so you're pissed off at me and you respond by giving one more insulting slam against djabolica's work?

You're high-handed in your critical style, and you get a negative response for that. Now you've deleted all the topics you initiated, though there were many people who contributed.

(Eidea is provocative and critical, yet he keeps a sense of humour about himself, and stays responsive to what is actually happening.)

ladies... the last entries here look like a feud of friends... can you please get over it? thanks.

i find djabolicas pictures neither erotic nor pornographic. like shakespeare once said: it's not the naked breast that makes the lads cum. or was it hefner?

pornographic pictures are those that are solely meant to arouse. i don't care if it's a teenie trying to get the attention of her peers or a mature lady showing that she's still pretty, a boy that shows of his potency or an old man proud of his dick... pornography is when someone like this put up pictures with the clear shine through intend of arousing ME, the anonymous viewer on this blog. because this is PUBLIC, boys and girls, meaning if you post stuff like that... you show off with it. full stop.

now, showing of is OK, as long as it makes my brain tickle. but pornography hits deeper, on the hippopotalamus or whatever it's called, so it actually circumvents my hard working brain cells and gives me a direct physical reaction... and in this case, i even don't care if it's pleasureful or just annoyance. the problem is the bypassing of all controls.. and photoblog is or wants to be (or i declare it now as something to be like that) a controlled environment, controlled not only by the makers (who i believe don't want any of this shit) but also by the community of users, which i reckon is in it's wide majority not looking for nice titties and ass here on the blog.

i like pictures of the human body, i like female and male beauty in pictures. but if that's THE ONLY THING transported and only meant to BE SEXY, well fuck off with it.

sorry for the blunt words - i really want to discuss the topic, not the people posting pretty naked pics.

what's this about hitting your hippopotamus? that doesn't sound very sexy.

To properly defend myself before would have only escalated things further. I think the whole thing got out of hand, hence I deleted my comments. Since you've now read the one above, I can remove that too.

Through this whole fiasco, i AGREE with one of your criticisms of me.

I will now just make some defense of my general position since you are still pushing my buttons but I am no more pissed off with you than you are with me.

First, you brought the images to the forum to be viewed and responded to.

You like them, its not that I did not like them or think they lacked merit. You did not like my responses to these images, in part, I am fairly certain because it disagreed with yours but I concede you also did not like my tone.

And i do not think you appreciated that my first comments about Djabolica's work were about one blog entry. I tried to emphasise that.

It was a mistake on my part not to look at the whole blog straight up, a mistake I made because my computer was not working quickly.

Now that I have seen the whole lot my view is different though I maintain my opinion of that picture - which was 'we've seen this before but that's not such a crime since we all start off somewhere'. Its how men and male photographers look at the female body, its how they taught us to look at the female body.

Although I would point out that Edward Weston didn't do that in that picture, his picture is not sexy. He was intent on showing the body as pure form. His body wasn't a case of "gee's she's a bit of allright!" but "the body as flesh - what is flesh -soft, warm, a life" And I think his purpose in doing this was to show what photography COULD DO. Weston was a technical master, but also as his work shows a great artist. Note, I am not the first to say these things; this is not just my subjective opinion. I agree with the others.

His pictures of bodies and vegetables and other objects all have this palpable quality to them and in them is a great deal of respect, sensitivity and self-awareness. google edward weston image, study them and you will see this.

My view of the body of Djabolica's work, now that i have seen it all, is that she's done an interesting and quite a good job of exploring her subject. Its the point of view that I have criticised, not her work in the end. I think her point of view is still problematic but it is an advancement on the past, though not unique today when everyone is exploring their own sexuality and so forth. But the narcisstic sex object thing - it doesn't do much for me, that's true. What I do like about it is that she is somewhat self-knowing - she knows she's "bad" and she's playing it for all its worth. She knows this is a turn'on for the male gaze - eidea notwithstanding. I would not, however, suggest it has no place on the forum. Afterall it is not porn.

I am sure Djabolica is used to receiving strong responses to her work. I am sure she can deal with whatever I have to say about it.

I notice you did not like Diane Varner's work. I think your criticism shows a degree of ignorance. In fact, all your critical comments do. eg. you said Diane Varner's work is too perfect. In fact, perfection is a legitimate aesthetic approach. There is, however, a technical error in some of her pictures. She crops some of them too much so that a practised eye will recognise that and that is a weakness.

Your comments about Pliskin's work were sheer gas, demonstrating a complete lack of knowledge, understanding and experience about art interpretation. I don't know if you read my analysis because I think I deleted it too soon. In short, I said his work looks good, good technique, but its a jumble of mixed messages and so undermines whatever his intention of the meaning of the image was. The colours suggest an upbeat optimisitic interpretation - most of the world agrees that bright colour is thus. And yet all the people on the bus are either sleeping or dulled down - the way people often are on a bus going home after work. The title suggests it's the bus trip that has exhausted everyone. But this is silly. From our own experience, most of us know that the bus is a chance to rest after a hard day's work. There is a subjective element to art interpretation and analysis - "I like this, i don't like that" for example. There is also an objective element to it. What I say about pliskin's work is demonstratable. It could be proven that I am right. I do not go to the subjective part of the work at all.

As I said before, I am qualified to critique art. While there are no formal qualifications for same, I know what I am talking about. When I don't, I will keep my mouth shut. But by all means on a forum such as this, its a free for all and anyone should feel free to offer their interpretations or analysis of works. Though I am not sure its such a great idea to start critiquing works from the blog here in general unless someone offers themself up for it. Djabolica is not an amateur - I expect she's a student at the least - and if pliskin is I hope he will find my words useful. Diane Varner's work is fair game since she is obviously a professional and since her work is out there.

You know, I started reading your latest entry, and found it thoughtful and sort of interesting. And then you go to stuff like this:

Shangri-La: "I notice you did not like Diane Varner's work. I think your criticism shows a degree of ignorance. In fact, all your critical comments do. eg. you said Diane Varner's work is too perfect. In fact, perfection is a legitimate aesthetic approach." (emphasis mine)

I don't particularly like that aesthetic approach, legitimate or not. I was expressing a viewer's preference. what I wrote in that thread was "the photos themselves were impressive, but for me, too perfectly pretty."

Responding to art isn't like filling out a multiple choice test, and I was talking about a subjective response. Where I find you absolutely arrogant is in your assumption that most of us have an entirely uninformed response, while you have an expert response. And even if that is your opinion, why do you feel compelled to make such hostile comments?

You deleted the whole thread where our 'conversation' about Pliskin took place, and I'm not going back to that one. It was a dull enough discussion the first time round.

My impression is that you honestly wish to engage, and that you don't see how you kill the possibility every time.

You deleted a bunch of topics. I took that as an indication that you were done with this conversation. I appreciate that you took the time to look at djabolica's work again, and see it more fully.

For me, a basic level of mutual respect is the bedrock of an enjoyable dialogue. Maybe you will have more fruitful discussions with other members. good luck.

@ julia & shangrila: can you fight this out somewhere else, please? it's really become your personal discussion now and "off topic" of this off topic topic.

staying on topic is overrated.

don't worry, eidea. I'm sure you'll be at the centre of controversy some time soon.

"staying on topic is overrated"

agreement at last.

"staying on top" gets me off! ;-)