“The flash goes off after she’s finished fucking me. Brilliant darkness while my eyes re-adjust to dim light. I like it best when it’s dangerous. Her hand, a lens, a weapon. Shoot the parts I’m afraid of.” So opens Max, a new volume of photography and writing by Sam Penn and Max Battle. The book, out this week, is published in tandem with the opening of an exhibition at New York Life Gallery, which features 19 of Penn’s new works from the book blown up to mammoth proportions.
The show focuses on the photographer’s collaboration with a single subject—the eponymous Max—whose writing is interwoven with the intimate and explicit photos. Taken together, the imagery and text illustrate the couple’s attempt to balance a private sex life with their artistic practices. A lot is on display—but even more is left to the imagination. The book features nine additional photos, shared exclusively with CULTURED here. To mark the show’s opening, I spoke with the pair about mining the bedroom material, navigating power dynamics between artist and subject, and how hot it can be to switch the roles up.
Adam Eli: Tell me a little about the show.
Sam Penn: It’s a show about sex called Max, made of self-portraits, portraits, landscapes, nudes, and close-ups of bodies. Alongside the show, we’re putting out a book with my photographs interwoven with Max’s writing. We shot it over the course of about a year in New York, Paris, and Fire Island. This is also the largest work I’ve ever printed. I wanted it to feel like you are surrounded when you walk into the space, to emphasize what it’s been like to be sexually obsessed.
Max Battle: Sam and I have known each other for a while. I’ve always been attracted to her work and I always wanted her to take photos of me because she makes her subjects look so hot. When she started shooting me, I wanted to see what would happen—creatively!—if I let her do whatever she wanted. The direction the work was taking became clear pretty quickly and I felt like I needed a way to balance things out. We came up with the idea for the book so I could write about our relationship from my perspective, switching the dynamic between the photographer and the subject.
Penn: We wanted to make the collaboration as explicit as the photos. With the book as a part of the project, we found a place where each of us could submit and a place where each of us could take control.
Eli: You have described the show as confrontational. What do you mean by that?
Penn: I like taking pictures during sex, and if they’re good enough, I like showing them to people. Given that the content of the photos and the writing is a bit perverse, I wanted the way they were printed and installed to amplify that, not hide from it. The work is aware of, and, at points, directly addressing the viewer and the reader. We’re offering a huge level of access to ourselves so we tried to make it so that people can only engage on our terms. In the show there is a self-portrait of me in a sexual situation looking directly into the camera. The photo is seven and a half feet by five feet and the first thing you see when you walk in. After climbing five flights to see the show, the viewer has to meet my direct gaze before they get to look at anything else. This confronting moment was sort of me protecting the rest of the work.
Eli: And what about in the book?
Battle: I have a lot of respect for Sam’s work, so the pressure was really on. That the words were living with such charged photos of my body made the stakes even higher. Obviously, these are photos of me and I’m using the first person in the text, but I was also conscious that I’m building on a character from the world of Sam’s photos. I tried to create a piece of writing that could live with her work long term, something that would reflect what that subject, in that moment, needed to say. The only way to do it was to get as shameless with the writing as she was getting with the photos.
Eli: Sam, what was it like for you to be the subject? And to know that someone else would have a hand in the show?
Penn: Since Max is the person in the pictures, it was disconcerting at first. Generally, I want people to be able to project whatever they want onto my photos, I don’t include additional information. For this project, it was nice that Max’s text wasn’t the key to the photographs, but would deepen the work. It also helped me empathize with Max’s role in the project. We’re both subjects of the photos, but he’s a lot more exposed than I am. Through the text, I got a glimpse of how it felt to be as stripped down as he was.
Eli: It sounds like the two of you, Ethan James Green, and the gallery have gone into this with a lot of thoughtfulness and care. But no matter what, showing photos that are explicit and intimate must be scary. Is there anything else you’re nervous about?
Penn: I’m always nervous before putting out something new. Even though I have experience sharing a lot of my life through my photos, this does feel like a new level of exposure.
Battle: Of course I feel nervous, but I’m down to do this because I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out in gay male spaces that prioritize nudity, which has required me to develop a certain level of physical boldness. I have found a lot of power in not getting hung up on other people’s shame or unfamiliarity with my body. I’m aware that this show might make some people uncomfortable, but I personally don’t think it’s such a big deal. I don’t think that my body is that shocking, and I don’t think that sex is all that provocative. We all have one, we all do it. I think we’re showing something beautiful and intimate and true, so I’m good with that.
Eli: What do you want people to feel in this space? What do you want people to take from the show?
Battle: I hope people are able to engage with the work beyond saying “lol I saw that photo of you.”
Penn: I just want people to see the show in person because it’s difficult to see the photographs online without some level of censorship. It’s all about the physical experience of being in the space.
Eli: Will we be seeing another collaboration from the two of you in the future?
Penn: Right now, we’re trying to figure out how to talk about what we’ve made. So it really feels like we’re still in it. Besides that, I’ve been on tour with Lorde for the past seven weeks, and I’m going to do another Europe leg with her. I leave the day after the show opens.
Battle: Yeah, we’re not done here yet. I’m blogging, finding ways to write more casually online, seeing what happens with all this.
Penn: I still shoot Max all the time. I don’t think that’s going to let up at all, for sure.
in your life?
