have started to design their own stuff. Their style is usually described as a mixture of the European colonial chic and a traditional African clothing, although I guess that’s just a very limited description. The photographes below show the awesome work of a guy called Kepi Mngomezlu and have been taken by Jonty van Zeller, a young British photographer. Zeller has recently travelled to South Africa to organize fashion shootings with the Smartees for his dissertation. You find more pictures of his pictures on his blog. I also recommend checking out this post on Dazed Digital for some pictures and a little short film taken by Chris Saunders during the research for an article that will be published in the magazine’s South Africe special. He also holds the copyright for the picture on top of this post. Let the hype begin.
I’m happy to present an interview with Quinnford and Scout aka Colin Quinn and Oisín Share, a couple from Manchester that since last year is constantly supplying a growing community of fans with beautiful pictures they’re taking of themselves. Although in the beginning I may have been a bit sceptical about their decision to post pictures online that might otherwise be considered private, I quickly realised that their photography posted on tumblr and flickr is much more interesting and visually exciting than most of the pictures of the dozens of so-called artists doing self-portraits that circulate through the gay blog world. We got in touch a few weeks ago and decided to make an interview online – here’s the complete conversation.
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