I went to see the Bill Brandt exhibition at Tate Britain today. It’s free and on till January 2023 so if you’re in London at all I recommend it.
I love Bill Brandt. I can’t remember exactly when I first saw his work but it was probably during university in the mid-nineties and it was certainly his (and Man Ray’s) work that first got me interested in nude photography.
After getting back from the exhibition I scrolled back through my blog and through my unused photos folder and it’s quite ridiculous how often I’ve channeled him, either through direct replicas or through heavily influenced black and whites.
In the unused folders were a couple of homages dating back to my lockdown project in 2020. Brandt had a habit of naming his images by the location and date they were taken so here I have done the same. The shot that inspired mine is below.
Nude, London, Crystal Palace, 2020, April 19Nude, London, South Kensington, 1979, February 26
I absolutely love this photo. It’s from back in summer 2020 when me and this chap would guiltily giggle about breaking the law with our lusty lockdown liaisons. If only we’d known what was going on a few miles away at Number 10! Still, the covert sexy bubble was a lot of fun so I’m happy for our ignorance.
Anyway, the grip. Isn’t it funny how some partners can do things that feel completely different to when another does exactly the same thing? Other people grip my throat and I like it a lot but there’s something about the way he grips it that radiates tingles down my whole body. Is it the size of his hand or the particular pressure he applies? I don’t know but I love it when he does it.
I’ve thought about posting this photo a few times over the last couple of years but I’ve always dismissed it, thinking it wasn’t a ‘good’ photo because of the bleaching from the back light. But suddenly with this weekend’s prompt it’s just perfect.
An entirely predictable image from me given that I use mirrors so much in my photography that they have their own tag on this blog!
This is a lazy post today as I’m hauling out one of the few distance diaries photos that haven’t yet found a home on the blog. I’m on a bit of hiatus with my photography at the moment as work is off the scale busy and I’m also isolating and doing house jobs in the lead up to my holiday.
I am looking forward to the warmer months rolling round so I can get out and about and naked in the wild with all my lovely photography friends!
I’ve written before about now much I like the downtime in long lazy afternoons of fucking. This photo was taken during one of those moments. Not this week; this week there was some filthy filming which will remain private and a very silly photo that may one day be used here for no reason other than it fully showcases my fat belly and I like it anyway. Progress.
This photo was actually taken back in June but I look at it often. I like the comfortable intimacy of it and it reminds me of how calm and content I feel in those moments. Calmness very much feels like the defining hallmark of this friendship. Well, that and the fantastic not-at-all-calm sex!
This hasn’t been the easiest of periods to live through, even for those of us lucky enough to not find the lockdowns traumatic. Aside from just coping with the pandemic and keeping a business alive through it, there’s been stuff in my personal life that I’ve needed to work through and make peace with. My monthly hangouts with this man are such a source of joy and happiness. Occasionally the ghosts of past relationships will rise up and fire a dose of insecurity into our conversations but again, that word calm springs to mind. No yawning silences or recriminations, just quiet reassurance or kind deflection of whatever is unsettling me.
Nurturing casual commitment-free partnerships isn’t always an easy thing to do well. When neither of you have any interest in the relationship escalator but you also know you like hanging out and making plans it can feel like a fine line to tread. At least it does to me, sometimes. But I think he and I are doing very well at it. Healthy communication and a good balance of time just the two of us mixed up with planning for future filthy fun adventures. It’s a part of my life and a dynamic that I value so much and, as I’ve mentioned, makes me feel so very calm.
Earlier in the week I went to bed with busy brain and had an attack of insomnia. Rather than waste the time I got up for a bit of photography. Here’s the result of my 1am creative endeavour.
It was originally only intended as a morning greeting for a couple of recipients when they woke up but I liked it enough to upgrade it to this weekend’s post.
On Friday afternoon @19syllables and I spent a gorgeous couple of hours sat around Honey’s fire pit drinking tea and eating cake. 19s promptly started fishing skeleton leaves out of the pond and laying them out of dry.
“If I fall in you’re not allowed to laugh,” she said. “If you fall in I will laugh so hard I’ll let out a little bit of wee,” I replied. She didn’t fall in. I took a dried leaf away and promised to do a photo with it.
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