In
a new series of photographs, a couple fornicate in a stark white room over
rumpled, soiled-sex sheets. His hair,
more salt than pepper, is receding as quickly as it is balding. His chest, still barrel-shaped and strong,
belongs to that of an aging statesman.
Lines of wear and tear atop his shoulders slowly replace the ripples and
slopes of boyish muscle.
The
woman’s breasts drop heavily from her chest, emphasizing her bony, protruding
rib cage. Her freckled skin grips onto the last bits of elasticity. Well past vernal desire, their fusion is a border
town of early middle-age on the vista to ruin. And yet, their gnarled bodies, furious skin to skin contact, clenched fists and incessant kissing, evoke an erotic
reality that’s shockingly human.
A
little too human.
SusanSilas, a renowned photographer known most recently for her decaying birds
collection, ups the ante with her latest, Love
in the Ruins; Sex over 50, an ongoing collection that features her and her
husband intercoursing with abandon.
Beginning in 2003, the project is Silas’ “personal diary about sex and
sexuality. It is about the resilience and the decay of the aging body.”
Love in the Ruins; Sex over 50 is about a
married couple —over 50!—who have sweaty, frantic sex, who are not ashamed for
not looking like surgically enhanced pornstars.
The collection challenges shallow ideas of late about the time and place
for sex, love, what is, and what is not sexy.
In a world over-saturated with airbrushed, pornified bodies, assaulting
viewers with acrobatic positions that could break a yogi’s Om, Love in the Ruins; Sex Over 50 is disturbing
because it stands in opposition against cheap hookups pantomiming gonzo sex. Silas anchors sex within the context of
love. Old love to be exact. The
deep-space kind of love far removed and more refined that the lustful—and at
times vengeful—naïve, youthful love. Old
love is scary because like the human body, it has its limits: it has a
beginning and it has an end. And this
sad, despairing reality amplifies the disturbing climate of the collection as
it shows two people, unbotoxed and real, desperately grappling sex by-way-of-love
not in ruin, but in that short time before physical ruin.
It makes you wonder, what’s more ruinous: hasty sex among the foolish and
synthetic, or sex among the old and the wrinkly?
Love
in the Ruins; Sex over 50 continues at Studio 10 (56 Bogart Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY) through
April 6.
Photo by Susan Silas
