Doing Meaningful Boudoir Photography In The Age of Pornography

             How does the fine art photographer who plies his skills photographing the nude compete in this overly saturated world of sexually explicit imagery and still stay on an artistic path? How does the onslaught of pornographic images temper the vision of the fine art nude photographer? What options does this leave the artist who has shunned the slick patina of the obvious to pursue a loftier more immersive artistic experience?

            This is the great problem today for any serious artist who works with the human form.

            With its imprimatur on everything from network TV and cable, to the sex tapes of D-listers desperate to steady a sinking ship Pornography is certainly mainstream. Ever since it appeared out from under the counter of your local convenience store and onto the World Wide Web, you’d be hard pressed surfing in its viscous wake without ever coming across the lubricious acrobatics performed by the infamous pincushions who call it home. For the Internet caters to every original taste and sicko craving that has ever been remanded to the darkest corners of man’s consciousness. Log on for ten minutes and you will find a virtual bouillabaisse of every warped morsel of human perversity a mind can ever possibly conjure.

            It is there you’ll find the freshly spanked and shaven hordes, the ass worshippers, the stomata humpers, the insertion freaks, the body fluid sommeliers, the busty, midget cock riders, the out of control, anal grannies, and the rest of the cast of fudge slurping, load bearing, urine gargling gutter jockeys, denizens of a miasma of such depth and breadth that it would be refused admission into Dante’s Inferno so recherché is the nutty finish. Pornography is so pervasive that it has become the new lingua franca. And if you don’t believe me then I’m not your typical red blooded, all-American, diaper wearing, binky sucking, foot fetishist. Even as I write, it is raining harder than a bukkake film directed by John Woo.

            Tough competition…

            This question is a conundrum to be sure, but by no means insurmountable.

            First, the artist has to ask himself a few basic questions. What are my goals in photographing the nude? What am I trying to say about the naked body? Is my artistic vision about nudity current or contrary to the prevailing zeitgeist? Am I making a new statement or am I just a garden-variety pornographer trying to elicit an easy reaction?

            These are all valid considerations, but for me the answer is always an existential one, that is, all I can absolutely do is try to define the meaning of my existence through the relationships I have with people. As an artist do I look beyond the façade and try to fuse desire along with a deeper sense of humanity?

            In the case of the photographic artist it is the belief that human flesh is only a pleasurable adjunct to the human experience and is never a complete portrait without the inclusion all of its encompassing modes. By incorporating this modus into the act of making art only then can the artist create a work worthy of the inscrutable. It is the obligation and duty of the artist to render a full portrait of the sitter, which balances on a fulcrum the ephemeral with the inevitable and with it the truly erotic can have purchase. This is only achieved if the artist is a thoughtful one and willing to sacrifice the worship of artifice for one of infinite dimensionality.