To say we are all living in strange times – and unprecedentedly strange times – is an understatement.

I know I’m not alone thinking and expressing that sentiment while living and breathing its reality. Day after day, the toll of this COVID-19 pandemic grows ever greater, the reality heartbreaking and life altering in ways that defy the imagination. Unlike others, at this very moment I am very lucky – my family, friends, colleagues and I are all healthy and safe, abiding by our national and local restrictions with the gravity they deserve, self isolating and trying our hardest to flatten that curve.

While the work and pace of my professional life have increased exponentially in the last few weeks, like so many I have more time on my hands now my life is focused almost exclusively between these walls. With some of that time, I’ve been revisiting the thousands of frames I’ve photographed over a decade, regarding them (and my body) with new eyes and an often-surprising kindness, fondly recalling those moments, places and desires. A number have been posted on Twitter, others await the possibility of a new form. The remainder I’m hoping to post here once the words I lately struggle to write finally grace the page. (The two shots that accompany this post were captured in a once grand hotel in Manchester during the northern summer of 2015. After days of dreary grey skies and rain, the sun finally broke. On the morning of my departure, the light allowed me to capture some of my best work.)

My wish is a return to my past form and regular posting might bring a little comfort during this stressful and anxious point in our lives – to my loyal friends and readers as well as myself.

On that note, please drop by and indulge yourself at any time if this space gives you joy, inspires your eroticism, exhibitionism or desire, and brings you that comfort. Even though I can’t make as material a difference as I’d like during this time, I want to offer this Love Hate Sex Cake as succour, relief and possibly some light during this despairing darkness.

Be well and stay safe. 

~ Minx x

It’s in the sigh, in the fire, in the shimmer
Between sweet thighs, in the pout
Beyond the frame

Once his gaze falls upon her, once his touch maps the limits of her form, once his lips whisper their kisses into naked feminine warmth, she is changed, transformed.

No longer purely woman, she is more.

Muse, creation, force, she is the sigh, the moan, the roaring pulse, oil on canvas, the sensual delicacy of his brushstrokes, light and shade, the camera eye, shutter click slicing through the night, the sweetest skin, the honeyed come, voluptuous pixels aching to transcend the screen, the erotic words composed in fluorescent virtuality, the desire etched into the throb of her glistening velvet, the lustful yearning written on the body with tip of devouring tongue, with the artist’s hand, with the need of man, with the slide of thick, throbbing flesh, with the seductive scratch of the writer’s nib.

In the forgetting, in the act of extinguishing our fire,
in the struggle to rid my body of its erotic longings, its carnal addiction,
it is the shutter’s click, it is this sweet yet cruel apparatus that serves as a reminder of you.

As my transfixed gaze took in the detail of the garments suspended in the glass case, I wondered about the women who had inhabited their forms, the bodies once swathed in fabrics coarse and refined. I wondered about their curves, their skin, their scent, their sensuality, desires and cravings, my eyes absorbing the shapes and textures, attempting to place my fair flesh within them and within that time and place.

Standing in the shadowy museum light, I willed them to speak their secrets, their stories of love and lust and loss. I willed them to whisper the tales of these women. If only to reassure me of my own place in the world. If only to reassure me that my voracious and often limitless carnality is not merely a product of the here and now, but rather a hunger we carry, we bear, we release through each and every lifetime.

She stares for an age at the screen, barely able to see through the passion blurring her vision, barely able to comprehend the desire she provokes in such a man.

Yet, the proof is there before her. The proof of his desperation, his yearning, the ache that crawls under his skin.

She blinks over and again, her chest rapidly rising and falling, her breath catching in her throat, her slick cunt slamming against the denim between her legs.

And although she realises the gesture an imitation, she too cannot control the impulse to merge her flesh with his, to extend her touch to the electronic body, caressing the large, strong hand reaching out in a futile attempt to feel her own absent form.

Tousled hair framing her down-turned face, rosy nipples erect, stockinged thighs pressed coquettishly together, legs long and lean accentuated by vertiginous stilettos, the gems on the tiny g-string sparkling in the low light. One arm hooked high on the wardrobe door, the other gently caressing her hip, she waits for the detached glass eye to capture her pose.

It is a poor substitute, this mechanical silver box, staring, gazing but never truly seeing the desire rising up from deep within and prickling her skin. Orange light blinking, body momentarily frozen, she wonders if he will sense just how she aches for his presence, yearns for the sensation of his fingers trailing over her burning naked flesh, his large hand cupping her moist flower, his strong masculine body overwhelming her from behind, drawing her into his own incendiary lust.

On this steamy, airless night it is her only means to him, to his eyes, to his body hungry and needy. And on this night all she has is this feeling, this intensity, this moment, frozen in time, alone in her room.

It begins with an innocent double click. With the attachment finally open, her eyes grow wide, jaw drops, lips part; the space between her legs begins to throb.

Forgetting the public surroundings, she stares unashamedly at the picture-filled screen, moving in as close as she can before the photograph disappears into a mass of coloured pixels.

Standing by the rumpled bed they had marked only a few hours earlier, he is wearing the suit that always makes her swoon. Charcoal single-breasted jacket, crisp white shirt, flat front trousers, heavy leather belt, all topped off with his unmistakably cheeky grin.

And his big strong hand around his growling angry cock.