In The Other Place, Jeff
Burton shows some of the workings of the porn industry.  In contrast to the recent collection of
posed portraits of porn stars by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders in XXX (reviewed in Metapsychology April
2005), Burton shows people in action or off-guard, between
performances.  It includes both
male-female sex and male-male sex, and is occasionally explicit, although it
does not include explicit pictures of intercourse.  However, this is not really a documentary work, and it does not
show the "truth" behind the appearances.  Rather, it is far more informed by aesthetic sensibilities.  The photographs are full of rich colors, and
the large format images with high quality printing make the book a pleasure to
handle.  The people in the pictures are
almost never shown directly and show no awareness of the existence of the
camera or the photographer.  In many, we
see only glimpses of people’s bodies, and some they are shown in reflections,
or are out of focus.  In a good many
photographs, we just see the location, surroundings or details of the scene,
with no people shown at all. 

Depictions of pornography tend to
wear their values on their sleeve: it is either shown either as a brave
exploration of human sexuality, harmless fun for adults, or the heartless
exploitation of vulnerable people. 
Burton’s approach resists such simplicity.  He uses a rich pallet and shows a loving fascination with his
subject, yet he also conveys discomfort with the life of porn actors and
conveys the unhappiness that goes with can be associated with selling an
intimate part of one’s life.

Some examples.  The images are not titled and the pages are
not numbered, so it is hard to refer to them, except by description.  In one image a couple of men seem to be
having sex in a library, but it is hard to tell because they are out of focus,
while crisply in focus on the left is a carved torso of a bearded man,
apparently part of a mantelpiece sculpture. 
On the facing page is another photograph largely out of focus, of some
kind of pet bird, with no associated sexual content.  Both images have pleasing colors, with golds, lovely greens, and
muted reds.  In another picture, a woman
with long golden blonde hair lies with her head backwards, and we see just her
head, neck, and the top of a lacy piece of clothing.  Her mouth is slightly open, and her blue eyes are visible, but
they don’t seem focused on anything and she looks almost like a corpse, except
for the blush to on her cheeks.  We can
see grass below her and a man’s foot, in a short white sock and white sneaker
in the dark behind her, and from the context it is likely that she is having
sex with someone.  In another pretty
picture, we see slightly out of focus a man’s muscular chest, in rich pink
hues, framed in an inverted V by another man’s hairy thighs, in focus.  A few pages on, there is a dramatic couple
of images facing each other.  On the
left page, there’s a highly explicit image of a woman’s shaved vagina as she
faces downwards.  It is raised in the
air, ready for sex, and round her waist is a metal belt draped over a rich red
sheet.  Someone’s hand rests on her
back.  On the opposite page is a
curtained stage, with two director’s chairs lit in red, presumably prepared for
a discussion between two people who will soon come on stage.  The folds of the curtain behind the chairs
strike the viewer as they are illuminated in the red light.  High above the curtain is darkness, that
takes up nearly half the image.  In this
darkness, are two ornate decorations, although it is hard to work out their
relation to the stage.  The red in the
two pictures is closely matched, and they make a strange juxtaposition.

There is some muted humor to The
Other Place, such as in the picture of a naked man framed by deep green
plants, bending forward in front of the camera so we just see the top of his
head, apparently fellating himself, or the picture of a flat bed truck in a
wooded area, behind a wide tree, with two naked men wearing just socks and
black sneakers, presumably having sex with a third hidden man or woman.  Indeed, many of the images have a subtle
playfulness combined with a sense of pathos. 
Burton seems to take great pleasure in unusual perspectives, surprising
vantage points, and making his viewers guess at what they might be seeing.  While there’s no sense of shock within the
pictures, there’s some surprise in their arrangement, so that while having the
book open at one point might present quite innocuous subject matter, turning
the page may display an explicit shot of genitals. 

Burton’s work seems like a
commentary on the pornography industry — after all, it would be odd for him to
just use porn actors as his subject as a random choice, or because he happened
to be hanging around with them.  As a
commentary, it is slightly inscrutable, hinting at judgments rather than making
them directly.  Yet the book is full of
emotion and provocation, making it a demanding experience to scrutinize the
pictures.  Certainly, it is a far more
interesting body of work than Greenfield-Sanders’ XXX and it is one of
the most striking depictions of pornography in recent years.  It deserves a wide audience. 

Link: Twin Palms
Publishers

© 2005 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.