What are we left with after orgasm? Not much. Sweat running along the spine. Salivary glands dry like a desert. Semen curdling in bed-sheets. In fact it's no pleasure at all. Every orgasm is as backbreaking as it is ironic. 400 calories lost. 75 if you pulled off solo and that's the most frequent case anyway so don't believe what they say about sex and keeping fit. It's a frustrating and exhausting job. Bed exertion. Struggle in a toilet at your favourite club. Salty taste in your mouth and splashes on your trainers. The knowing gaze of those standing in the queue whilst you exit. A nightmare that sucks, literally. You just want to get back home, brush your teeth, gargle, wash your hands and forget it as soon as possible.
And at this moment of natural reset, of desperate and hopeless torment of a foreskin - if you have one - when you forget how your face swells and your eyes bulge, when it all dries out and crumbles out of your bellybutton, exactly then the voyeur Stuart Sandford puts his camera down.
Have you been excited? - Yes. Have you been embarrassed? - No. - says Bubi Canal when asked about Stuart's shoot originally commissioned by Gay Times magazine in 2007. Most of the guys answered like that. Most of them were happy doing it. For most of them it was an experiment with their own body. Today "victims" of voyeurism are no longer victims, they're willing participants. Today we are asked to be voyeurs. Today it's easier to be one more than ever before.
One can write Stuart's art is post-Warholian but that's the same awkwardness as shooting into a guy's eye. What art isn't? One can write he's inspired by Terry Richardson, which is a colloquialism that needs adding up because, like Wolfgang Tillmans, he's more objective. One can write he appreciates the work of Nan Goldin too, but he has a much better sense of humour than she does.
"Sperm mugs" was a right-wing website's translation of the exhibition title when the series was shown in Krakow, Poland in 2008. Catho-Nazis again, as bright as Slava Mogutin's dream skinheads. Wrong direction gentlemen. Nothing is so obvious here, it's far more elusive. It's blow job time here. So let's enjoy it.
© 2008 Lukasz M. Maciejewski