Harley Weir on art, porn and controversy

“It’s dreamy, vulgar, romantic, classic and subversive all at the same time.” So says Dazed Editor-in-Chief Isabella Burley of Harley Weir’s cover for Baroness, the new erotic paperback by the makers of Baron. The work of the acclaimed photographer (dubbed “one of the world’s finest perverts” by Burley, who was invited to guest edit the first issue) and stylist Haley Wollens, the image is one of three chosen to front the erotic paperback’s debut. The first to be unveiled was a limited edition designed by artist Penny Slinger, revealed on AnOthermag.com last week.

Founded by Matthew Holroyd as a twisted sister magazine to the already (dis)reputable Baron, Baroness seeks to intelligently and scintillatingly dissect sexuality in a way that isn’t just about creating “porn for the ladies”. “We didn’t want Baron and Baroness to be about men versus women,” explains Holroyd, who also creative directed the magazine. “The debut issue features work from a variety of different gazes and focuses on the idea of the individual, instead of gender binaries.”

“I kept trying to answer why there still haven’t been any successful erotic magazines for women, but coming to no real conclusion,” adds Burley. “Eventually, I realised I didn’t want to look back and try and correct a mistake from the past. Baroness isn’t about providing answers, but instead is here to provide lots of deviations.” And that’s where Weir comes in – for the past few years, the British photographer has been making a name for herself with work that blurs the lines between the sensuous, sexual and strange, whether capturing Klara Kristin for Calvin Klein or shooting Atlanta rapper Young Thug in his tub for Dazed.

Here, the photographer discusses the lines between art and pornography, being seen as a ‘female’ photographer, and the controversy surrounding - campaign image.

What was the concept behind this shoot?

Harley Weir: The concept of the shoot was quite abstract. When the magazine mentioned they were going to be called Baroness instead of Baron, it brought me back to my earlier work. My images were often about the idea of a woman’s point of view of what’s sexy, showing men as desired. I was really interested in returning the balance in porn and other sexually centred industries. I used to think, ‘Why isn’t there more porn for women?’ Like most things with money, men rule this arena, and that’s part of the reason why women don’t put much effort into the likes of porn. Personally, my sexuality is much more abstract – it might be a patent boot stuck in some mud with a pair of black horses copulating in the background. We need a S.E.X. revolution in these industries, but then again, I don’t like the idea of it being segregated. I watch male-directed porn about once a month and enjoy it, so maybe we are not so different. In the end, this shoot is about myself and Haley’s rambling fantasies. We took a long time to edit so it has become a very PG-rated, tasteful version.

What about the cover image with the cherry stalk? Where did that come from?

Harley Weir: Haley came up with this, I wanted to give some appreciation to one of my favourite body parts, the testicles, and Haley had this idea to turn them into a pair of cherries. After we did the shoot, some other things came to fruition for me about ideas of image ownership and who an image belongs to, how a photographer can feel like they’re taking something from someone when they shoot them. It’s a very strange transaction. I asked Roi Cydulkin – who was our ball model – to write about how the shoot took place and how it made him feel. As a photographer you’re so whipped up in your own frenzy, you don’t realise that you’re asking people to do some really fucking weird things, it can feel very violating when images are out there that aren’t in your control. So the front cover is actually really interesting to me. He wrote about his experience, he keeps it light and funny, but there’s definitely a lot of darkness there. It’s a very interesting thing to hear what a model has to say about what you did that day. And how it belongs to them, really, more than it belongs to you. A lot of photographers have the idea that (when) you take a picture of someone, it’s yours, that’s it. But I don’t agree with that. I think all of the images, for me, represent something about consent and image ownership. That’s what I learned from that shoot, rather than it being about gender conformity or what people are into sexually.

It seems like a tired topic, but what are your thoughts on the line between art and pornography?

Harley Weir: It’s blurry but I think it’s just quite evident when you see porn and you see ‘art’. Personally, I think it’s about context and intent. If you’re putting it on an XXX.bigtit.com sex website that you have to pay £3 to enter and the maker’s intent is that it’s porn, then you know that it’s likely to be porn. If the audience felt it was art or the artist felt it so then in turn that could be a great art piece.
 
And who is looking at it matters, too.

