Seven Deadly Sins by Souphatra
August 26, 2009 9:51 AM   Subscribe

One girl - seven deadly sins. A rare instance when the artist and the model are the same person. Her other works..
posted by Surfin' Bird (59 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Not really that great, and photographers shooting themselves is about as rare as hydrogen. -- cortex



 
I dunno. That didn't do a whole lot for me.
posted by kbanas at 9:54 AM on August 26, 2009


Sin has had better advertisements.
posted by tommasz at 9:54 AM on August 26, 2009 [6 favorites]


Durer takes umbrage with your second sentence.
posted by munchingzombie at 9:56 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


one... it is not rare at all for the artist and the subject to be one and the same.
two... these are... ok, but deserve to be where they are, on flickr. Nothing new here.

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I found it rather meh-tastic. Perhaps others will feel different.
posted by edgeways at 9:56 AM on August 26, 2009


4 of them are wrong (or at least very unclearly showing the sin in question) and one is inexplicably mislocated.
posted by DU at 9:57 AM on August 26, 2009


A rare instance when the artist and the model are the same person.

Was this your first time looking at Flickr?
posted by interrobang at 9:57 AM on August 26, 2009 [19 favorites]


A rare instance when the artist and the model are the same person.

Attractive women posting mediocre self-portraits on flickr is rare? Seriously?
posted by brain_drain at 9:59 AM on August 26, 2009 [3 favorites]


A rare instance when the artist and the model are the same person.
posted by now i'm piste at 10:05 AM on August 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


Very Flickr-y
posted by hermitosis at 10:11 AM on August 26, 2009


She actually has some really good pictures in her other sets.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:12 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


You want to impress me? Invent three new deadly sins, so that they're equal with the number of commandments. I've seen these seven before.
posted by dortmunder at 10:22 AM on August 26, 2009


I was expecting Orlan. Instead I get Camwhorelan.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 10:24 AM on August 26, 2009 [11 favorites]


Taking fancy self-portraits has been de rigeure among female artists since the success of Cindy Sherman...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:24 AM on August 26, 2009


*photograph of self refusing father's request, to mow lawn, thus dishonoring him*
posted by DU at 10:24 AM on August 26, 2009


Sin #8: Being In The Way
Sin #9: Push Ups
Sin #10: Pee Shivers

Your welcome. Please forward 30% of all future 'sin taxes' to my address.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:25 AM on August 26, 2009 [4 favorites]


Is it just me, or were about four out of seven of those deadly sins lust?

But then I never studied the bible much.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 10:25 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


*photograph of self refusing father's request, to mow lawn, thus dishonoring him*

Breaking the Ten Commandments. Now, there's an idea for a photo set.
posted by dortmunder at 10:26 AM on August 26, 2009


That was probably a bit harsh. Please, 'artists', leave the crackle filter alone.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 10:27 AM on August 26, 2009


Sin has had better advertisements.

I'm not so sure that sin is what's being advertised here, really.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:33 AM on August 26, 2009


Why is this all over the internet today? It's the most mediocre thing I've seen in a while...
posted by joe defroster at 10:33 AM on August 26, 2009


Lame.
posted by R. Mutt at 10:34 AM on August 26, 2009


Which sin was which?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:36 AM on August 26, 2009


I thought it was pretty meh too. And the fact that the first picture you can see in her photostream is an over-edited picture doesn't help that impression.

Besides, the whole 'self-portraits by an attractive woman who knows how to use photoshop' has been done a lot of times before in flickr, probably most famously by Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir. I'm not saying they are bad photographers (I really like some of the pictures by Rebekka) just that the topic can be somewhat unoriginal, almost lazy. And, in this case, I don't see anything about this particular self-photographer that makes her original enough to be posted here.
posted by Memo at 10:36 AM on August 26, 2009


Wow, her photos are almost a straight-up parody of the worst of the Flickr aesthetic.
posted by rottytooth at 10:37 AM on August 26, 2009


Nothing remarkable about this set - either the idea or the execution.
posted by the cuban at 10:40 AM on August 26, 2009


nthng everyone.
posted by dabitch at 10:44 AM on August 26, 2009


She's wearing fake lashes.

