Symon Chow
Chelsea Summers
/Photo: Symon Chow
A susurration of perversity...
Text by Chelsea G. Summers
There is a susurration of perversity about the photos of Symon Chow. Each one has this lovely melancholy sense glow of sweetly menacing naughtiness, and I respect that. More, I’m drawn to it. The matte black stocking stretched over gleaming flesh; the discomfiting juxtaposition of black nails, twee bows and shiny metal; the uncomfortable incongruity of antlers and tits; the flash of clit, hiked thighs and towel spread on the floor: these images are more than merely risqué. They are thoughtful and they invite narrative. They make you, the viewer, complicit in their pained intimacy.
Which is, after all, pretty much the definition of perversion, the willing complicity in pained intimacy. If no one’s hurting, it’s vanilla, normative, and strewn with rose petal Sarah McLaughlin styling. I wager that Symon Chow does not listen to Sarah McLaughlin.
I stumbled across Chow’s work on Tumblr. It was the girl on her side, white, white skin blurring with the white, white sheets, the white, whiteness relieved only by her black mask, black sensible shoes, and black accusatory eyes. I thought it was a vintage photo—most of Chow’s photography seems torn from other times; naughty French postcards, the homage to Man Ray, the seedy Polaroid of ‘70s wood-paneled no-tell motels—and I was delighted to find out that it was not.
Which is, after all, pretty much the definition of perversion, the willing complicity in pained intimacy. If no one’s hurting, it’s vanilla, normative, and strewn with rose petal Sarah McLaughlin styling. I wager that Symon Chow does not listen to Sarah McLaughlin.
I stumbled across Chow’s work on Tumblr. It was the girl on her side, white, white skin blurring with the white, white sheets, the white, whiteness relieved only by her black mask, black sensible shoes, and black accusatory eyes. I thought it was a vintage photo—most of Chow’s photography seems torn from other times; naughty French postcards, the homage to Man Ray, the seedy Polaroid of ‘70s wood-paneled no-tell motels—and I was delighted to find out that it was not.
What it was, and what all of Chow’s photographs are, is fucking art, and there’s little I love as much as a great fucking photograph. The vintage shot out of time speaks to the plasticity of erotic desire. Our bodies may be moribund things, tied to the here and the now and the press and crush of our present, but our desires are free-ranging. We are kings, we are courtesans, we are not men, we are furry. We are when and where and who we want to be in our erotic heads. We can shut up and take it, we can force you to your knees, we can do both at once and now and forever.
Symon Chow’s pictures celebrate, capture and enable that writhing host of possibilities. Is it comfortable? No. But it is exciting.
Symon Chow’s pictures celebrate, capture and enable that writhing host of possibilities. Is it comfortable? No. But it is exciting.
- 11/03/2010