Harley Weir: Yeah. I mean, you know the deal. If you say it’s art, then it’s art. Art is what it is to you, so if someone says, ‘I’ve made an art porno’, then they’ve made an art porno. If someone else thinks it’s porn, then that’s fine too – I watch porn from time to time and I don’t think it’s so harmful. Sex can bring out the badness in people but it can also do the opposite. People are afraid of it because it’s so primal, but it shouldn’t be seen as this vulgar, dirty concern. Sex can be pure. Intent.

“A lot of photographers have the idea that (when) you take a picture of someone, it’s yours, that’s it. But I don’t agree with that” – Harley Weir

Are you tired of being classed as a female photographer who looks through a ‘female’ lens? Or do you think that’s something that’s been beneficial to you?
 
Harley Weir: Well, yes and no. I do think that my work can be overly sexed at times, but sex as a female was put upon me at such a young age that it’s kind of just something I have had to work through. As a child, I remember the main female character in any film was the sassy whore. She’s the one you wanted to be; forget the damsel in distress, the sassy whore had the power, that’s pretty much as good as it gets in terms of heroes within mainstream media. Need I add that that’s because all movies were directed by men. Until the equality is restored, female work will always be classed as overtly feminine. That’s all I’ve known: I was born and immediately put into a pink baby suit and everyone has treated me as a female ever since. If men were more in touch with their feminine side and women were more in touch with the man in them this wouldn’t be so cliched. It’s both important, and it’s a cliche that I do work which is very feminine.

And do you think your own work is a medium for you to explore your own womanhood, your own sexuality?

Harley Weir: My work is very basic in that sense, it’s about me learning and figuring out the world, womanhood and sexuality included. I’m really lucky in the ways that I can do it. I try to keep my personal and my commercial work together so that I’m always learning at least a little bit. It’s definitely something you’ve got to work your way through as a woman or a man – being typecast and all those things, the good and the bad.

Do you feel that you have a pressure to represent the female point of view?

Harley Weir: I do, but as a woman whatever I do is from a female point of view, so it doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve never called myself an artist but I do realise now that, as I have more people looking up to me, I should keep myself in check, and that has helped me be more aware. 

One of your images of Klara Kristin for Calvin Klein caused a lot of controversy lately. What were your intentions with the image, and did you think people took it out of context?
 
Harley Weir: I do think people went a little bit over the top, seeing as we are inundated with images of dramatic, wet women covered in oil clutching their naked breasts. If they look straight at the camera and it’s shot straight on, then ‘she’s in control!’ But you change the angle just a touch and it seems to remind people of things that are a bit more real. It did look a little like, ‘Oh! Something’s going on here.’ This could be a real transaction. Something frightened people about the image because it was ever so slightly not what they had seen before, it made people think about female representation. For me, I’m glad that people were talking about it, because it is a pretty dire situation – female representation within fashion. I was happy to listen to those comments and question myself. It’s something I’ve thought about since I did my dissertation at university, which was all about image ownership and this idea of ‘Who does an image belong to?’ So this was just another interesting question for me.

“I didn’t realise people would think that (Klara) looked out of control. She’s looking down at me, she’s aware. You’d think that she looked more heroic, I was the one on my knees” Harley Weir on her controversial Calvin Klein campaign

Klara obviously came out in support of the picture.

Harley Weir: I spoke to Klara immediately when people started commenting on Calvin Klein’s Instagram and I asked her, ‘What do you think about this image?’ We had a discussion and decided that it was OK because we both really liked the picture and thought that it was producing an interesting conversation. People kept saying in the comments, ‘I can’t believe you can call this art!’ Nobody had called it art. This is an advertising image. And the fact that people were trying to use that against me almost made it into art, which was what I found really powerful – people were talking about this advertising image and thinking, because it was evoking thought and it was shot from a slightly different angle, that suddenly it was art; people were putting it into that box on their own.

I thought that was really interesting – is it art? I got paid to do it and I was trying to advertise knickers, looking for an interesting angle that felt intimate. That’s what Calvin Klein asked us for, they wanted the campaign to be about love and intimacy – that image was me trying to make a situation feel very close and personal. I didn’t realise people would think that she looked out of control. She’s looking down at me, she’s aware. You’d think that she looked more heroic, I was the one on my knees. I think it’s more empowering – although I do agree she looks very young. But at 23, she’s a consenting adult older than most models and who has already starred in a highly erotic film by Gaspar Noé.

Did it get pulled or banned?