Also, these photos are execrably dull.
posted by Pecinpah at 10:50 AM on August 26, 2009


Yeah, sorry to pile on here, but these are just atrocious webjunk.

Comically bad modeling, way overdone PP, completely lacking in subtlety, and s wildly self-indulgent streak that encapsulates the very worst of flickr.

This is basically an attractive girl posing badly for stupid pictures.
posted by lattiboy at 10:51 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


Judging art is difficult. At once, you are required to stand in front of a work and decide "Does this move me?" and then depending on that answer you have to decide "Do I like how it moves me?" To say art is bad, is to say that it does not move you. However to say art moves you, and it moves you to think bad things does not also make it Bad, it can in fact make it Very Good. I feel the kneejerk reaction of "your art is Bad and you should feel bad!" is not helpful in any case, but we must also be open to what feeling were put into a work of art, and how the artist felt. In other words, can the feelings of the artist be enough to raise art from its Schrödinger's Cat-like state of "Meh" and raise it to Good? Is the viewer necessarily the judge? These are the questions that hound the whole of the art world, in the post-modern art world. What we have come to agree upon is that all art exists in a time and place beyond the comprehension of either creation or viewing, but in an unending thread reaching back to the dawn of time, and forward beyond all our lifetimes, and all we can judge is based on all that came before and all that came after. We cannot truly know the relative level of any art, we do not have the perspective to judge.

That said, based on what I have seen before, this is not Good.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 10:57 AM on August 26, 2009 [5 favorites]


Did you favorite your own post?
posted by eyeballkid at 10:58 AM on August 26, 2009


These were sins of photography, right?
posted by mazola at 11:01 AM on August 26, 2009 [4 favorites]


Looks like it was a flickr contest. More tepid pics to add to the pile.
posted by podwarrior at 11:03 AM on August 26, 2009


souphatra, meet solea. You seem to have a lot in common.
posted by brain_drain at 11:05 AM on August 26, 2009


On flickr everyone's a photographer!
posted by photoslob at 11:06 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


Hilariously, this picture has red eye, and I don't think it was intentional. Way to use that $1000+ camera kiddo!!!
posted by lattiboy at 11:07 AM on August 26, 2009


On flickr everyone's a photographer!

Not that there's anything wrong with that.
posted by mazola at 11:08 AM on August 26, 2009


@ eyeballkid: Yeap! I am enjoying this discussion so far.. :)
posted by Surfin' Bird at 11:10 AM on August 26, 2009


Is it just me, or were about four out of seven of those deadly sins lust?

And then, the actual lust one didn't strike me as particularly, uh, lusty.
posted by kingbenny at 11:12 AM on August 26, 2009


Wait wait wait. So there isn't some kind of subtle multi-layered meta commentary in the hey-look-I'm-under-a-table-with-a-bunch-of-quarters-on-it tableau? It's not an attempt to evoke the facile value judgements we are taught about money and greed at a young age, by replicating the way an 8 year old would have constructed a shoebox diorama for school?

Gosh, art is so confusing.
posted by danny the boy at 11:18 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


"I feel the kneejerk reaction of "your art is Bad and you should feel bad!" is not helpful in any case, but we must also be open to what feeling were put into a work of art, and how the artist felt. In other words, can the feelings of the artist be enough to raise art from its Schrödinger's Cat-like state of "Meh" and raise it to Good? Is the viewer necessarily the judge? These are the questions that hound the whole of the art world, in the post-modern art world."

God, no. Hound?

The artist can be the audience for a piece of art. However, if you're arguing that the feelings of the artist can raise a piece from "Meh" to "Good," you have to care about the feelings of the artist. If you care about the feelings of the artist, you're part of a private audience; the public has no obligation. This artist made her work public, so she expects other people to care about the work.

The technique sucks. The posing sucks. The ideas behind the shots are simultaneously cliché and poorly executed. In this instance, the knee jerk reaction of "Your art is bad and you should feel bad" is justified and apt; better to dismiss this bullshit quickly so we can move on to giving our full attention to finding and experiencing good art.
posted by klangklangston at 11:20 AM on August 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


A rare instance when the artist poster and the model favoriter are the same person.

