Praise for Analog Human Studies
Analog Human Studies, MenOnPaperArt, London, 2023
Are these skinny, heavily tattooed bodies male or female or at the intersection of the sexes? As in a Harold Pinter play, we feel we’d understand what’s going on if we’d only arrived a moment earlier; uncomprehending, we feel we’re close to the beautiful mystery these painted, shorn people embody.
In Slava Mogutin’s new book Analog Human Studies, he dives into themes that have inspired him throughout his career: sexual liberation, otherness and eschewing anything “normal.”
Fearlessly confronting the power structure in both the court of law and the court of public opinion, Slava made his voice heard and shone a light on so many who were systemically marginalized and discriminated against. Slava wanted to put a human face on a community long subject to misinformation and erasure.
With his subjects coming from all over the world—London to New York, Berlin to Buenos Aires—Analog Human Studies captures a portrait of queerness that refuses uniformity; by covering decades of work, this collection shows not only the development in Mogutin’s own work, but the changes in how queerness looks, and what it means to be queer as the world has changed.
Analog Human Studies is provocative and agonizingly intimate. Mogutin resituates the art of the queer portrait, in tune with a shifting global culture—bestowing it with an open-ended face, expanding its meaning beyond sex and love, into the realm of platonic community and the gritty mundane. In refusing to conform—in letting fantasy exist next to the concretely real—Mogutin opens up a world of queer possibility.
Morgan Becker, Document Journal
Analog Human Studies is a labor of love that showcases Mogutin’s evolution as an artist. Starting with the outtakes from his first monograph, Lost Boys, the collection has grown to include a mesmerizing array of portraits, nudes, and striking imagery. Mogutin’s lens captures the raw essence of individuals and their surroundings, offering a glimpse into their lives and emotions. Through his art, Mogutin captures their essence, freezing moments in time that convey the power and complexity of the human spirit.
Analog Human Studies limited hadcover edition