If you set out to make pictures about love, it can’t be done. But you can make pictures, and y

If you set out to make pictures about love, it can’t be done. But you can make pictures, and you can be in love. In that way, people sense the authenticity of what you do. - Emmet GowinThree images, all taboo, yet infused with gentleness. The subject is Gowin’s wife, Edith, whom he married in 1964. Knowing that changes something. It adds an invasive intimacy–a summoning to a place where an outsider is not supposed to go.The out-of-focus woman in the first photograph is Edith’s grandmother. Her presence shouldn’t conjure discomfort; nor should Gowin’s, unseen behind the camera. But they are not supposed to be there at the same time, not when Edith’s breasts are exposed in such a determined way. Particularly in his early work, Gowin suggests that the alienation of family from sexuality is inauthentic. Sex, after all, is part of what creates families. He knew this message was open to misinterpretation. “Everyone thought my photographs were incestuous,” he remembers in a 2014 Guardian interview. Of course, that was not his purpose. He saw the same wonder in everyday familial relationships that others go to mountains or jungles to witness.According to artist Chris Wiley, the second picture of the set, which shows Edith urinating in a barn, is “the most intimate photograph.” He’s not limiting himself to Gowin’s portfolio. Of all the images in the world, it is the one that “brings love near enough we can feel it’s hot breath.” Wiley writes: The picture is so piercingly intimate that I find it difficult even to look at it. This is not because I feel as if I am intruding, or being shown something that I was not meant to see, but simply because it seems to hover too close to the vital force of human connection. It is too poignant, too alive.When skimming explicit photographs on the Internet late at night, you’re sure to encounter pictures of people peeing. For me, they have this terrible effect of causing mindfulness of my bladder, forcing my sleepy body out of bed for a trip to the bathroom. Such images are not really intimate, despite the subject matter; rather, they are bold and confrontational.Wiley’s private moment with Edith doesn’t offer anything for the fetishist–unless being in love in a intensely familiar way counts as a fetish.The last photograph features no grandmas in rocking chairs or puddles of urine, but for me it is the edgiest and best illustrates the concept of loving trust. Edith’s pose is not flattering. Seen out of context, perhaps the viewer would misinterpret Gowin’s intention as a meditation on the entropy of old age.The miracle of lasting love is that we never stop seeing beauty in the bodies of our partners. Though the image is not romantic, I feel overwhelmed by the photographer’s affection for the creases of his wife’s neck, the slouch of her breasts and the folds of her stomach.Then there is Edith’s faith, purer than the most zealous nun’s belief in God, that Gowin will see her accurately yet love her as devotedly as he always has, always will. -- source link

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