I have a theory about the erotic power of the camera. I’ve taken a few previous swings at putting these thoughts into words, but it’s a large and complex topic, with many convoluted lobes and isolated lacunae. Every time I buckle down to write about this, I get derailed by various nuances of the specific images I’m looking at. But one part of it is that if voyeurism is good, then preserved voyeurism (capturing the sexual images we formerly would have seen only once, in more permanent medium behind the camera lens) is better.

If it’s hot to see a sex act, it’s hotter to know that you are not only seeing it, but capturing it in visual media. Now you’ll be able to visually relive it whenever you want. And there also may be a power and humiliation factor: not only did you see the raunchy sexing, but the parties you captured can’t deny it happened. The act of filming something “naughty” creates a modicum of leverage or power over the people filmed, which can be erotic in itself.

The erotic power of the camera is so well-understood, that an entire meta-category of porn sprang up to take advantage of it. This is porn of people making porn: an erotic image that contains within it a spectator or participant who is filming the scene.

I wonder, too, if some of the commercial success of cams and camming doesn’t stem from this erotic power of the lens. Cam sites are numerous (CamDude has a usefully representative list) and there are said to be a lot of camgirls out there, providing erotic entertainment through the wires. In theory these sessions are ephemeral (customers do not pay for the right to record cam sessions and are not supposed to) but even when that’s so, we’ve grown so used to the preserving power of photography (and the erotic implications thereof) that I suspect that even a live-streamed sexual performance imbues itself with an extra quantum of eroticism because of the medium.

Of course this is just speculation on my part. But I am old enough to remember when video-cassette recorders (camcorders) were new, expensive, and heavy. By the time I came along, the suitcase-sized models that would burden your shoulder were mostly falling into disuse, but I remember vividly the period in which camcorders shrank from the size of a mailbox to something that would fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.

Very early in that process — when it still made more sense to use a tripod to film anything that didn’t travel out of the frame — couples were using camcorders to record their own sex scenes, even if they didn’t plan to share or even watch the resulting “home movies” themselves. It seems that the mere act of filming may have added an erotic charge to their bedroom festivities. Thus did the camera itself become a sex toy of sorts!