A tattooed man sitting naked on the floor leans back as a woman straddles him and grips his lower back.
This photograph, titled Control, was taken by photographer Michael Barone. I’ve just become aware of this photographer’s work thanks to it being featured in FetLife.com’s “Sit on Santa’s Lap” Christmas giveaway. I really like this picture in part because the man’s bulk is strangely and indescribably attractive to me, despite my personal aesthetics trending towards leaner men.
Another thing I like about Michael Barone’s photography is that he describes his work as intentional not only in aesthetics, but in politics and society as well. His images are displayed in galleries sorted by political and sociopolitical topics, and often feature confident women and men of diverse shapes and sizes. Although I find his visual messages somewhat obscured, the titles he gives his photographs usually give a glimpse into his meaning. It was, after all, the title of this image that made me go look at it.
Although I haven’t heard it mentioned between all of the excitement over the sex toys in FetLife’s giveaway, one of the other prizes is a year-long subscription to an Internet proxy service called CryptoCloud.com, a service that helps you route around censorship
on the Internet. As dissimilar as Michael Barone’s photograph and this product might seem at first, I see an instant connection: controlling what we are allowed to look at or want to look at, whether by de-facto mainstream monopoly, government legislation, social taboo, or Internet filtering, is a clear and present exertion of control that I do not consent to. Neither you nor I should be unwillingly forced to submit to it.
