In March of 2015, I was contacted by Jessica, a local photography student. She was working on a paper about erotic photography, and she asked if she could interview me about my work. It was an interesting process, because it forced me to consider and articulate some things that I felt, but never had words for.
Here is the interview, transcribed:
If there's any sort of a difference between porn and erotica, it has to be entirely defined by the viewer. There's no such universal thing as "this is porn, and this is erotica." So, for me, what usually separates one from the other is where, and how deeply, it "engages" me, and how unique the experience feels. "Porn" is brash, un-subtle, and without a lot of serious effort put into the style or presentation. There's nothing nuanced about porn - it reaches the "sex as a purely physical act" part of my limbic system, but it doesn't stimulates much of my imagination, because I've probably seen the same thing dozens or hundreds of times before. "Erotica" traces a more complex path around inside my head because there's more to absorb and digest - each experience of erotica is a little different than all of the others, so it makes me wonder about the people, and the unique story behind what's happening in the image. I can usually relate somehow to people in erotica, but porn is just me looking in at a scene from the outside without having any attachment to the people involved.
I would never say that my work is a higher art than porn. I think it's more that I put thought into the lighting and composition than porn would call for. Our brains are wired to perceive and appreciate patterns and color combinations, and shadows, and small details, and that's what I'm hoping to stimulate. Take a snapshot of someone in an erotic moment with a bright light in the middle of a cluttered living room - that's porn. Put some thought into the lighting and the context - then it's erotica. I like them both; neither is superior to the other, and they both have value.
I've always liked black and white for its sense of drama and boldness, so most of my work is black and white. But it turns out that color is often better for boudoir photography because part of boudoir photography is about the colors of the clothing people bring. Also, my boudoir clients ask for color, whereas my other clients seem to appreciate black and white. Even if I don't fully understand why one works better than the other, it matters to my clients, and that informs the choices I need to make.
Most of my work is either for my own satisfaction, to satisfy my own curiosities, or for private clients. I've had some of my work in art shows (mostly my fine-art nude work), and a few pieces have been published in books of erotica. But I don't really know that I have an "intended audience," because I do this mostly out of my own need for exploration and expression.
Most of the couples on my website hired me to shoot them. I think there's one couple on my website that I hired several years ago; apart from that, the rest either hired me because they wanted photographs of themselves making love, or they were couples that hired me to do some flavor of nude or erotic portraiture of them, and the sex just ended up “happening.” It's probably an even mix of those two scenarios. I like working with professional models, but I prefer shooting with regular people who bring their regular selves and regular desires to a shoot.
It's mostly the "huge fly with a big honking lens and a thing that goes 'click' a lot on the wall" version. Every now and then I'll move a light around if I feel like the lighting needs to shift, but I'm more interested in photographing what different people actually do in their authentic moments than I am in fashioning images that come out of my own limited imagination.
Definitely. If it's a client, then I'm very much aware of trying to blend their expectations with the skills they've hired me for. If I've hired a model, then it's all for me, and I have more latitude to experiment with technical stuff and make mistakes. A lot of the time, if I've hired a model, I'm usually only expecting to get one or two really good images out of a shoot, and if I get none at all, that's OK, too. If I'm working with a paying client, they have a right to expect a lot more, so I probably take fewer risks.
I've never felt threatened or unsafe, but there have been a few moments that were uncomfortable. The most notable was a woman who came to my studio with her boyfriend - he had arranged the shoot, which was just of her, and she was quiet and tense for most of the shoot. It was pretty clear, in retrospect, that it was something she was doing for him, but wasn't entirely on board with it herself. I didn't like the way that felt. Also, I've had some men apologize for getting erections during the shoot. It's not the hard-on that's awkward; it's trying to figure out how to gracefully respond to the apology.
Mentally, yes, sort of: there's something very special about being allowed into someone else's erotic life. I dislike the word "sacred," but if there's ever a place I'd have a use for it, it would be here. So that's emotionally satisfying, but it's not really sexual in the "do you ever get a hard-on while you're shooting?" kind of way. I've been doing this since around 2003, and in all that time I can only remember having gotten physically aroused once: I was working with a model in a warm, small space, and at one point there was this wave of sweat & pheromones that hit me with a lot of force. Apart from that, while I love being an artistic witness, too much of my brain gets used up in making sure that I'm doing the right things with light and the camera for me to be in a headspace to get physically aroused. I think it'd probably be like seeing if you could get turned on by watching some kind of hot porn while you're trying to follow a recipe for baking a cake. No matter how often I do this, there's never any sort of "autopilot" I can switch on. Also, I think maybe I owe it to the people I'm shooting with to respect the boundaries and intent of the shoot: they didn't come to me so they could turn ME on; if I start going off on my own tangent, then that probably does all of us a disservice.
Well, if the definition of "art" is relative to the viewer and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, than I'd guess that the presentation would play a strong part in the admissibility of anything as "art." But I don't usually create what I create with an eye towards actually presenting it - it's the making of it that's ultimately the most satisfying part of the process. It's not that I don't get anything out of people seeing my work: I do. But I don't spend much time thinking about how it's going to be presented because I don't really care if anyone else sees it as being admissible as "art."
I think it's probably more the venue or the context that matters, rather than the media. If you think about a projected image vs. a printed image, I don't think the thing that's different is really about the projection vs. the print. The difference is that a print is meant to hang there and be experienced for a long time, and a projected image is probably part of a slideshow, so the viewer knows that the image will probably vanish soon. That changes how the viewer perceives the image. But again, I'm not in this for the final presentation; I'm in it for the process of creating, so if there's actually a difference, I don't know that I really care about it.
For classic nudes and figure art, Edward Weston & Richard Avedon (for the clear, simplicity of their work), Sally Mann & Joyce Tenneson (because their portraits are so gritty and authentic). For more edgy, sexually-energetic work, my two heroes are Aeric Meridith-Gougon and Anthelian, because they've both managed to channel the energy of the human sexual experience into direct, sometimes startling images. Oh, and I like John Santerineross, because of the dark, deeply spiritual nature of his work.