Victorian Erotic Photography

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It is interesting to note that French photographers were the first to produce nude and erotic photographs. As more of these early daguerreotypes are discovered it will be possible to draw conclusions as to whether cultural differences have influenced the types of erotica produced by France and other countries, most notably England.

Arundel Holmes Nicholls". papericons.com. Archived from the original on 2013-09-07 . Retrieved 2013-10-01.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] Founded in 1965, Penthouse magazine went a step further than Playboy and was the first to clearly display genitals, initially covered with pubic hair. The models looked usually directly into the camera, as if they would enter into relationship with the mostly male viewers. Erotica may form a substantial sub-category in photographic history, but there has been relatively little critical recognition of that fact. One aspect of the problem may lie with the nature of erotica, which insistently involves the viewer in a dynamic of looking that can be confronting and uncomfortable. Perhaps because of this, and because of the sometimes transgressive nature of these photographs, mainstream photographic critics have largely excised them from their histories. 3 Traditional photographic histories (for instance Beaumont Newhall’s The History of Photography) mention early photographic nudes only if they seem securely located in the tradition of the académie, or academic nude study. For an excellent select bibliography of literature dealing with mainly modern erotic photography, see J. H. Pearson, ‘Erotic and Pornographic Photography: Selected Bibliography’, History of Photography, vol. 18, no. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 47–9. With the Gallery’s photograph, however, there is no mistaking that what we are looking at is a naked body. The intensely voyeuristic experience of viewing this image is apparent from the moment we see it as the photographer intended it to be seen, that is, through the lenses of a stereoscopic viewer. This apparatus combines the two images into one and focuses our gaze unremittingly on the body of a naked young woman who appears almost alarmingly lifelike. Stereoscopes produce a three-dimensional effect similar to the simulacra created by holograms or virtual reality games. 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.

Charles Baudelaire, 1859 1 C. Baudelaire, ‘Photography’ (1859), in Photography: Essays & Images, ed. B. Newhall, London, 1980, p. 112.Photographs of nudes in the mid-nineteenth century vary considerably in terms of stylistic devices and aesthetic values but generally such photographs fall into one of three categories. One major type was of a man or woman posed in the manner of an academic nude. These photographs were often produced for sale to artists interested in using such images as study aids, and were the only type of photographic nude in the period that could be exhibited without disrupting contemporary moral values. Marshall, Peter. "Nude 101: A Beginners Guide to Nude Photography, Part 3: Finding Models". About: Photography. The New York Times Company. Archived from the original on 2007-06-04. 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. 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.