Thailand has long been known as the sex capital of Asia, and according to a survey in 2004, there are approximately 800.000 underage prostitutes in Thailand and the money being traded at 4.3 billion per year or three percent of Thai economy. This alarming number has put Thailand on the top of the list of underage sexual exploitation according to the U.N.
Underage is a photographic documentation aimed at understanding the minds of these underage male prostitutes in a most candid and visceral way.

This project is multi-layered and complex in its nature. Psychologically, it offers provocative and haunting portraits of these lost souls. The visual is visceral and represents an ugly mess and deep-rooted problems of family, teenage years in Thailand, and society. The personal data of each subject is included to offer an insight and to peep into their lives and journey to the opposite side of norms, tradition, and perception. In addition, sexual identification and orientation are being questioned and investigated. While most subjects identify themselves as heterosexual young boys who come to terms with having sex with gay guys for money, almost all of them have never had sex with females. Many of them reason that all men must go through having sex with gay guys in order to understand how to have sex with females when such time comes.

Which is the intention behind Underage project?
I want the process to uncover a bit of the life, choice, and consequences that these young boys are experiencing.
Underage prostitution results from several reasons, from being molested by family members and/or relatives, poverty, being a runaway, and drug addiction. I want the images to act as a mirror reflecting the rotten reality of child abuse and exploitation. I also want the images to pose painful questions about life, choice, consequences, and of humanity. Lastly, I hope the project will shed some light about this pervasive situation, raising questions for us about society, corruption, morals, and human treatment. Also desire, innocence, corruption maturity of the observer, customer, and prostitute… when we look at the pictures, we take the part of both… the boy and the buyer… Mirror neurons.

Photo: Ohm Phanphiroj
www.ohmphotography.com

c.a.p. 74024

Why are we all fascinated by stars pictures? Because they are beautiful? Because we love them? Because everybody knows them? Not necessarily. Every time we look at a star’s picture, it tells us automatically a story made by memories, by envy, by desires, by movies, by musics. The photo is a call to the imagination.
Take Clint Eastwood’s photo by Patrick Swirc, simple portrait in black and white, but extraordinary face, torn up by these sublime wrinkles, lit by this incredible, strong, raw and hard light. The photo takes the breath away, it is brilliant of simplicity. The photo tells nothing, she shows. And we imagine. We all have Clint Eastwood in our memory, we all saw one of his movies at least once, we all listened to him speaking about cinema. It is this memory which amplifies the beauty of the photo.
And if all this was accessible to everybody?
And if a stranger became a star?
And if this stranger was you?

Sylvain Norget – www.butportraiture.com

The Unknown Project

Alessio is a young 25 years old Italian talent. He is so young but he has already had several collaborations with prestigious contemporary art galleries. A photography, his own, that draws strength from the charm – now emblazoned ultra – of amateur stuff.
Love or its absence as a source of inspiration, art as a tool in order to blowing up its power. And it is to love, a forbidden love, that Alessio dedicates this collection of personal shots, born from the memory linked to people who have embarked on new paths, on other paths, leaving on him the signs of their passing by.

Relics of Aborted Loves are small images of little things that we used to collect from the beginning of a story, and that we discover, perhaps after a long long time, abandoned in a drawer, lost behind a table, buried at the bottom of a box, when the relationship is already over. In every photo I try to represent in retrospect all those moods linked at the end of my loves, initial hopes, disregarded then, and the loneliness that stands in the end.

oldboytales.blogspot.it

LETTERE

Rivedo le tue lettere d’amore
illuminata adesso da un distacco,
senza quasi rancore.
L’illusione era forte a sostenerci
ci reggevamo entrambi negli abbracci,
pregando che durassero gli intenti.
Ci promettemmo il sempre degli amanti,
certi nei nostri spiriti d’idilli.
E hai potuto lasciarmi,
e hai potuto intuire un’altra luce
che seguitasse dopo le mie spalle.
Mi hai suscitato dalle scarse origini
con richiami di musica divina
mi hai resa divergenza di dolore
spazio, per la tua vita di ricerca
per abitarmi il tempo di un errore.
E m’hai lasciato solo le tue lettere,
onde io ribevessi la mia assenza.
…

A. Merini

Beyond the skin.

In the circularity of time, two bodies submerged in water // it is necessary to overcome the ego.

Side effects: confusion / loss of self / loss of the horizon / lack of recognition / alteration of perception and of consciousness / remodeling of the physiognomies / extension of the oneiric dimension / lack of gravity / weight loss / hallucination / attenuation of sound perceptions / opacity of the vision / slowdown of gestures / pointlessness of the will.

