Victorian Erotic Photography

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Tallulahs Classical Nude Poses; Classical Nude Poses of Julian Mandel". Archived from the original on 2006-07-16 . Retrieved 2006-10-05. Other photographers of nude women of this period include Alexandre-Jacques Chantron, Jean Agélou [14] and Alfred Cheney Johnston. Chantron was already an established painter before experimenting with photography, [15] while Agélou and Johnston made their career in photography. The subjects of erotic photographs include professional models, celebrities and amateurs. Well-known entertainers do not generally pose nude for photographs. The first entertainer to pose nude for photographs was the stage actress Adah Isaacs Menken (1835–1868). [3] However, a number of well-known film stars have posed as pin-up models and been promoted in photography and other media as sex symbols. The majority of erotic photographs are of female subjects, but erotic images of men are also published.

Although the woman in the Gallery’s photograph is not identified as an individual, with a name and life history, there is the tantalising knowledge that some time around 1852 she entered the studio of a French photographer, took off her clothes and spent a few hours arranging herself in a series of rather uncomfortable positions. No matter how willingly or not she undertook this job, the way that she did so makes the sublimation of this woman into the generalised and impersonal framework of the ‘aesthetic’ difficult to sustain. 15 This is not only the case with photography. Perhaps the most obvious parallel case in painting is Manet’s Olympia, 1863 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), where the artist has painted a woman in a manner that transforms an academic nude into a study that is confrontingly personal. A number of these references are quoted in G. Ovenden & P. Mendes, Victorian Erotic Photography, London, 1973, p. 9. To indicate the number of erotic photographs produced, the authors cite the trial of one Henry Hayler, a London photographer, whose catalogue of 130248 ‘obscene’ photographs and 5000 stereoscopic slides was seized by police in 1874. For further references to contemporary responses to pornography, see also A. Scharf, Art and Photography, London, 1968, pp. 98–101; W. C. Darrah, The World of Stereographs, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1977, pp. 158–9. Unlike the traditional erotic photographs, which use any attractive female subjects, the male nude photographs are usually of celebrities.See Scharf, pp. 90–3; F. A. Trapp, ‘The Art of Delacroix and the Camera’s Eye’, Apollo, vol. LXXXIII, no. 50, April 1966, pp. 278–88. The Color of Words: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States, Philip Herbst. Intercultural Press, 1997, ISBN 978-1877864421. p.86.

A little later a thousand hungry eyes were bending over the peep-holes of the stereoscope, as though they were the attic-windows of the infinite. The love of pornography, which is no less deep-rooted in the natural heart of man than the love of himself, was not to let slip so fine an opportunity of self-satisfaction. Traditional photographic histories (for instance Beaumont Newhall’s The History of Photography) mention early photographic nudes only if they seem securely located in the tradition of the académie, or academic nude study. For an excellent select bibliography of literature dealing with mainly modern erotic photography, see J. H. Pearson, ‘Erotic and Pornographic Photography: Selected Bibliography’, History of Photography, vol. 18, no. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 47–9. In 1841, William Fox Talbot patented the calotype process, the first negative-positive process, making possible multiple copies. [10] This invention permitted an almost limitless number of prints to be produced from a glass negative. The technology also reduced the exposure time and made possible a true mass market for low cost commercial photography. The technology was immediately employed to reproduce nude portraits, classified by the standards of the time as pornographic. Paris soon became the centre of this trade. In 1848 only thirteen photography studios existed in Paris; by 1860, there were over 400. Most of them made income from the sale of illicit nude images to the masses who could now afford it. The pictures were also sold near train stations, by traveling salesmen and women in the streets who hid them under their dresses. They were often produced in sets (of four, eight or twelve), and exported internationally, mainly to England and the United States. Both the models and the photographers were commonly from the working class, and the artistic model excuse was increasingly hard to use. By 1855, no more photographic nudes were being registered as académie, and the business had gone underground to escape prosecution. [5] The Victorian tradition [ edit ] Eadweard Muybridge: Woman walking with fishing pole (detail) Before 1839, depictions of nudity and erotica generally consisted of paintings, drawings and engravings. In that year, Louis Daguerre presented the first practical process of photography to the French Academy of Sciences. [4] Unlike earlier photograph methods, his daguerreotypes had stunning quality and did not fade with time. Artists adopted the new technology as a new way to depict the nude form, which in practice was the feminine form. In so doing, at least initially, they tried to follow the styles and traditions of the art form. Traditionally, in France, an académie was a nude study done by a painter to master the female (or male) form. Each had to be registered with the French government and approved or they could not be sold. Soon, nude photographs were being registered as académie and marketed as aids to painters. However, the realism of a photograph as opposed to the idealism of a painting made many of these intrinsically erotic. [5]Nude photographers of the mid-20th century include Walter Bird, John Everard, Horace Roye, Harrison Marks and Zoltán Glass. Roye's photograph Tomorrow's Crucifixion, depicting a model wearing a gas mask while on a crucifix caused much controversy when published in the English Press in 1938. The image is now considered one of the major pre-war photographs of the 20th century. Charles Baudelaire, 1859 1 C. Baudelaire, ‘Photography’ (1859), in Photography: Essays & Images, ed. B. Newhall, London, 1980, p. 112. The third category is that of the more overtly sexual image, whether heterosexual or homosexual in nature. Such images use similar stylistic codes to those found in the other two types of photograph but are more explicitly concerned with ‘transgressive’ behaviour. These illicit images were not distributed openly through studios but formed part of an underground market, being either sold privately to wealthy clients or, more commonly, mass produced as paper stereo cards or prints for ‘under-the-counter’ distribution. Marshall, Peter. "Nude photography, 1840-1920, Part 1: The Body". About: Photography. The New York Times Company. Archived from the original on 2007-02-18.