… i was getting very disappointed with Feedbin… I thought it wasn’t functioning properly… no new articles coming in… this morning decided to poke through settings and it turns out i was filtered to an item i had starred… once filtered to “unread” i am back in business…

… what catches my attention:

• Myths, Dreams and Erotica: The Zine Celebrating Latin America’s Outsiders, AnOther Magazine… i am drawn in by the lead photograph of a heterosexual couple in the midst of having sex… by the word Erotica in the title, by Latin America’s Outsiders, also in the title… i discover that the article is about a zine published digitally and in print, focused mostly on LGBTQ+ life… there are 25 images accompanying the article… most are about LGBTQ+ life… clearly AnOther thinks their readership is heterosexual…
• Photographer Lea Colombo’s Searing Ode to Colour and the Nude, AnOther Magazine… i am again drawn in with the promise of sex… an article with the words Searing and Nude in the title… yes please!… yes, sex sells to me and i am not ashamed of that… i like well done portraits of naked women and even men sometimes… however, i am also aware of the ways in which heteronormative society objectifies women… when i review the photographs accompanying the article, i see there is something more to the set than sexuality and i like it on a more platonic level… i see echoes of Roger Ballen (fellow South African Photographer) and Boris Mikhailov in her images…

From Colours of My Body (2021) Lea Colombo, via AnOther Magazine

From Structures of Madness, or Why Shephards Often Go Crazy Living in the Mountains, Boris Mikhailov

… the artist focuses on her use of color as a principal factor of the work:

I am attracted to colour’s vibration and energy, the frequency that it gives off and has, or holds. It allows a deeper expression. Colour is the living touchstone of reality. Everything that we see and experience is made up of a spectrum of colours – it’s how we relate to the world and ourselves. As such, it is a pivotal component of my artistic and photographic expression. It is how I render my relationship to subject and self.¹

… there is a gallery exhibit of the work in two places, South Africa and Los Angelas… there is a book coming… six hundred plus pages… i really like the work but wonder if it would sustain me through 600 pages…

… that the nudes are all of the artist’s own body frees it from questions of exploitation of the model… it is a self exploitation… i also think that the work frees itself from questions of objectification of the female body as intent… though, as with all such images, how the image is interpreted by the viewer can be pure objectification…