n.maxwell.lander

I had to take advantage of having Jiz Lee (@jizlee) in town last week and get some shooting for the book in. Here’s a little preview. As of right now, the real good stuff is getting held back for the final release of the book. 

GUYS I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS! I’ve been holding back on talking about this new project I’m working on, but it’s time. Introducing Carnal Anomaly - my super 90s nerd fetish book! Yep, you hear that right, book. Like the kind that comes along with a publisher. Like the kind with deadlines, and guidelines and distribution and other people outside of me involved. CA is being published by ThreeL, a new publisher in the states that so far has been focussing on those of us that work in or around sex. The first book to be released by ThreeL arrive in May, and you’re probably gonna wanna pre-order it cause it’s by the always fucking amazing, Tina Horn (Love Not Given Lightly on Amazon). 

Anyway, back to me (shocking I know). The best part of this whole thing, besides everything about it, is that I have full creative control. It’s super rare for those of us who make a living off of our art to get this kind of opportunity, and I’m feeling pretty lucky about it all. I decided early on that I wanted to take full advantage of this and make something I wouldn’t get the opportunity to in any other context. So, NATURALLY, I’m making a 90’s inspired, cyberpunk styled, fetish art book. 

I'm really good at 2 things - character portraits, and naked people. being of the last north american generation to grow up without the internet, I was partially raised by a  media that was obsessed with portraying technology as a tool of the perverted. Movies and tv were filled with “hackers”, a painfully vague term used to describe someone who’s disconnection from society (and resulting connection to “the net”) led them to a life of vigilantism. More often then not these portrayals came with a moral judgement in the form of said characters sex life. To embrace technology was to descend into the depths of human depravity - homosexuality, bdsm, fetish, promiscuity and drug use were all a part of the sex life of a hacker. I think I took it to heart…

Instead of using "hacker" as a subject matter to explore all this (cause nobody likes those guys anymore), CA will be an application of a cyberpunk aesthetic to a  wide variety of bdsm activity, sexual symbolism and intimate portraiture. Centered around a core cast of characters, the narrative will emerge via the visual lineage of the subjects and the activities they engage in, not via the development of a plot to which the subjects are accountable to. Part imagination and part actuality, CA  will be a combination of highly staged images and captured organic moments. If successful, CA will illicit a combination of excitement and revulsion in the audience. 

There’s another thing to note in all this. If you've been following along with my life, you’re aware of the last 2 years being a time of actively reframing my relationship to my body and, to some extent, my identity (I know, I know, transitioning for most folks s a BIG reframe of identity, but…). In a momentary state of madness, I decided that a good continuation of this process would be to include myself in the core cast of this project… insert terror screams here. I’m gonna try and live up to the standard of goodlookingness set by the other folks involved (it’s a stupid high standard - see attached photos), but really more importantly, I’m hoping to carry on my history of putting myself in the positions that I ask other people to put themselves in. And maybe also my vanity was jealous of being involved in what I think will be a series of really bad ass images. 

Introducing the core cast of Carnal Anomaly - a weird sexy nerd photo series by N Maxwell Lander. 

Follow along to see the shots first. Now onward! For ART! 

Inspired by the recent wave of post apocalyptic media around me (namely Snow Piercer, the new Mad Max trailer and my sci-fi book club's current read, The Girl with All The Gifts), I figured it would be fun to take that aesthetic and run with it. I hammered out some of the kinks using myself as a lighting test and finally got a hold on some ideas i wanted to explore further so enlisted my pal, JP and got to shooting. I like the result so much that i’m gonna keep at it and do a full series. Consider this Instalment 1.

Thanks to the Willis for the make-up and wounding!   Lighting info below, for the photo nerds. 

As promised, the lighting info. The gels i used were the rosco sample pack kind, but i've used them so much that the colour identifier cards are gone, so the colours are a rough guess. the fact that they weren't all full CTO actually helped with getting it to look like there were flames in the background. And yes, I made them better in photoshop.