I’m in love with Ryan Pfluger. Unlike a lot of people I’m not all that in love with the idea of being in love. But I am certainly in love with the idea of Ryan Pfluger. Admittedly, I don’t know Ryan. I never met him but I follow his blog religiously and enjoy his photography. What those two sources tell me about him are enough, I think, to fill in the gaps with my romantic imagination and fall madly, deeply in love.
Ryan is a photographer. How boring, right? Everyone calls themselves photographers. But he’s the real deal. His pictures are amazingly good. I don’t pretend to be an expert on these things. I just know I’m affected. And I’ve always thought a good measure of the skill of an artist was the work’s ability to affect. Like all visual media his is hard to describe. You have to look at it. But I hesitate to link to his website because of the nudity. It may not be work safe but the experience of viewing it is definitely worth the pink slip. The images are very sexual but in the most intelligent way.
Such intelligence has always been really sexy to me. I’ve never related to conventional airbrushed photos or dumb ideas of attraction. The combination of thinking with beauty and form is irresistible. It’s not the first time I’ve fallen in love based on mental evidence. There was Bjork. I’ve never met her either but something about her makes me love her. I figure any mind that can create that music must also fuel a wonderful person. It’s the same with Ryan. The man responsible for these pictures has to fit my bill.
On his blog Ryan’s sexuality is put out there in an open and honest fashion. It is not peek-a-boo contrived stupidity. That attitude toward sex is also very, well, sexy. I usually write about the religious right in purely political terms. But what makes them so fascists and unfair has nothing to do with politics. I think it comes from sex, or, discomfort with that part of their beings. They obsess over gay rights and abortion - one, an uncommon sexual identity, the other, a consequence of intercourse. They have little passion for any verses in the Bible not dealing with sex. I think it comes from deep trouble within their psyche for which conservative politics is only a symptom.
As I’ve written before, there’s a well-established pattern of those most dedicated to fighting sexual expression being quite perverted themselves. From Pastor Haggard to John Ashcroft to the Catholic priest scandal we see it over and over again. Strident repression leads to unhealthy acting out. The opposite of this is a revelatory reveling. And Ryan lets that show in portraiture and the well-lit nude.
Sex is a part of life. It ranks somewhere between oxygen and actualization on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So many social constructs were built around its ordering, controlling desire, setting rules that we have forgotten how many conventions are rooted in sex. The real thinkers in any time challenged literary, cultural, social, and visual norms. And in all that there was a challenge to how we see ourselves and relate to each other. The social leveling in the Renaissance’s Decameron contributed to the philosophical underpinnings for the French and our own revolutions. It was also pretty baldy. Shakespeare revolutionized the English language. He was also preoccupied with sex.
In Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare has many passages about a “subtle hole… Whose mouth is covered with rude-growing briers, Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood.” He speaks of, “…the swallowing womb… Of this deep pit where the dead Bassianus lies bathed in maiden blood.” And later, “This detested, dark, blood-drinking pit, ‘this gaping hollow’ …the ragged entrails of this pit.” The “pit” is all one big metaphor for vagina and that pit swallows men’s lives, loses wars and causes imprisonment. Shakespeare talked a lot about sex.
Ryan’s photography represents what I like to call “Cognitive Sexuality.” It is the thinking man’s pornography, the sophist’s distraction. It’s a pictorial description of the male form Shakespearean in its delicate eloquence. At times I’m more banal. It is – my god – so damn hot.
He rounds it out with descriptions of his friends that leave the heart longing and wishing for an invitation to some party you just know would be too cool for you. He’s quickly become one of those New York figures like Ryan Donowho or James Iha that you hope to see hanging out in a Parkslope bar or hopping around the Lower East Side. I often spot Donowho, but never my Pfluger. All I have are pictures.
Of course, we have our problems. No relationship is perfect. He sometimes frustrates me by taking too long between posts and I harbor seething resentment over him being thinner than me. But considering the abundance of perfunctory relationships and stale marriages an imaginary relationship with an internet personality is not so pathetic by comparison. For all I know he could kick puppies and set fire to rare ecosystems. These details are left out of his blog. But I know for sure I’m in love with cognitive sexuality and I know Ryan’s photos illustrate that concept about as well as I can describe it. So as long as I can afford the wifi our affair will continue. Playing the role of the jealous lover would contradict the open root of my attraction. So I’ll reluctantly provide a link. “Be gentle kind taker. My heart is pure.”
