More than a few people on this planet view glamour photography as pornography. It's a fact of glamour photography life and, for the most part, neither you nor I are going to change many of the millions of narrow-minded minds regarding this. Once you put a pretty girl in front of a camera and she removes some clothing or poses seductively, sensuously, sexually-invitingly, or erotically, there are people who are simply going to brand it with a Scarlet P, feign disgust, and heap scorn on the photographer, the model, or probably both. I've read through many photography forum threads wherein the contributors attempted to explain the differences between porn and glamour/erotic photography. An uncomplicated and slightly humourous explanation is simply, "the lighting." But I've seen enough glamour photography with really poor lighting to toss that explanation aside. Just because the lighting is atrocious and/or artistically non-existent doesn't make a so-called glamour-shot porn. Of course and conversely, great lighting in an actual pornographic image doesn't suddenly make that image glamourous or automatically place it in the realm of gallery-quality erotic photography.
Somewhere, I once read about a person who supposedly said something like this: "I can't define porn but I know it when I see it." Since this person, whoever he or she might be, hasn't been universally proclaimed the Grand High Exalted Mystic Porn Czar, I, for one, am not willing to take this person's word for it. Although it's probable that some of you might agree, in principle, with the underlying intent of that statement and you might believe that porn, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder, I don't agree nor do I buy into that explanation either. For the purpose of defining porn, as opposed to glamour and/or erotic photography (i.e, this wonderful and exciting genre of photography that I pursue as do many of you), I've developed a self-explanatory checklist to help anyone determine whether an image is pornographic, that is, pornographic in terms of its sexual content or sexually implicit content. I call this checklist The Three P's of Porn.
Here they are:
Penis (Erect)
Pink (You know what I mean.)
Penetration (Again, you know what I mean.)
If your image contains any or all of the above, it is, more than likely, a pornographic image. If it does not, it probably is not... porn, that is.
Now that I've cleared that up for all of you and, indeed, for the entire world's population, I think we can safely and comfortably call this discussion closed.
The model depicted in the non-pornographic glamour image at the top of this post is Paris. MUA Terese Heddon.
5 comments:
"Somewhere, I once read about a person who supposedly said something like this: 'I can't define porn but I know it when I see it.'"
It was a US Supreme Court justice, although I don't remember his name. He's dead now, which is a shame 'cause we've lost the only reliable way to separate porn from non-porn!
Jimmy, I believe it was Chief Justice Earl Warren who made the famous quote. I believe in the same decision he said that pornography contained not artic value, but rather appealed only to the prurient intrests of the viewer. I think that means when you see it, all you can think of is sex. Been to a mall lately? Times have changed since that ruling and the court is still reluctant to define it.
I don't necessarily consider "pink" to be pornographic. It depends on the context, as does most everything.
Sometimes when I crit images on PSig the art v. porn debate comes up. I believe that if you're going to mix the three P's into your art you have to make the artiness more identifiable. The viewer will decide if the image more likely to be displayed as art or used as sheet music for a one handed organ solo in a split second. That's how long you have to convey that there is a message in the piece if you want your work to be considered art while containing (or just hinting at) elements of porn.
-J
Are we assuming here, that porn is a negative or illegitimate thing? Pictures, made for a particular human response. Why isn't there a big debate about "commercial photography" vs. "art"? Those lines are most certainly blurred, too. You guys in your forums, stop feeling so guilty about the pictures you like to look at.
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