Harley Weir: No, no! Nothing technically wrong with it. There’s no nudity. Can’t even see half a nipple. The butt cheek is just from a different angle. You can see butt cheeks everywhere, from thong to coffee adverts. It’s almost not sexy enough and that’s what terrified people. They were like, urgh! This is ugly. We don’t get it. It’s disgusting.

Baroness is available to pre-order from BaronessMagazine.com

The white tile and glass of the shower stall were coated in thick, oily globs of glitter dripping down in nasty swirls, the colors packed so tightly they seemed almost brown, and my crotch looked splotchy and bloody, almost the color of menstrual blood, with flecks of gold and green and blue. And both my balls and cock burned, badly. The glitter was much coarser than I had anticipated and the hairspray I had given to use as an adhesive had no business going anywhere near my genitals. For a few minutes I stood there, hunched-over, twisting my spine as far as it could go, and I stared at this diseased-looking mess coating my burning crotch, stopping only to blink away the sweat now falling in big colorful clumps off my forehead, joining the strange chemical mixture on the cheap plastic floor. And now, as I stood there, unsure of how I could possibly wipe away the sweat from my eyes when my hands (and feet, for that matter) were covered in more glitter than my crotch, I remembered that just two days earlier, when the stylist and producer had emailed me to ask if I would be comfortable covering my balls with reddish glitter and squeezing them tight in a fist so that they might resemble a cherry emoji, I had immediately said NO!, and yet there I stood, confined by the dirty glass walls in a kind of quarantine, dedicated to the task, but totally failing at it. And so I turned on the water, and I took a shower.

A few minutes later, towel-dried and mostly-clean, I bent over once more, staring at my poor raw reddish cock, and began to brainstorm: okay, the hairspray didn’t work, so next we’d try baby oil. The make-up artist had left me an enormous economy-sized bottle of Johnsons & Johnsons baby oil, and so, careful not to get bits of color or confetti anywhere outside the stall, I tossed aside the dirty towel and arranged all the different colored glitters in little plastic bins at my feet. First, I applied a thin coat of baby oil, and then, as delicately as I could, I dabbed different-colored glitter, first to my dick, then my balls, then my pubes and my crotch; and then, of course, since glitter is never, ever obedient, I repeated the whole process. In spite of the chafing, I actually began to like this; it was meditative, and just as I started to feel a small sense of accomplishment, there was a knock at the bathroom door: it was the stylist, and she wanted to see how it looked. Excited, I washed the glitter off my hands, wiped away some of the excess from my crotch, and I called her in. There I stood, naked, shrunken, cold, and moist, but I felt some sense of pride about doing what I had been told. The stylist walked in and immediately started laughing – and then I started laughing, too. “It looks like you have an STD,” she said, cringing slightly, and I looked down, and cringed too. She was right; it looked awful. Shit! Maybe I was just doing it all wrong? But what could I do differently this time? Maybe it was time to time to call in the professionals.

I showered, and wiped myself clean as gently as I could, the skin on my dick now chafed almost to the point of numbness. The stylist and makeup artist joined me inside the glass walls of the shower stall and, with slow, deliberate movements, they went about applying the baby oil and glitter, with painterly precision, first to the penis, and then to my scrotum, and then over again once more. My arms raised and leaning to each side, I watched closely at the way their fingers seemed to know exactly where to go and how to move, transforming my genitals into some approximation of a pair of cartoon cherries. And as a thick layer of sweat formed at my brow, and an assistant obediently dabbed it away with a clean towel, I felt a little bit bad for this team working so patiently at and on my privates. It gave me some small comfort that at least my genitals had shrunk enough from the pain and cold to ensure they had a bit less surface area to cover. 

After about ten minutes, the team stopped working, and called in the photographer and production designer, awaiting their approval. One by one they entered the bathroom, and, staring out from the confines of the shower stall, I could now see five or six sets of eyes staring back at me, only their line of sight was a couple feet below mine. I had been warned to keep still, so as not to knock away any of the thin, delicate layers of glitter, which barely clung to the coarse flesh of my cock; and so when an audible sigh of relief finally passed through the room, I could breathe easy again. As they readied me for the short, but perilous, journey over to the next room, for the actual photo shoot, I took a moment to look down at the work they’d done, and appreciate the level of dedication. I wondered if this was something they often did, or if this was something new for them. It had certainly been new for me. Nevertheless, neither my cock nor my balls could’ve done it without them.

– Roi Cydulkin