Looking through these pictures confirms a dreadful suspicion I
have had for years — I am quite abnormal! Nearly all of these
pictures, apparently masterpieces of erotic photography, leave
me cold. I’d expect to find them far more appealing, because the
premise of the book sounds great. It takes recent photographers
from fashion, style, high quality fetish magazines, and glamour.
The introduction talks about the recent history of the portrayal
of the erotic and at least suggests that the images that the editors
chose go beyond the stereotypes and predictability of mainstream
eroticism and pornography. Forty photographers and over 150 photographs
are selected here for their ability to portray love, lust and
desire. It makes a fascinating document of the current range of
erotic photography, and some of the images are striking or intriguing,
but nearly all are highly staged, artificial, and passionless.

Maybe these pictures are meant to be about sex, rather than be
sexy. Maybe this is really an aesthetic enterprise than a turn-on.
For example, Michael Childers has one sepia toned black and white
high definition image, "Untitled from Hollywood Voyeur,"
in which a couple sit by a swimming pool. She sits up, with a
kind of net over her head and tied behind — it’s a little like
a white bridal veil. She is in fact, on close inspection, a good
looking store mannequin. He is certainly a real person, or at
least, if "studly" male models are real people. He leans
back against her, his chest to the camera, turning his head behind
him to place his mouth against her breast. It’s an odd picture,
formal in its pose, humorous, and silly.

In "Oshan and Maria at Twirl," Doris Kloster also uses
humor. It’s black and white, obviously in a studio. A woman lies
on a short leopard-skin sofa immersed in the Financial Times,
one shoe off, one shoe on. Kneeling beside her, in a page boy
costume, kneels another woman, holding the first woman’s bare
foot in her hands, extending her tongue to lick the big toe.

I don’t get it. I don’t know what these two pictures, or many
others in this book, are meant to be doing. There are plenty of
pictures in this book which don’t hide their purpose — regular
pictures of people doing sexual stuff. There’s no explicit sex
here, no erections, penetration, or anything as explicit as you
would find in Hustler, Penthouse, or even Playboy.
There’s quite a few bodily piercings, tattoos, leather, women
kissing, licking, or touching each other, and men and women in
sexual positions. But most of them seem unexceptional, clichéd
(for example, China Hamilton, whose work has been reviewed elsewhere in
Metapsychology), or just plain silly. To be blunt, they
are tastefully arty pictures with a sexual theme, with little
ability to really provoke viewers to thought or feeling. It’s
a coffee-table book, for those with coffee-tables in their bedrooms.
It compares poorly with Nerve: The New Nude,
which avoids most of the mistakes of Love Lust Desire.

Having said that, there were some images and photographers I liked.
Especially stylish and humorous is the work of Pierre et Gilles whose
gay-themed set pieces have a sense of fun. They are so artificial
in their colors, poses, and settings that they seem postmodern
without taking themselves seriously. Then there are a couple of
images by Leeanne Schmidt of nudes in water, with faces not visible,
where the play of light and texture is remarkable. There is a
series of photos by Bob Carlos Clarke,
called "Black Tie Ball — London, 1995" which look very
real, of young couples, lying on a wooden floor, probably drunk
out of their heads, groping each other. It’s not a particularly
erotic series of pictures, but they are wonderfully evocative
and even poignant.

For the images I liked, I want to search out other work by those
photographers. If it is possible for photography to count as erotic
art, and I don’t see why it should not be possible, then one needs
to get a sense of the work of the artist: to see just a few pictures
from each photographer doesn’t tell the viewer enough about what
the artist is attempting to do, and makes it impossible to really
grasp the full force of the images.



Looking through these pictures confirms a dreadful suspicion I
have had for years — I am quite abnormal! Nearly all of these
pictures, apparently masterpieces of erotic photography, leave
me cold. I’d expect to find them far more appealing, because the
premise of the book sounds great. It takes recent photographers
from fashion, style, high quality fetish magazines, and glamour.
The introduction talks about the recent history of the portrayal
of the erotic and at least suggests that the images that the editors
chose go beyond the stereotypes and predictability of mainstream
eroticism and pornography. Forty photographers and over 150 photographs
are selected here for their ability to portray love, lust and
desire. It makes a fascinating document of the current range of
erotic photography, and some of the images are striking or intriguing,
but nearly all are highly staged, artificial, and passionless.

Maybe these pictures are meant to be about sex, rather than be
sexy. Maybe this is really an aesthetic enterprise than a turn-on.
For example, Michael Childers has one sepia toned black and white
high definition image, "Untitled from Hollywood Voyeur,"
in which a couple sit by a swimming pool. She sits up, with a
kind of net over her head and tied behind — it’s a little like
a white bridal veil. She is in fact, on close inspection, a good
looking store mannequin. He is certainly a real person, or at
least, if "studly" male models are real people. He leans
back against her, his chest to the camera, turning his head behind
him to place his mouth against her breast. It’s an odd picture,
formal in its pose, humorous, and silly.

In "Oshan and Maria at Twirl," Doris Kloster also uses
humor. It’s black and white, obviously in a studio. A woman lies
on a short leopard-skin sofa immersed in the Financial Times,
one shoe off, one shoe on. Kneeling beside her, in a page boy
costume, kneels another woman, holding the first woman’s bare
foot in her hands, extending her tongue to lick the big toe.

I don’t get it. I don’t know what these two pictures, or many
others in this book, are meant to be doing. There are plenty of
pictures in this book which don’t hide their purpose — regular
pictures of people doing sexual stuff. There’s no explicit sex
here, no erections, penetration, or anything as explicit as you
would find in Hustler, Penthouse, or even Playboy.
There’s quite a few bodily piercings, tattoos, leather, women
kissing, licking, or touching each other, and men and women in
sexual positions. But most of them seem unexceptional, clichéd
(for example, China Hamilton, whose work has been reviewed elsewhere in
Metapsychology), or just plain silly. To be blunt, they
are tastefully arty pictures with a sexual theme, with little
ability to really provoke viewers to thought or feeling. It’s
a coffee-table book, for those with coffee-tables in their bedrooms.
It compares poorly with Nerve: The New Nude,
which avoids most of the mistakes of Love Lust Desire.

Having said that, there were some images and photographers I liked.
Especially stylish and humorous is the work of Pierre et Gilles whose
gay-themed set pieces have a sense of fun. They are so artificial
in their colors, poses, and settings that they seem postmodern
without taking themselves seriously. Then there are a couple of
images by Leeanne Schmidt of nudes in water, with faces not visible,
where the play of light and texture is remarkable. There is a
series of photos by Bob Carlos Clarke,
called "Black Tie Ball — London, 1995" which look very
real, of young couples, lying on a wooden floor, probably drunk
out of their heads, groping each other. It’s not a particularly
erotic series of pictures, but they are wonderfully evocative
and even poignant.

For the images I liked, I want to search out other work by those
photographers. If it is possible for photography to count as erotic
art, and I don’t see why it should not be possible, then one needs
to get a sense of the work of the artist: to see just a few pictures
from each photographer doesn’t tell the viewer enough about what
the artist is attempting to do, and makes it impossible to really
grasp the full force of the images.

© 2001 Christian Perring. First Serial Rights.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography, Sexuality