Art Keeps Getting In My Porn
One thing I like about writing a sex blog, in this era of increasing porn saturation, is that as the competition heats up, and production values increase, I’m seeing more and more porn that looks like art, especially from the high-quality porn producers like Kink.com or (for your non-kinky examples) Femjoy or Domai.
It used to be that a shot like this one, of Candice Nicole enjoying an enforced contemplative post-ejaculatory moment during a Sex And Submission shoot, would have come only from the studio of one of the “arty” guys like Craig Morey or Richard Kern:
My problem with erotic art photography is that, historically, it has tended to strike me as self-conscious and defensive, and in its defensiveness, it often grew boring. In its worst form, we get that endless flood of semi-abstract nudes that congest web galleries and college sophomore life photography classes. You know what I’m talking about: the curve of a buttock or breast, usually upside down or at an odd angle, often pressed against some random implausible texture like old roofing tin, presented in black and white with funky lighting so as to make the whole project safely non-sexual.)
Luckily, as the standards and technology of porn photography get better, I’m seeing a best-of-both-worlds convergence, with your favorite subscription porn shack pumping out art-quality photos of a volume and diversity and unapologetic lustful sexuality that even the best “erotic art” photographers never seemed to manage. And I love it!
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Bacchus you have certainly just hit on a topic which has been very close to my heart in recent months. I’ve been wondering if the internet itself is responsible for porn getting “artier”.
When I was a wee lad, the porn in my town was so rare, that my chums and I considered ourselves quite lucky to have access to any at al. What little that was available, had unattractive models who looked like they much rather be doing something else, the poses were amateurish and the lighting was either harsh or the film was overexposed. Most of the models didn’t bother to groom themselves and if they did ever sport a smile, it always looked forced.
Being as porn was illegal, it followed that all the porn was made by mobsters, who didn’t appear to have a lot of talent. Fortunately nowadays, anyone with a digital camera, and a home computer system, can produce far superior work, and some highly creative individuals, who ordinarily couldn’t have afforded to dabble in the hobby, now have a real chance at turning it into a professional career.
Many of the nudes being produced now, look as though the model and photographer may actually have an intimate relationship. The girls appear to be having fun, and aren’t ashamed of their bodies or of showing them.
The more art one is exposed to, the more refined one’s tastes have an opportunity to grow, and the web has certainly offered a tsunami of porn. All art seems to evolve and become more sophisticated as time marches forward.
I for one love the incongruous juxtapositioning of warm tender female flesh, with all of it’s biomorphic curves, and the cold, harsh steel of an abandoned hydroelectric plant. I also love just the idea of finding nudes in unlikely environments.
I for one would love to hear your definition of porn vs. art when it comes to the nude, and for your readers to likewise try to articulate the criterion for categorizing the two. I can’t really come up with anything myself, although I think somehow I sorta know it when I see it…
Dr. Whiplash, as you may know, your “I think somehow I sorta know it when I see it” is a nod to Judge Potter Stewart’s famous frustrated failure to sharply define a category of obscenity: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
That’s pretty much where I come down on porn versus art. Mind you, I’ve got kind of a negative view of art in general — too much of it is self-conscious boring dreck aimed at artists, with deliberate condescension toward anybody who doesn’t understand and appreciate it. But the best art, in any field, is the stuff that grabs the eye of the total outsider, the hypothetical truck driver walking past it, and makes him/her stop, gape, and walk away feeling better or at least different about the world.
So, yeah, for years porn was mostly dirty pictures produced by fast-buck artists, and it just had to be dirty, quality wasn’t an issue because the consumer was lucky to find your product, and wasn’t in a choosy mood. Certainly the internet is responsible for porn getting better — competition is wonderful that way — but I’m not sure what commercial pressure there is for it to be getting more artistic (whatever that means.)
But, meanwhile, erotic art has been affected by the internet as well. The safe, bad, boring, affected erotic art is now more likely to get thrown up on a website, so we see more of it; but the jaw-droppingly hot erotic art (much less common) is more likely to fall under our eyes as well. I don’t have info on whether erotic art as a whole is improving, but at least internet distribution lets me see more of the good stuff.
The biggest convergence effect I see is that in the commercially-driven quest for higher-quality porn, the porn producers have little choice but to hire the best photographers and videographers they can find. And some of those people will be artists. Since there’s no inherent conflict between porn and art, the result will be more photos that work as both art and porn — to our net benefit.
Granted there are a LOT of people out there who don’t know the difference between art and illustration, art and craft, art and dilletantism, or art and kitsch. These are the people who would hire a decorator to “do” there home, when they could have had an interior designer. I think this is perhaps what ultimately what leads to the acceptance of a lot of bad “art” into our lives. The last time I visited the galleries of NYC in the SoHo/Bowery district, you would have thought that I was an Olympic walker in training. But once or twice, something would stop me dead in my tracks, and that made it worth it. It is indeed unfortunate when some art can only be appreciated by other artists who are speaking the same language. Anyone who censores his own creativity to only benefit other artists, is doing a diservice to himself, and to art, but that doesn’t mean that artists should censore there ideas so that they only produce art understood by non-artists either. Artists deserve to be hit by something that makes THEM gape and feel better or different about the world as well.
Whatever is driving the quality of porn upwards, I’m all for it, and I can’t wait for the day that Hollywood’s best directors make a porn film with Hollywoods best and hottest actors and actresses.
In thinking about these replies, it makes me wonder where this element of porn is leading. Definitely there is art in a lot of commercial non-smutty film and photography, to the point that certain shots or looks almost have a signature. And regardless of whether it appeals to the truck driver walking by (which of course would be better), an important element of art is the dialog between artists.
I wonder if we will see porn that reflects this too. It would be interesting to see porn that references other porn in terms of the stylistic elements, and taking porn in certain directions, to realize a vision as much as to get people off.
I have certainly had my artsy pornographer fantasies. If only it was as easy to get your friends to come over and make a movie with fucking as it was to get them to do silly things on camera with their clothes on… I guess there is always the future.
Your line “it has tended to strike me as self-conscious and defensive” definitely struck a chord with me, and reminded me of Melvin Moten’s hilarious-yet-depressing roundup of the rules for erotic photography.