Consent, Context, and Clutter

Last night I was all loaded up and ready to go with this post, but this morning I’m second guessing myself. “Consent, Context, and Clutter” is yet another conceptual post, a post about how to see and think about photography, yet there’s this voice in my head saying “Enough theory, Tony. Give ‘em some practical advice! Give ‘em some tips!” So, before we dive into “Consent, Context, and Clutter” here’s a tip:

Camera Tip
If you don’t know how to do it already, learn how to turn off the Auto-Flash function on your digital camera. Your digital camera’s Auto-Flash is programmed for those “Here’s me and Mindy and Frank and Sally leaning in and saying “Cheers” at the office Christmas party!” photos — a blast of bright white light reaching out about 5-7 feet in an otherwise dimly lit room. Of course now that you’ve turned off the flash, you’re going to have to start thinking about alternate light sources and/or camera support for the slow shutter-speeds needed to capture images in bedroom lighting levels. But more on that later, let’s continue with some more of my conceptual framework.

Consent, Context, and Clutter

Today’s lesson is taught by way of negative example, and with the aid of two websites; LuridDigs.com and GuessHerMuff.Blogspot.com.

LuridDigs.com is a blog devoted to photographs that have been snatched off the internet, of (presumably) gay men  in unlikely interiors. Count this one as a guilty pleasure for me. The juxtaposition of everyday men, in all their glory, against  their home furnishing choices (or lack their of) is hard not to look at. The commentary is just as snarky as you’d expect, and often as funny as it is cruel. 

GuessHerMuff.Blogspot.com is blog devoted to pictures of clothed pictures of everyday women, with a second “reveal” photograph showing how her pubic hair is coiffured.  This ought to be heaven for me. Comstock Films was inspired by the idea that people’s real sexuality, their real relationships and real sex play were a lot more interesting and erotic that any of the nonsense that comes out of Chatsworth, and I love the “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover” aspect of the concept.

But like LuridDigs there are troubling questions of consent on GuessHerMuff. LuridDigs covers their ass with some boilerplate legalize:

All photos are used strictly for educational, parody purposes, and fall under copyright law’s fair usage terms. Any questions or issues, please contact the webmaster. © 2009 Nightcharm Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this site may be reproduced without the written permission of the owner.

Whether or not this claim of “Fair Use” would withstand a challenge I don’t know. I do know that parody is a form of humor best aimed at people and institutions in a position of power. Parody aimed at the defenseless usually goes by another name: mockery. Apparently it’s human nature. The doesn’t make it nice. LuridDigs is nothing if not ironic, which gives added “meta-spice” to their all-encompassing copyright notice sitting right next to their assertion of fair use.

GuessHerMuff goes a slightly different route on the consent question:

This site isn’t here to make anybody look bad. If you are the owner of an image show here and would like it to be removed, please leave a message in the comment section of the post in question and it will be removed.

I had something similar happen with one of my films down in Australia. Shortly after the OFLC banned DAMON AND HUNTER from the Sydney International Gay & Lesbian Documentary Film Festival, they sent our Aussie distributor a negative-option notice that if we did not opt out, they would be using our film in their training sessions. I was not amused. And whatever the site owner’s assertions about what he(?) is or isn’t trying to do, the fact is the women on this site are subject to savage, puerile commentary. I can’t imagine that anyone would consent to having their pictures posted in this this context.

So what’s the lesson here?

Well I guess the first lesson is that if your images get away from you, there’s no telling where and in what context they might appear; and that even if you find out that your pictures – pictures that you own and have the legal right to control  – are being used in a way that you don’t approve of, it may take more time, effort and money than you can muster to make the fight.

The second is that context matters. I might send my wife a not particularly thought through picture of myself, and in that private context I might seem sweet, charming, and sexy. But drop that photo into another context, and I might look foolish. Thoughtful photography (and I’m not saying that all photography should be thoughtful) creates a lot of its context within the frame, and this context can travel with the photograph, regardless of how the photograph is used or misused.

A powerful tool for creating this internal context is what I’ll call Intentionality; which brings us to clutter.

Click through LuridDigs or GuessHerMuff or any of the thousands of amateur websites and you’ll notice a lot of things end up getting caught in the photographs that people who made them didn’t really mean to include: odds and ends on night tables, laundry baskets, electrical outlets overflowing with cords.

The reason is simple: when we “see” in real life, our psycho-perception allows us to focus our mind on whatever it is were looking at, while ignoring all the distractions. Psychologically it’s very similar to our ability to listen to a conversation in a crowded party with loud music, and if we couldn’t do this visually, we couldn’t drive a car, or walk down the street, or cook dinner. When we take snap-shots, we do the same thing when the viewfinder is up to our eye – we focus on the subject to the exclusion of all else, and that’s how we end up with a lamp post coming out some someone’s head and making them look like a unicorn.

But when we want to move from taking Snap-Shots to making Photographs (if you’ll forgive my pretentious nomenclature,) we have to learn to overcome this essential aspect of the way we see. This is especially hard when our beloved is laid out on the bed in all his or her glory. Maybe there’s already a bit of tension because of concerns about making these sorts of photos, plus worry about how they’ll come out, plus “Holy cow! She is gorgeous!  I want her right now!” Add to all that, there are some technical aspects of camera-phones and point-and-shoot digital cameras that actually make it harder to make uncluttered photographs than if you were using an digital SLR or film camera.

More on the technical aspects later, and how to overcome the clutter-philic nature of digital photography. For the time being, the next time  you are making photographs – of yourself, of your lover, of anything – before you the click the shutter, pause for just a moment and check the corners of the frame. This might feel awkward at first –especially if you’re doing bedroom photography – to have that beat of deliberation and intentionality in an environment we associate with spontaneity. But give it a try. Check the corners. If you see something that doesn’t belong, move it or change the framing; shift up or down, left or right, or move in closer. Being aware of and responsible for everything that’s in the frame is a way to imbue your photographs with intentionality, and to give them some of that internal context that will make them look better, regardless of where they end up being seen.

The other thing is that while spontaneity might be thought of as the ne plus ultra of sexual expression, playing with a camera is an opportunity to explore the eroticism of deliberation and intent. The process of making a photo is like selecting special lingerie, or programing a bedroom playlist. It involves forethought, anticipation and decision making. Those aren’t usually thought of as sexy words, but they can be. It’s all about the context!