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October 16, 2012 / Blog
So, I was tired that day. My newest rubber gear, waders, camera around my neck–Folsom Europe street party was demanding my visit. Maybe, once there, the excitement would grip me firmly by the neck, drag me to my knees, unzip its fly and start slamming down my throat. Surely, there would be something to take a picture of–muscle, chest hair, bound in leather, bulging in latex, human doggies licking boots, Tom-of-Finland knock-offs dragging their grateful slaves around on chains–that sort of thing. Past years had seen fist scenes in Fuggerstraße to the delight of the local residents, or excitable tourists parading their Nazi uniforms dripping with swastikas and Iron Crosses. Folsom and a camera… what could go wrong?
But I was tired, so tired. My gaze was cloudy. My eyes tried to lock onto something, maybe a hairy brute of a leather daddy, but they just kept slipping. A million perceptions were pumping into my aching sensory channels, dropping undigested into my mind’s labyrinthine sewer where they lie rotting and fermenting. Labels, muscles, red laces, mobile phones, boots, beards, shiny rubber, bulging crotches (Hello daddy!), gloves, and fucking revolutions pounded my eyes, each one having a stab before being pushed out of the way by the next. But still I raised the camera to my burning eyes, duly pushed the shutter release, flashing smiles where I remembered to…
So, a good month later, this is what’s left. I was so tired that day…
Tags: consumerism, festish, folsom, gay, sexYou may also like
2 comments
I really like this series of photos – I’m sure they’re quite different to the ones that appeared in the QX-type magazines after the event, but these are wonderfully human, most of the people look like real people, tired and a bit jaded. For me, these images show the gap between the fantasy and the reality of a fetish scene beautifully and I’m reminded of the passage in the Grason Perry book when he talked about the moment he realised no matter how much money or effort he put into his clothes and make-up he was never, ever going to look like a pretty girl. I also find the pics touching, and the one of the guy being tied to the tree is very powerful. That face is haunting; so exhausted and bleak, it reminds me, for some reason, of Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ series, or something biblical.
Thank you luv. Those pictures are a bit dysphoric, and I hesitate to show them because I do not intend to expose individual people. But there is something about these commercially organised events and the sort of social exchange they promote that makes me very uneasy. I used to be so fascinated and somehow still am, but even looking at the same fetish scenes, sexy guys all dressed up, I feel like the meaning of it all has changed. The surface is the same, but at the core it has become about something else. Maybe, as a friend says, “J’ai passé l’age”, but I perceive the same disorientating phenomenon in other aspects of life. My problem is how to capture it, the phenomenon, without “exposing” individuals. Maybe it is that why I increasingly resort to staged pictures.
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