Christopher Schulz created one of the greatest magazines about naked dudes on the planet: Pinups. Since I first interviewed Christopher about the photo-based graphic design experiment back in 2008, he’s been a busy bee. Now in its 12th issue, the latest Pinup is cult favorite actor Guillermo Diaz, sexy-dancing to records in nothing but a pair of leather cuffs. In his spare time, Christopher has been appropriating vintage and contemporary porn for beautiful, amusing—and sometimes unnerving—digital collages in his Tumblr-based design project, Mopping Is Stealing. He’s also begun a series of illustrations devoted to his long-time muse: lovably corn-fed thespian Seth Rogen.

Catch up with Christopher after the jump! And if you happen to be in New York, don’t miss the latest Pinups release party on Saturday, June 19th at Blackout. (NSFW butts and penises below).

Why did you choose Tumblr as the platform for Mopping Is Stealing? Do you feel Tumblr is changing the way gay men interact with porn?
Most of the blogs that I refer to are Tumblr blogs, so it made sense to use Tumblr for my blog. I suppose it’s clear that Tumblr is #1 when it comes to queer content, so I like that about it.

Do the Mopping collages start with a mental image of what you want the piece to look like, or are each models’ limbs and appendages like puzzle pieces waiting to be arranged into an undiscovered masterpiece?
I don’t ever start with mental images of what I want a collage to look like—they just come together one at a time. I have a folder of images that I’ve pulled from other blogs. As long as I’ve had my own computer I have saved Web images to my desktop if they struck me in one way or another. Once blogs became as common as email addresses, I wondered about the differences and similarities in stockpiling favorite images privately vs publicly.

To me most bloggers have nothing to do with the content they put on their blogs—their role is really “viewer with an audience”. As posts get reblogged across many other blogs, the notion of defining oneself through one’s curated list of images becomes less relevant. What’s really happening is the development of an unorganized collective. With Mopping is Stealing I am experimenting with the reblogging process, and the creator-viewer relationship.

What intrigues you about the subtle differences between the contemporary and vintage bodies that coalesce in Mopping?
I’m most intrigued by their similarities. Most vintage male erotic imagery has an aesthetic resonance today, especially in queer art, and it has some parallels to the amateur erotica that seems to exist primarily on the Web. There’s a charming naivety in most vintage erotic imagery that is shared with the amateur digital erotic imagery that circulates on Tumblr blogs today. The analogue process of vintage photography allows it to have more flaws than the perfection of the Photoshopped imagery from today’s porn studios, allowing it to be more human and thus, more arousing.

Do you see the fragmented male bodies in Mopping as a variation/extension of Pinups’ deconstructed men?
Not directly but you certainly could make a connection there. When I made the first collage (incidentally also the my first post), I had no plan. It wasn’t even meant for a blog at the time. I was merely experimenting with found images. The process of creating the collage made me think about blog culture and ownership issues with these types of images. The connection to Pinups is that the magazine and blog both share a process that involves creation, not just mere curation.

Are all of the images in Mopping found photos, or are some of them your own work? How has Pinups changed the way you look at found porn?
Most have been found photos but every once in a while I’ll pull from my own photography because it’s high resolution, which is sometimes more useful than low-res found images. With Pinups I take on many roles: photographer, producer, editor, among others. It’s the editor role that turns on when I look at found porn. When I have a collection of images in front of me, I’ll pull one that stands out and think of what would look best next to it. That’s the starting point with most of the collages but they generally serve as exercises of the editing process and they help me come up with new concepts that I might apply to Pinups.

When I started it was just about pairing images with other images to create strange but aesthetically pleasing collages but as I continue with the collages I’m becoming more aware of other aspects, like positive vs negative space, using positive space to shape negative space and vice versa. I’ve also become aware of the balance and imbalance between the design elements and the erotic elements. The more experimental the design becomes, the stranger the image becomes, and the less erotic.

How did Guillermo Diaz end up modelling for Pinups? Did you approach him with the idea or was he already a fan?
I met Guillermo at one of the Pinups launch parties. He expressed an interest in modeling for the magazine. At first i thought he was kidding but when we met to go over all the details, he was 100% on board. He was wonderful to work with and I really admire him for getting involved in the project.

Describe the relationship between graphic design and photogrpahy in your work. Is it a top/bottom type of thing or are they totally vers?
The relationship between graphic design and photography is different from Pinups to Mopping is Stealing. With Pinups, I act as photographer and designer, so they’re very intertwined in the process. With Mopping is Stealing, the photography pre-exists so it’s used as a design element.

What are your favorite tumblrs?
I don’t know who are behind most of these, but I often enjoy the following:
ghostranch.tumblr.com
randydandy.tumblr.com
fistfest.tumblr.com
babysarmholdinganapple.tumblr.com
argonaut.tumblr.com
and of course bearsimjealousof.tumblr.com

Finally, tell us about the new illustration project you’re working on! What should we expect?
I’ve defined Pinups as being something other than porn, but not because I’m afraid of porn—I just see Pinups and porn differently. I identified porn as being largely about fantasy (while Pinups isn’t about fantasy), and so I gave myself the limitation of working with ideas around fantasy to create my version of porn. I’ve always said Seth Rogen would be my ideal Pinups model, but since that’s extremely unlikely, I’ve indulged in the fantasy of making Pinups-like drawings inspired by Seth Rogen. The drawings take a long time and I still have quite a bit of work ahead of me. I hope to get the Seth book finished this year.

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