No need to thank me, I do it for the love of the blue.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:22 AM on August 26, 2009 [5 favorites]


I will also note, while conceding the suspect nature of my observation, that conventionally attractive women seem to be wildly over-represented as terrible artists. I suspect this is because everyone wants to flatter beautiful people by telling them that their feelings and vision matters, when they'd be better served by being told their work sucks and isn't even good enough for a Diesel Jeans ad.
posted by klangklangston at 11:22 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


@ eyeballkid: Yeap! I am enjoying this discussion so far.. :)

Shoot me now.
posted by joe lisboa at 11:23 AM on August 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


On flickr everyone's a photographer!

On Metafilter everyone's a critic!
posted by notyou at 11:23 AM on August 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


I suspect this is because everyone wants to flatter beautiful people by telling them that their feelings and vision matters...

I'd be more inclined to think it's "everyone" wanting them to post more pictures, however poorly conceived and executed. Maybe we'll get lucky amirite?
posted by DU at 11:29 AM on August 26, 2009


They're obviously a new set of sins, previously undocumented:
  1. Mislaying one's jacket.
  2. Bad table manners.
  3. Financial imprudence.
  4. Smoking.
  5. Stabbiness.
  6. Scratching.
  7. Cheap jewelry
posted by Grangousier at 11:39 AM on August 26, 2009 [6 favorites]


Why do they all seem to be "lust."
posted by Pollomacho at 11:40 AM on August 26, 2009


Rarely is MetaFilter so united, and that is a cause for joy! Let us celebrate our collective "meh!"

meh
Meh.
MEH!
posted by Bookhouse at 11:40 AM on August 26, 2009


(seriously, meh)
posted by Bookhouse at 11:40 AM on August 26, 2009


These are just not very good.
posted by ob at 11:43 AM on August 26, 2009


or 'meh'.
posted by ob at 11:44 AM on August 26, 2009


MehFilter
posted by DU at 11:45 AM on August 26, 2009 [3 favorites]


I will also note, while conceding the suspect nature of my observation, that conventionally attractive women seem to be wildly over-represented as terrible artists. I suspect this is because everyone wants to flatter beautiful people by telling them that their feelings and vision matters, when they'd be better served by being told their work sucks and isn't even good enough for a Diesel Jeans ad.

Dunno, seems like images of conventionally attractive women are popular regardless of who the photographer is. I think people just care more about seeing hotness than they do about aesthetics.
posted by rottytooth at 11:45 AM on August 26, 2009


Yeah, teh girlies are always more popular, at least on Flickr.

I am a self-admitted terrible photographer who got my camera for $100 on Black Friday, and a lot of my photos have me in them.

My friend has a Canon Digital Rebel and knows how to use it. A lot of his photos are panoramas, skyscapes, etc.

We used to compare Flickr stats and it would always end with him huffing and puffing and wishing he had boobies.
posted by Juliet Banana at 11:54 AM on August 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


thank god the blue is (for once) unanimous - I thought I was going to have to recalibrate my taste
posted by Think_Long at 11:56 AM on August 26, 2009


Now, if I were on a myspace or livejournal community of amateur camwhores, I'd be thinking, "hey, these are pretty good."

But I'm not.
posted by thisperon at 11:58 AM on August 26, 2009


meh
posted by ocherdraco at 12:05 PM on August 26, 2009


This is one fake-HDR-filter away from being an America's Next Top Model photoshoot.
posted by nicepersonality at 12:08 PM on August 26, 2009


Dunno, seems like images of conventionally attractive women are popular regardless of who the photographer is.

Self-portrait hotties on flickr are a whole different phenomenon. Unlike most photos of attractive women, these offer an opportunity for the viewer to communicate directly with the subject. Users leave fawning comments in the hope that they will be noticed and perhaps even receive - gasp! - a response. (They also do creepy things like use the notes feature to highlight and comment on selected body parts.)
posted by brain_drain at 12:10 PM on August 26, 2009


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