PHOTOGRAPHY OR PORNOGRAPHY? VOL. IV: IS IT ART OR PORN? When Did Porn Become Art (And Art Become Porn)?

Art historian Hans Maes has proposed one influential way of thinking about pornography and art: pornography can be understood as fundamentally oriented towards sexual arousal, whereas artworks may pursue multiple purposes—conceptual, political, aesthetic, emotional or critical. It is a useful distinction, but it does not solve everything.

1/2 Cherry Delight (selfie) - Molly's Daily Kiss blog post by Molly Moore, 2014 / Nude and Roses-Black and white and color key pictures of an sexy inked alternative girl, Stephan Strange Photography  SO… PORNOGRAPHY, PHOTOGRAPHY OR ART? (Editor’s Note)

3/4 Art porn collages 8 via Pornceptual, 2019 by Tomislava Vankova / Joel-Peter Witkin Man With Dog, Mexico 1990 Tirage argentique Courtesy Baudoin Lebon and William Mora Galleries © Joel-Peter Witkin

 An image can have intellectual ambitions and still be ethically objectionable.It can be aesthetically sophisticated and still exploit its subject. The history of erotic photography is therefore not simply the history of naked bodies. It is the history of modern looking.

5. Modern Torso, famous 1918 pictorialist photograph by German-born American photographer Arnold Genthe

6/7 Fabien Dettori, Nude#1, Eredità Exhibition 2025, Drogheria Contemporary Gallery Milan. Credits The Italian Art Guide / Odalisque, New York 1943 by Horst P. Horst. Platinum palladium print, printed later

 Photographers learned how to pose bodies, light, crop and frame bodies.They learned that a body could be made innocent, dangerous, glamorous, submissive, powerful, mysterious or desirable simply by changing the surrounding visual language.

This was an enormous cultural development. And this is a glimpse of this history …

8/9 Paul Outerbridge, Nude lying on a love seat, c. 1936. Carbro colour photograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra /  Fabien Dettori, Fanny-Paris 11, 2024 series Come Closer (Pieces Unique, Acrylic, Gold Leaf and Polaroid on board), Nicolas Auvray Gallery NY. Credits Artsy

THE QUESTION WE SHOULD REALLY BE ASKING

There is a wonderfully stupid question that keeps coming back in discussions about erotic art: Is it art, or is it porn? As if the two were rival species. As if one wears a velvet jacket and the other arrives carrying a suspiciously large box from an adult shop.

As if the difference could be settled by examining the amount of skin on display.

10/11 'Forbidden Erotica The Rotenberg Collection' , late 19th Century - Laura Mirsky, Taschen, 2000 / From 'Forbidden Erotica The Rotenberg Collection' -  vintage forgotten erotic photographs

Art historians have spent centuries trying to make this distinction look more sophisticated than it really is. A nude painted by a dead European master can hang peacefully in a museum, surrounded by scholarly labels and discreet lighting.

Photograph the same body today, make it explicit, and suddenly somebody wants to know whether it is “really” art.

12/13 Kenneth Probst, 'Chase Hunter Poses With Two Dicks', 1993 gelatin silver print, Artsy / Kenneth Probst, Homage to Michelangelo, 1993 Gelatin silver print, Artsy

14.  Kenneth Probst, Crew Battles Low Ceiling, 1993 Gelatin silver print, Artsy

15. Photographs from Ken Probst's book Pornegrafik (Pornographic) Limited First Edition, Story by A.M. Homes, Twin Palms publishers, 1998 / Ken Probst, Pornegrafik (Pornographic) First Edition,1998 via AbeBooks - Wild collection of sexually explicit candids and production shots from gay porn 

But the history of modern erotic photography has repeatedly demonstrated something rather inconvenient: pornography and art are not opposites. They are neighbours. Sometimes they share a wall, and occasionally they sleep together.

The real question is not whether an image contains sex, but what the image does with sex.

Become a Premium member and check out the complete publication including:

• The Question We Should Really Be Asking
• The Camera Goes to (Cultural) War
• Mapplethorpe: When Photography Started a Culture War
• The Porn Star In Art: the La Cicciolina Effect
• When the White Cube Meets the Red Light District
• Alva Bernadine’s Pornography As Art
• Pornceptualism: Can Porn Actually Be Art? (When Queer Desire Takes Back the Body)
• … And When Did Art Become Porn?
• 109 Additional Pics

Click HERE for volume one: The Camera Discovers Desire

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