February 23, 2006

Phoenix New Times talks with Timothy Archibald

Popular Mechanics
February 23, 2006
by Robert L. Pela

Unlike most of us, award-winning photographer Timothy Archibald isn't content just wondering what a giant mechanical two-headed penis machine looks like. He wants to take pictures of it. He wants to interview the guy who built it.

Which is exactly what the former Phoenix New Times staff photographer has done in Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews (Process Media, $24.95), a hilarious collection of color portraits of big electrical gizmos that you can make fuck you, alongside profiles of the people who created them. There's the Hide-a-Cock, whose inventor swears there'll be one "in every home someday"; and the Thrill Hammer, which employs an antique dentist chair, a large vibrator, and a computer monitor to give you your pleasure.

"I was surprised at how normal most of the inventors were," Archibald says. "No, really."

Robrt L. Pela: Who knew you were a writer?

Timothy Archibald: I'm an interviewer! And you know, in my hands, the interviews were a lot snottier. If someone said something that made them seem stupid or sexually preoccupied, I would include it. But my publishers were concerned about readers coming to the book with assumptions about who these people are, so they asked me to weed out the cynicism and not make so much fun of them. At first I thought "No!" but in the end it made the book richer.

Pela: Speaking of assumptions, I thought at least some of the machines you depicted would have, you know, vaginas. They're all mechanical dicks!

Archibald: There are machines out there that do have female anatomy, but that's another book. I was originally drawn to these machines because I thought they looked fabulously anthropomorphic. Like they have their own personalities. They're like folk art. Then I went out and met the people who make them.

Read the rest of the interview at Phoenix New Times.

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