Erotic photography
As erotic photography is called a photographic genre that stylistically between nude photography and pornography is settled. The representation of the more or less naked human body in a sexual relation belongs to erotic photography. The distinction to pornography is often largely subjective; erotic photography is always caught between artistic freedom, aesthetics , kitsch , provocation and the violation of “morality”.
History and Development
19th century
Until 1835, when photography was invented by Louis Daguerre , pictorial erotic representation was limited to drawing and painting. At the time, however, public morals were very prudish about portraying naked people, especially when it was erotic. The technical development was also in its infancy: very long exposure times were necessary and made it difficult to take pictures of people. Reproduction was only possible by photographing the original, which made the process cumbersome and expensive. Thus a photograph was very valuable at that time and there was no mass market.
Stereophotography was invented in 1838 and the calotype in 1841 . These processes were developed to market maturity a few years later and enabled erotic photography to take off for the first time. In France, postcards with naked women in erotic poses were produced, which were sold as postcards, but whose real purpose was not to send them by post, as this would have been prohibited. The first magazine to publish erotic photos was the French La Beaute .
20th century and present
In the early 20th century there was the rise of erotic photography. Postcards in particular were sold in France. Among the erotic photographers of this time in France were Jean Agélou (1878–1921), Jacques Biederer (1892 – around 1942), Louis Amédée Mante (AM patent, 1826–1913), Julian Mandel (around 1893 – after 1945), Charles Reutlinger (1816–1888), Jules Richard (1848–1930), Lucien Walery (1863–1935), Grundworth (anonymous, photos from the 1890s to the 1930s), Edmond Goldschmidt (1863–1932) in Italy Vincenzo Galdi (1871 –1961), Gaudenzio Guglielmo Marconi (1841–1885) and Guglielmo Plüschow (1852–1930), in Germany Rudolf Franz Lehnert (1878–1948) & Ernst Heinrich Landrock (1878–1966) and in the United States Charles Gilhousen (1867– 1929).
During the Second World War, the pin-up girls reached a wide audience. Initially, the depiction was limited to bare legs in short skirts, but bare breasts were also added more often in the 1950s. Playboy magazine , founded in 1953, soon achieved great popularity and established the market for men's and lifestyle magazines. Erotic photography was soon closely associated with her and increasingly made public. Penthouse magazine, founded in 1965, went one step further than Playboy, in which genitals were clearly shown for the first time, although at the time they were covered with pubic hair. The models also usually looked directly into the camera as if they were entering into a relationship with the mostly male viewer.
The spread of the internet in the 1990s and increasing social liberalization brought erotic photography a renewed upswing. Various print and online publications were formed, which meanwhile compete with the large magazines ( Playboy , Penthouse ) and serve a wide variety of tastes. The largest online provider of erotic photography is the MetArt website .
The history of erotic photography offers an insight into social ideals of beauty. A study by York University in Toronto found that 70% of the Playboy models named Playmates were underweight between 1978 and 1998. The playmates' average body mass index was 18.1 kg / m².
A change in the ideal of beauty, which was made visible by erotic photography and probably also reinforced in part, is the increasing spread of pubic hair removal . Erotic photos from the 1980s almost exclusively show women with natural pubic hair, which in the 1990s merged into an increasingly thin line and has largely disappeared nowadays.
Delimitations
pornography
Similar to pornography, erotic photography aims to sexually stimulate and arouse the viewer. In contrast to pornography, it does not necessarily use the explicit and never the rough representation of sexual acts to build up eroticism , but mostly only uses hints and usually meets higher aesthetic demands.
Nude photography
The boundaries to erotic photography are fluid, the same photo can often be assigned to both categories. Likewise, the artistic and aesthetic demands are often met with erotic photography. The decisive factor is the purpose: erotic photography strives for a sexual stimulus that is only incidental in nude photography . For this, the shapes of the human body and the possibilities to artistically represent them as a photographic object similar to a landscape or a scenery are decisive.
Individual evidence
- ^ JM Cross: Nineteenth-Century Photography: A Timeline . Victorian Web
- ↑ Stereoscopy.com FAQ
- ↑ Peter Marshall: Nude photography, 1840-1920 . photography.about.com
- ↑ http://transversealchemy.com/2014/02/french-postcards-i-mysteries-of.html
- ↑ http://www.helmut-schmidt-online.de/Boudoir-Cards/fp-photographers.html
- ^ Michael R. Peres: The Concise Focal Encyclopedia of Photography. CRC Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-136-10182-3 , p. 84 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ^ Mark Gabor: The Illustrated History of Girlie Magazines . Random House, New York 1984, ISBN 0-517-54997-2 .
- ^ MET-ART review at Rabbit's Reviews
- ↑ Thinness and body shape of Playboy centerfolds from 1978 to 1998 .
- ↑ Playboy's Waxing Nostalgic ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
