Pink Dreams - the magnificient works of gay artist Jim Ferringer

The allegorical and alluring digital photographs of openly gay artist, Jim Ferringer, celebrate male body and male nudity. Some may label the works as pornography, but they are a far cry from pornography, rather come close to the magnificent paintings of Renaissance masters.   

He states in his blog, "I am fascinated and in love with light. It’s what draws me to the art of photography and what I strive to capture in my imagery. To me the art of manipulated photographs is the ability to see and paint with light and combined images. Through the manipulation of images and the overlaying of textures, most of my work ends up looking like paintings. I am captivated by the beauty of men, all men, and have embarked on a journey to explore that in my current imagery. These manipulated photos explore the world of the beauty of the male body and soul. My work is a reflection of my thoughts as I make sense of the world around me. They are my notes as I navigate through. They are part of a process of a releasing of my sense of self and finding what is beyond my limited thoughts. To me, there is something about the beauty of the human figure which stimulates contemplation of life’s deepest mysteries and stories".

I have included some of his works in this post. Some time later, I will post the excerpts of an e-mail interview with him. He was very open minded and gave frank answers to my questions related to the struggles of being gay, male nudity and his art. It was really wonderful to connect with him and I cherish the opportunity to cross paths with such a genuine soul.

a fine balance

boy in venice

Listen to what Ferringer has to say about how he creates such dreamy montages,

“I would describe my work as manipulated figurative photography. All work is created with a Nikon D60 and an iMac with Photoshop CS6. My goal is a contemporary photograph with a reference to painting, history and environment. Light, shadow and color all build stories around the male figure. I try to bring to my photography some of the qualities that Carravagio, Jacques-Louis David, Anthony van Dyck and others brought to their paintings. It is important that my art have a sense of history and mystery”. 

an indulgence of 100 days

Andrei

 Adam

black shaman

For more details and to see his amazing opuses, visit the below mentioned links,

http://dreamsandothermysteries.blogspot.com/
http://naked-man-project.com/joomla/en/featured/guest-artist/jim-ferringer-american-artist

Please bear in mind that some photographs show explicit male nudity. 

Androgynous - way to being genderfluid

Androgynous look is becoming vogue, many celebrities endorsing the androgynous look like Adam Lambert, Boy George, the late pop icon Michael Jackson to name a few and  models like Andrej Pejic, Tilda Swinton are considered hot properties in both male and female modelling ramp shows. So, is it bad to be gender fluid? One day you dress like a man and the next day you go out in your smashing and flamboyant female avatar. Well, you need to endure the heavy frowning of our society, you need to think beyond your thick social conditioning to enjoy such a drag and quite sure that those will be labelled as "freak shows". Photographer Leland Bobbe, created some wonderful photographs in his series " Half-Drag" he dismantles the social conditioning and explores the gender neutral stance to a new level. 

As mentioned in his website "His  series, Half-Drag offers a unique perspective on the drag queens behind the make up, while providing provocative social commentary on gender identity, normative ideas about gender roles, and the traditional male/ female paradigm". "Not surprisingly, Half-Drag has gone viral, appearing on over thousands of blogs, websites and online magazines in over 30 countries including Vogue Italia, Huffington Post, ABC News, The Sundance Channel, AOL and MSN".

Enjoy/Frown/Wow upon, but not at all easy to try this in public spaces.

 

 

 

Image credits: Google, Tumblr