Photography Competition Commended – Niamh McBratney
Photography by Niamh McBratney.
Under His Skin
I don’t think he knows I’m here, embedded in his dermis. We ended things in a typical rage: “God, you get under my skin!” And I said what now seems to me the line which sealed my fate: “You’d be so lucky!” And, the next morning, I came to, and there I was. Don’t get […]
The Woman of the Perfume Ad
The woman of the perfume ad is a complex construct. The advertisers who create her are geniuses of manufacturing desire, of finely chiselling models into shape with slogan and sign. Perfume ads come with tropes: her armpits are hairless; no blemish taints her skin; her hair is slicked back with seaw
Ode to Joy
When I first began to touch myself it wasn’t “masturbation”—it was nothing but an expressive action. Its implications and attached politics were unknown to me. I was unencumbered by any words or conversations that may have inflected my private action with shame or disgust. I was, at least fo