A liquefied ego that expands its limits.
The skin is no longer the ultimate limit of the existence.
Skin is no longer the border.
In a liquid horizon the mind rediscovers itself fluid / the movement is not intended to an action but to feeling.
The perception of self is freed from the criteria imposed by body policies / there are no canons.
Aesthetic models vanish.
Beauty does not exist / there is only fluid.
It is not important to appear // it is important to pass through.

From the fixity of perceptions to the plurality of processes.

Fusion of bodies in the alteration of perception // photography is an imperfect language.

Silence // time is no more // the river flow takes the images far away.

azetati.net

To transform in images the elegance of a body, of a moment, of a thought. Just a lesson in Aesthetics at the University and then the inspiration. A name clear, resonant, that of the italian photographer Luigi Ghirri. Since then the beginning of a new path. A path that crosses the truth and beauty of the images. The road of Claudia Pasanisi is like this, a constant evolution, which affects cities and the major publishing realities: New York, London, Milan, Paris, and then the houses of Glamour, Elle, Esquire, Vanity Fair.

She likes to portray women and men alike. But this time I decided to talk about her women portraits.
Poetic, sharp, never dull, I’m in love with these shots and these figures. True, slight, naturally sensual.
For me, they are “Claudia’s Women”.

Why do you love to shoot women more than men?
Actually I like to photograph men too. I had the opportunity to work with men, from models to actors, writers and designers. Let’s say that lately the fees of the magazines have happened to me more about women.
However, it is definitely a bigger challenge to photograph a man kindly. I think they are more careful and perhaps even more vain than women when they have to expose themselves in pictures.

The salient features of your style.
Concerning to my style, I think the mind is up to the viewer. I only shoot when someone or something expresses elegance. Even when I have a commission, I do not shoot barrage, but only when I realize that everything is beautiful and there is such an elegance that appeals to me and I hope to the others too.

What is for you the voyeurism?
Voyeurism? It is the pleasure of seeing. And in the case of photography, the pleasure of catching what is most striking about the senses.

Tell me a secret…
When I was a child, at kindergarten, I ripped the veil of a nun. I discovered she had a long braid twisted into a chignon and she appeared to me wonderful, immaculate. A statue, with white neck and honey-colored hair.

The love for you in three words.
I do not know what to say about three words to describe love, too difficult.

www.claudiapasanisi.com
claudiapasanisi.tumblr.com

Interview: Antonio Moscogiuri

We met by chance, through one of my favourite social networks. His name is Matt Hopkins, young, super young, he lives in New York, Brooklyn, and works as an editor. He takes photos just for pleasure, a passion that accompanies him since forever.

He does not love interviews and he would rather have his shoots speak in his place. Bright, clean, precise: the bodies he takes photographs of reflect lights and shadows of the places where they move. They are strong, seductive, lost, light, thrilled, beautiful, sexy, flamed.

There they are.

mhopkinsphoto.com

Text: Antonio Moscogiuri

Eduardo Vega-Patiño is a super young and very talented photographer who lives and works in Argentina. He was born and raised in Panamá, then he went to Rosario at the age of 18 to attend the Arts school. We love his pictures, because they are so full of poetry, sensuality and love. It’s so hard to remain indifferent looking at those images. The use of the thecnics, the mix of colours, shadows and lights are so balanced as much as natural and unpredictable. That’s the kind of voyeurism we love.

How was born the idea of Anailogías por Vega y Patiño?
Well, It began with a work I had to do for the university project, the teacher allowed me to use photography and the main idea is to conceptualize a book chapter’s title into an image, so I took one of my friends and I started trying to get a picture that resemble him. I have always wanted to be a storyteller, and I found human nature the most interesting thing, so “Anailogías” means that, a visual image that is also a metaphor of the subjec that is in it.

Which is the idea behind your beautiful and so sexy project?
My idea is to collaborate with artists, from any filed, and I hope that soon I will be able to do some photo installation with huge prints of my pictures on public spaces, but for now, I’m just trying to get better at conceptualizing and getting the best from the people I take pictures.

What do you think when you shoot a picture?
Basically, what makes interesting this person, why am I taking pictures to him or her, and what I wanna tell.

Which are your favourite subjects?
People with interesting stories, creative people and those who change in an intimacy context, the people who surprised me on a photoshoot are the ones who I like the most.

What does it mean for you voyeurism?
A portrait to someone’s intimacy or sexual moment, it depends of the context.

Do you watch porn?
I do from time to time, but as I am seeing a lot of sex in my photoshoots, I have stopped enjoying visual images of sex, and enjoying more the real thing.

Who or what is the favourite subject you would love to shoot the most?
I would love to shoot a day in Xavier Dolan’s life, but also goal is that my ex-boyfriend and best friend, would want to be part of my pictures, he has refused to posed naked.

p.s. The “toilet” shot is my first voyeur shoot ever…

analogi.co
facebook.com/anailogias

Interview: Antonio Moscogiuri