The Scent of a Man - New York Times March 5, 2006 Possessed The Scent of a Man By DAVID COLMAN THE camera, one of the most artful and habitual liars ever invented, should never take the stand. And yet wouldn't it be fun to see it break down under cross-examination? Admit its disingenuous ways and woeful inadequacies? Confess that its blank Cyclopean blink is as subjective as a hostile witness? Seldom do photographers exploit this weakness. Usually they play it as would a defense lawyer coaching a key witness, carefully prepping the camera with every advantage: lighting, makeup, Photoshop. Wolfgang Tillmans, by contrast, is a traitor to his art. His photographs came to notice, in their slipshod, snapshot, scrapbook style, for suggesting just how short the camera falls at representing whatever it is pointed at. The pictures, whether the imitation grunge fashion shoots that made his name in the mid-1990's or his latest lush abstractions and extreme close-ups — now at P.S. 1 in Long Island City, Queens — never fail to dissatisfy, teetering uneasily between realness and surrealness. Never is that more true than with his male subjects. Many photographers attempt to conjure up an idealized state of masculinity, and Mr. Tillmans has pointed his lens at all manner of men: soldiers, friends in London, himself in the shower. But he does precious little more than point; the burden is on you to interpret. When he came to New York in the mid-90's, Mr. Tillmans was in a bit of the same predicament. Without a clue as to the associations of this restaurant, that jacket or this grooming product (which, like it or not, is often the way we figure out what to wear and where to eat), he just gravitated to what he liked. That is more or less how he, a man who does not really believe in deodorant, stumbled on that emblem of American manhood, Mennen Speed Stick. "I liked the lack of promise," he said. "It doesn't promise sex, or a better standard of living. Just speed." Now whenever he comes to New York, he stocks up, for he can't find it at home in London. Its very plainness is what he finds sexy. "I'm interested in normality," he said. "I find it much more interesting than hypermasculinity." And what better defines American manliness? Introduced in 1958, Speed Stick (now with dozens of variants, including the catastrophic-sounding scents Icy Surge, Clean Blast and Cool Fusion) is the leading men's stick deodorant. After aerosols like Right Guard came under fire in the late 70's, Speed Stick came to own the nation's underarms. Even men who do not use it now remember it as a kind of adolescent rite of passage. "I never went to high school here, so I never knew it would evoke any of that," Mr. Tillmans said, "but I think subconsciously the product communicated that." Maybe it's the smell. A 1962 ad described the scent as "all man!" A Colgate-Palmolive spokeswoman would not divulge the scent's ingredients, but the Speed Stick Regular label calls it a "clean masculine scent." "That seems like a contradiction in terms," Mr. Tillmans said. Indeed. Sanitize it all you want, but masculinity is like the truth: never simple, and never clean. But a little deodorant can't hurt. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top