different kinds of porn (part 2)

as we all know
(or as all the people who are googling this phrase and coming to my site seem to know)
porn is a wonderful thing.

it is defined as : creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire.

which, for the life of me, does not sound like a bad thing. or a non-artistic thing.

for example:


that there, my friendlets, is ultimate fighting champion, somebody or the other. and while his purpose in life may be to rip the heads off of other guys in a cage match or to conquer the spartans or to simply make gerard butler look like a wimp in real life, he pretty much rocks the real life porn category.

in the same way the boy below does. only more in the alien pouty lips/scary fine cheekbones, so pretty you want to put it on a shelf. or mess it up a little. or a lot. depends on the day.


and then there's this:

is he mormon? is he a skinhead? will you care when you get it to yourself? i don't think so.

on a side note (why not, landis? you're in a rambling mood today) my tastes range wildly. always have. and there's not much more fun than "window shopping" like this. i mean, you don't have to try anything on, but the merch sure looks good from the street, don't it? ;)

there's also fashion photography porn. that insane world where anything can happen, as long as it happens in clothing that costs a mortgage payment, with perfect bounce cards all around to light the scene, and everyone looks like your ideal catwalk moment brought down to . . . well, in this case, the mud. gotta love the mud and a couture gown:



much love out to mr. meisel, for his particularly skewed take on, well, everything. in some ways it is my favorite kind of porn, it takes you radically out of the "real" and settles you in a place where possibility is the only guide, and perhaps the only expectation.

ooh. i like that. where possibility is the only expectation.

like on a real couture runway:

gaultier is a master at this. a gold leafed hand on his couture runway simply caught my imagination up and held it for days. it was a russian icon come to life, a hindu blessing in motion, a false idol given a momentary truth.

or, even, PLEASE, tiny bells down the back of a pair of hose. i mean, you can HEAR the walk, you can feel the metal weight, you can imagine the simple naughty joy they would bring. even in the supermarket. perhaps most of all in the supermarket. life needs more moments of random beauty, of things that aren't SUPPOSED to be. but simply are. so there.


and i'm not sure why, i'm not particularly enamored of this gown. it's tricky. it's not technically beautiful. but i find it almost viscerally thrilling. i WANT to know the feeling of wearing something so ridiculously impractical and so wrong to the eye. something more barbie cake topper gone rebel, and yes, that lifts it into the nearly pornographic for me. transgressive in a frothy way feels more modern today than all the leather and straps could, it breaks boundaries for the eye and for the body in a new way. i adore.

and in smaller ways, i find porn on the streets. in the day to day hit of a BIG RED BAG on a pretty girl:





and yes, i do think suri is in that bag, but still. who wouldn't secretly kill for a birkin the size of their . . . toddler? it's WRONG. but they all are such stop signs in the world of street reality that they create enough frisson to be new porn.


but here's the porn that breaks my heart. it's "porn" because i find myself going back to it again and again, stumbling over it and gasping a little, wondering if they know how wonderful, how beautiful, how slightly erotic, how alive they make me feel. it's "lost friend" porn, the kind where you find a photo of someone you once were very close to, or perhaps knew only slightly but felt connected to, or a stranger you see on the web and somehow know in a way you can't describe. it's the human web, brought to film, caught in a moment, wrapping itself around you and pulling hard. it is the frisson of life that you cannot predict, it is the gift of a www stumble, and it is indescribable.

so thank you , my friends, for these kinds of forbidden shared moments:


the ever beautiful sandra durham and her husband pete, lost to me for awhile, turning up in amsterdam, living what i can only tell is an amazing life.


the smoky and talented, rough and tumble, delicate and lively jennifer parke,
daughter of my first mentor, frank,
and a constant source of surprise.


and of course, my argentine muse, julia francioni, on some sojourn in berlin,
giving another moment of inspiration,
of colorful delight,
and probably unaware of the impact she has.

these, my friends, are the best kind of different kinds of porn.

the kinds you never see coming.

argentine nights gone wild (breast first) -

we'll get to these in a minute . . .


so though we spend every day in a van running around the whole city trying to find things like, oh, the perfect stairwell, or something we could make look like a service station, or a copier machine (you know, as an aside, that could all sound like we were making a porn movie. which is not true. HONEST.) in a tight little van with mediocre air conditioning, and tons of traffic because the whole city was on strike in one way or another (garbage workers, then train workers, then escalator drivers. . . i don't know, i stopped keeping track), we try to make up for it every single night, by hitting the buenos aires nightlife.

so, we eat outside along the docks on the river, at amazing steakhouses:


loving up the magret wines:

and a personal favorite the caipirinas made with cachaca :


or, perhaps, going to sucre, for some of the best food in the city, with the stunning backlit bar:


and dishes like pumpkin risotto with garlic and prawns, laced with arugula and crumbled almond shortbread. you heard me. there are no cookies in YOUR ears:



or Olsen, for scandinavian food and, well, more caipirinhas:


julia finally joined us out on this night:


and kira had her friend sascha join us:





and we suprised ed when bebe brought in the cake for his bday.

(personally, i think richard and sara trumped us all by filling his hotel room with a hundred gold mylar baloons in homage to the finale of madonna's confessions tour . . . but i don't have pics of that, so you'll have to do with the cake thing.)



oh no. not over yet.



start using those gams ladies. cab time. bar hopping begins NOW:


first, 878 for some drinks and flirting with the random assortment of brazilian bartenders eddie and sara had picked out for us to view.


god. check bebe's jawline. how bergen in the making:


oooh, we were ready to ROLL:


then we were fueled to hit pacha, for the BIG GAY DANCE NIGHT. i know. suprise.


but my fondest memory of the trip
will be those intimate "lift and push together" moments
i shared with kira:

julia francioni - our argentine muse

while choosing locations, we had to pick everything from the actual space, to how we place the people. where the camera might sit. how the light has to fall. enter our unsuspecting p.a., julia.


the light seemed to find her, following her stillness from room to room. i loved photographing her. she would move, and suddenly, i saw the shot.


she walked, and the street became a backdrop.


sure, she kept our life rolling in a foreign land.


but the muse, she became a friend as well.