MUsings on Sex as art.
So recently a photographer whose work I absolutely love opened up sessions where couples can have sex during the session. And it has garnered a lot of positive response, which I fucking love. I love sex as art. It has also garnered a lot of “omg no one has ever done this before” to which I call BS. People have been photographing erotica and thinking about sex as art for a while. While he does an amazing job, he isn’t the first one to do this kind of work. But I digress—I simply think its important to give nod to all the people who came before you.
On a separate note, this has brought up a lot of interesting conversations about sex, art, and pornography and how we define art and porn. How we differentiate the two, whether porn can be art, how we define porn, etc. etc. And while I don’t have any conclusions, nor do I think I will ever come to any definitely, I think it’s a worthwhile topic of conversation.
I would like to preface this whole piece by saying that I have shot this kind of session before. And I absolutely loved it. The results were beautiful and raw. Why? Because there is no posing desire. While I am good at posing people and getting people to interact with each other, it is a very different thing than the body language and expressions that come with true pleasure. I believe in sex as art and I would 10/10 do it again. Maybe at some point I will offer this kind of session publicly, but for now I am going to keep it for only people I trust and know won’t step over any of my boundaries.
So, back to my musings on art and pornography. Which starts because I think when we see images that are sexually explicit, particularly photographs, we automatically think of porn because it is the only reference we have for that kind of imagery. So I wanted to start with the question what actually is the definition of pornography? Legally it is: “material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement” (FineLaw, 2024). The Oxford definition is: “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.” (Which I find to be kind of confusing definition because is desire and want not an emotional feeling?). I would argue that by these definitions, no one can actually judge something as pornography without knowing the intention of both the photographer and the subject, something that as outsiders we very rarely know.
The simplest definition of art on the other hand is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power” (Oxford Dictionary). So I ask, can pornography not have beauty and emotional power? Is the feeling of desire not tied to emotion? Sure we have a physical biological response, but do we not also have an response that is want and desire? Is that not an emotion? Does that not make it so art can be pornography and pornography can be art?
So what if the images are intended to stimulate erotic feelings in only one person? One could argue that a lot of boudoir photography is made to be given to significant others with precisely that intention. Which would then make a lot of boudoir photographer’s (myself included) work fall under the definition of pornography. But there’s an immediate desire for boudoir photographers to want to differentiate themselves from that. If someone told another boudoir photographer that their work was pornography, they would be quick to disagree and tell you you didn’t understand their work. So why do we have such a negative response to thinking of our work as potentially or at least adjacent to pornography? Especially, if we can say that porn and art are not necessarily mutually exclusive? I would argue is because of the huge stigma that our society has put around pornography. It is taboo. It isn’t respectable. And therefore, our natural reaction is to try to define ourselves as separate from it. But do we not perpetuate that stigma by doing just that? Or is it a worthwhile endeavor to differentiate in the hopes that we can get more people to see sex and bodies as art? Again, I don’t actually have any answers to these questions.
Which really just leaves me with a whole string of questions that I don’t have answers too but are none the less worth pondering.
Why is it that pornography has such a stigma around it? Is it because we are still ingrained in the idea of what is “respectable” and what is a respectable space for a woman to have a career? Are we really interested in the exploitation of women? And if we are, can we also acknowledge that it is not as simple as “all female sex worker are exploited” and also not a “all female sex workers have free will and autonomy.” It can be both/and.
Why is it that boudoir is socially acceptable, but photoshoots that actually contain sexually explicit photos are not? Why is it that is that the super posed and often created based in the male gaze is fine, but raw desire, pleasure and sex, is too much? Do we automatically label sexually explicit material as pornography because that is the only association we have the explicit imagery? Is it bad that we label it at pornography and not art? Should it just be art? Can it be both?
Cheers,
A raging sex-positive feminist with a camera.
