“I like looking at men” — in five words we have the philosophy of this month’s Slice guest-photoblogger, Jessica Yatrofsky. She likes looking at them, she likes getting them naked, she likes putting them in keyhole-viewable boxes (yes, naked — for an art installation), she likes getting them to masturbate for her, and she likes photographing and videoing what she sees, often with herself in the frame.
There are a lot of beds in Yatrofsky’s work, a lot of bodies and a lot of boys, often in the raw, retro look of her vintage Polaroid. “I’m married to my Polaroid. It’s instant, it’s film — a little, perverted thing.” She likes the resulting '70s porn-mag feel, the “blown-out imagery — everything in flash” and the especial gratification of erection pictures. Her Polaroids are at-hand artifacts and often make their way immediately into the set. “Being part of the picture I can claim or reclaim reality. And picture-making in general is a way to perv on something.”
What’s she after? She’s happy to tell you: “Nudity. I’m after getting people naked. I don’t think there’s an end to that. Just a need to create awkward or strange situations. I don’t try to control the outcomes; I just try to get whatever I can from the whatever happens.”
And yet what one sees again and again in her work is sharing: hot bodies coupling, sharing the spotlight of the image, sharing the power of being the eroticizer and the eroticized. Even with her subjects who come and model solo or masturbate for her untouched, there’s a kind of exchange: many of them are either foot fetishists or exhibitionists, and she knows they’re having their way with her, just as she is with them. “I like the ambiguity of power,” Yatrofsky says. “I know a lot about fetish — I’m from Vegas.” — Jack M.
