Alfonso Blanco is a photographer based in Oviedo. He’s been taking pictures for almost a decade, but only started recently to develop more personal projects, around topics such as introspection, emotions, sexuality, gender, relationships and fantasy.
His latest series NO HETERO, aims to encourage acceptance, and is accompanied by writings from his diaries.
“This project is about sexuality’s exploration from inside out. From within my head to outside of the closet. From in to out of my ass. The aim is to explore my sexuality through photographic language. With an expressive and aesthetic perspective that illustrates the different stages of the discovery of a sexuality outside of the Heterosexual Matrix imposed, as well as all the changes in the process. The communicative intentionality is to show with delicacy and intimacy one sexual orientation socially invisibilized; and personally underestimated and ignored. With a mysterious and dreamy approach, shrouded in sweetness and delicacy, the subject shows the difficulty to find their own place. The incongruity of the dichotomy of the sexual orientation, fleeting from binarism, seeking to fit in knowingly mistaken references and falling in the mischievous hegemony. Fighting the way out of the heteronorm. To construct and deconstruct. Build your own identity and deconstruct the previous one. To deconstruct is not to destroy. The fear to the unknown, to the new. How revolutionary is what you didn’t know and finally winds up being “not so special”. Late everydayness. This series is born from a doubt, from curiosity and it keeps developing little by little into a revelation, a sign of an identity. A portrait.“
I didn’t know. I’m straight, you know?
In the beginning it was simple curiosity, I thought it was a remote possibility, a faraway call. Well, maybe at some point I could perhaps feel attracted to another man, and then maybe I consider to try it and it will be something very intense and interesting. Besides, I may fall in love with someone from my own sex, right? And then we might kiss. I had the chance on a silver platter and said no “not this time, not right now, thanks. Flattered, but it’s not the right time.” But I had to try it, the light wouldn’t stop, I couldn’t stop thinking, I couldn’t stop looking. I wanted to traverse the mirror.
Then it all exploded eventually, then what’s this feeling in my chest? The flames have entered within me. It burns inside the eagerness for the new. I crave interaction. But I’m confused. I feel submerged in something that makes me question my orientation, has my femininity changed? Sexpolitics duality doesn’t let me breathe. Do you not fit? Nobody does. Are you suffocating? Stop running from side to side, you’ll just make your chest explode. Life goes on and the world spins at more revolutions to what you’re ready to support, remember you suffer from vertigo. Hold on, don’t fall. There are still some flutters left in the storm, but you’re allowed to be frightened. Don’t be afraid to change, don’t fear desire.
How we’ve changed, the world and you. Your sudden need was to deconstruct yourself from all fronts. Should I deconstruct myself from a new identity? Must I exert with my body the visibilization politics I so much admire in others? Or have I always been the same person who didn’t know how to open their eyes. Who didn’t know how to open up, who doesn’t know how to open up. I could try something new, let myself go, stop obturating. How do body parts become erogenous zones?
Now it turns out that curiosity and is synonymous with care and grooming, I didn’t know. They don’t really talk about feces on the other side, loud at least, not even on the internet I frequent. How much do I know my ass?
How do you do it? How do you fuck clean? Channels have come out bidirectional.
What about that pleasure they talk about?
I’m tired of waiting for the occasion, tired of the “I might like it”.
That’s it, it’s in my hand. I took the wheel and understood. It’s not about a sentimental call, it’s not a remote possibility of romantic attraction, it’s sexual desire. Masculinity, penetrability, anal pleasure and femininity.
I’m not scared. I closed the door to curiosity. I ended up with the heterocenterd fallacy, simplistic and binary. Deconstruct sex, own body and others, penetration, sissyphobia, feces, polyamory, love at grindr hallways,
chaos at your head’s hallways. It’s not a blinding light. Now I shed the light, I answer my questions.
I define my body, my pleasure, my desire, my orientation. Here is where I stand, proud.