Victorian Erotic Photography

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Erotic photographs are normally intended for commercial use, including mass-produced items such as decorative calendars, pinups and for men's magazines, such as Penthouse and Playboy, but many art photographers have also dabbled in explicit or erotic imagery. [2] Additionally, sometimes erotic photographs are intended to be seen only by a subject's partner. It is nonsensical to think that a society could be so outwardly righteous without wondering where the outlet might be for basic sexual desires. For the Victorians, sex for the purposes of procreation was a necessary evil. Yet the moment it became lustful or sinful, it was problematic. As mentioned before, “dodomitical miscreants” were the most heinous of all. The following passage is from The Phoenix of Sodom, or the Vere Street Coterie:

The respectable pioneers of French photography, Auguste Belloc and Felix-Jacques Moulin for example, ran lucrative occult trades in pornography. Often these pictures were described as "artistic nudes" and were registered at the Bibliotheque Nationale as study materials for painters. Delacroix himself used Eugene Durieu's nude photographs. Tallulahs Classical Nude Poses; Classical Nude Poses of Julian Mandel". Archived from the original on 2006-07-16 . Retrieved 2006-10-05. Erotic photography is a style of art photography of an erotic, sexually suggestive or sexually provocative nature.

Hix, Charles & Michael Taylor. "Dream Lovers", in their Male Model: the World Behind the Camera (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979; ISBN 0-312-50938-3), pp. [164]–186. Jules Richard published more than 7,000 glass stereoviews in the 45mm ×107mm (1.8in ×4.2in) format, shot in a classic Atrium. [20] Jean Agélou published more than 40 series of paper card stereoviews. During a single posing session with a model, he used a stereo camera for the stereoviews and a normal camera for the French postcards. [21] Later 20th century [ edit ] A number of these references are quoted in G. Ovenden & P. Mendes, Victorian Erotic Photography, London, 1973, p. 9. To indicate the number of erotic photographs produced, the authors cite the trial of one Henry Hayler, a London photographer, whose catalogue of 130248 ‘obscene’ photographs and 5000 stereoscopic slides was seized by police in 1874. For further references to contemporary responses to pornography, see also A. Scharf, Art and Photography, London, 1968, pp. 98–101; W. C. Darrah, The World of Stereographs, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1977, pp. 158–9.

Studies of this type can be found in the work of Eadweard Muybridge. Although he photographed both men and women, the women were often given props like market baskets and fishing poles, making the images of women thinly disguised erotica. [5] In their creation of erotica, photographers may appear to continue in a tradition whose codes have long been established by painters and other artists. However, there is a significant sense in which photographs are fundamentally unlike works produced in other media, because what we look at in a photograph once existed in reality, no matter how mediated or constructed that reality may be. The sense that we are viewing a person who once existed adds an altogether new element to this genre.

Pornography Advanced by Photography

Nude photographers of the mid-20th century include Walter Bird, John Everard, Horace Roye, Harrison Marks and Zoltán Glass. Roye's photograph Tomorrow's Crucifixion, depicting a model wearing a gas mask while on a crucifix caused much controversy when published in the English Press in 1938. The image is now considered one of the major pre-war photographs of the 20th century.

Mark Gabor: The Illustrated History of Girlie Magazines. Random House, New York 1984. ISBN 0-517-54997-2 Other photographers of nude women of this period include Alexandre-Jacques Chantron, Jean Agélou [14] and Alfred Cheney Johnston. Chantron was already an established painter before experimenting with photography, [15] while Agélou and Johnston made their career in photography. The visual provocation apparent in the Gallery’s photograph and in the variant work indicates that these images are something other than straightforward académies. Photographers such as Durieu or Villeneuve created images that emphasised distance between the viewer and the viewed. Their models, while not without sensuality, are sublimated into the aesthetic code of the ‘nude’. 12 For the classic study defining the concepts of the naked and the nude, see K. Clark, The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art, London, 1956, pp. 1–25. Clark notes the disjunctive effect frequent in photographs of nudes when he observes that such images do not contain ‘the harmonious simplifications of antiquity. We are immediately disturbed by wrinkles, pouches and other small imperfections which, in the classical scheme, are eliminated’ (p. 4). The criticism that photographs capture ‘too much’ of the truth is levelled especially against daguerreotypes, which are felt not to have the warm ‘finish’ of paper prints. As Solomon-Godeau has commented, these photographs show generalised ‘figures’, not ‘bodies’. 13 Solomon-Godeau, p. 225. Although the woman in the Gallery’s photograph is not identified as an individual, with a name and life history, there is the tantalising knowledge that some time around 1852 she entered the studio of a French photographer, took off her clothes and spent a few hours arranging herself in a series of rather uncomfortable positions. No matter how willingly or not she undertook this job, the way that she did so makes the sublimation of this woman into the generalised and impersonal framework of the ‘aesthetic’ difficult to sustain. 15 This is not only the case with photography. Perhaps the most obvious parallel case in painting is Manet’s Olympia, 1863 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), where the artist has painted a woman in a manner that transforms an academic nude into a study that is confrontingly personal. Many photographs from this era were intentionally damaged. Bellocq, for instance, frequently scratched out the faces of his sitters to obscure their identities. Some of his other sitters were photographed wearing masks. Peter Marshall writes, "Even in the relatively bohemian atmosphere of Carmel, California in the 1920s and '30s, Edward Weston had to photograph many of his models without showing their faces, and some 75 years on, many communities are less open about such things than Carmel was then." [19]

The Color of Words: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States, Philip Herbst. Intercultural Press, 1997, ISBN 978-1877864421. p.86. The photographer has also emphasised other sexually charged aspects of the young woman’s body, such as her hair, which has been untied and falls over the body in a manner traditionally associated with wanton abandon. The whiteness of the body has been accentuated as a result of the placement of the model on a bed of dark floral material that has been delicately hand-coloured. This environment of sensuous tactility suggests that the woman is as soft and yielding as the cushions on which she lies. Cross, J.M., PhD (2001-02-04). "Nineteenth-Century Photography: A Timeline". the Victorian Web. The University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore . Retrieved 2006-08-23. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link)