Everything here is white but two things: the dark herringbone of the jacket and the grey wool of the socks. The bed, the wall, the crumpled sheet give back the same soft milk of tone, and against it the boy lounges, chest bare under the open tweed, a small pendant resting on his sternum. It should be a seduction, and half of it is. But my eye keeps sliding off the beautiful face and down toward the feet.
The socks are thick, ribbed, domestic, the socks of someone cold at home, and they ruin the pose in the most delicious way. Then the gun: not a weapon but a toy, a chromed ray-pistol from some Saturday serial, raised in mock threat. These two objects, the wool and the tin, undo the whole erotic proposition; they turn the smouldering young man back into a boy playing on a made bed. I find I love him more for it.
This is Weber’s particular genius: to arrange desire and then let a foolish detail loose inside it, so that glamour and tenderness arrive together. The tousled hair, the parted lips, the loosened jacket are all in place, and the toy and the socks are there to say do not take this too seriously. The print is gelatin silver, and the silver loves the whites, holding the sheets in a dozen shades of pale while keeping the herringbone crisp. What lingers is not the beauty but the joke, which is the more intimate thing.
Everything here is white but two things: the dark herringbone of the jacket and the grey wool of the socks. The bed, the wall, the crumpled sheet give back the same soft milk of tone, and against it the boy lounges, chest bare under the open tweed, a small pendant resting on his sternum. It should be a seduction, and half of it is. But my eye keeps sliding off the beautiful face and down toward the feet.
The socks are thick, ribbed, domestic, the socks of someone cold at home, and they ruin the pose in the most delicious way. Then the gun: not a weapon but a toy, a chromed ray-pistol from some Saturday serial, raised in mock threat. These two objects, the wool and the tin, undo the whole erotic proposition; they turn the smouldering young man back into a boy playing on a made bed. I find I love him more for it.
This is Weber’s particular genius: to arrange desire and then let a foolish detail loose inside it, so that glamour and tenderness arrive together. The tousled hair, the parted lips, the loosened jacket are all in place, and the toy and the socks are there to say do not take this too seriously. The print is gelatin silver, and the silver loves the whites, holding the sheets in a dozen shades of pale while keeping the herringbone crisp. What lingers is not the beauty but the joke, which is the more intimate thing.