The Guardian, again

[AnnaMagnani]

DH drew my attention to this bonkers article in the Guardian about a man who had a collection of polaroids he had taken of women on his TV, usually undressing.

These are currently in an art exhibition, not incinerated as the stuff left by a dead weirdo, as the person who found the photos then found another of the man himself wearing a bra.

I quote:

Girard believes this single self-portrait changes how we should view the My TV Girls collection. “This is the absolute key to deciphering the mystery enveloping the work,” says Girard. “Tom Wilkins was not a pervert. This archive was a documentation of what he wanted to become.” By taking the pictures, Girard believes, Wilkins appropriated a female body. “That’s the mystery and genius of it. This shows how, in photography, you dive into your subject – you become the subject.

Can I propose another more obvious solution, that he was a pervert, this is how you generate porn in the era before VHS and the internet, and it takes a bit more than putting on a bra to have a female body?

Honestly. Although I was impressed how I've radicalised DH.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/nov/27/creepy-weird-mystery-my-tv-girls-fetish-archive-tom-wilkins

@Tinysoxxx you put it brilliantly

…missed the final sentence though - the link in The Guardian article where the actress could buy a book on the whole experience so she could see if she featured in it whilst lining the coffers of the man who exploited the man who exploited…..

The Guardian made it so easy.

To the editor of The Guardian - what are you thinking?? I grew up reading The Guardian and their women section.

I occasionally wonder what Jill Tweedie would have made of it.

Or Martha and Mary. Would Martha be more MN and Mary more #BeKind? (Do I remember correctly that this was a regular column?)

Glad this has been posted here, it's been winding me up all day since I read it this morning!

What bollocks. Making out like it's so mysterious why he didn't take any more Polaroids after 1982. Um, I'd hazard a guess that's when he acquired a VCR. Presumably the rest of his porn collection wasn't considered very artistic.

It makes viewing them an uncomfortable experience, as if looking through the eyes of an obsessive, misogynistic stalker.

Yes that is accurate. Only the very next sentence is:

And then Girard found one image that he believes changes how we should interpret the Polaroids.

Natural instincts should be thrown out of the window if a man thinks we should think differently about a perverted man.

This is off the scale, even for the Guardian.

👏👏👏👏👏

This is a new low even for the Graun.

@AnnaMagnani your DH hit the nail on the head. I would have paid good money to have heard the ranting.