Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(About sexuality rather than language.)

I’ve often reflected on the line — not at all clear — between gay porn photography and male art photography. The easy delineation has to do with intent: gay porn is intended to get guys off, male photography is aesthetic appreciation of the male body. But of course motives are mixed: porn can be artfully done, male photography can be arousing. There’s no one reading of an image.

A case in point: the main image in this TitanMen ad for a post-St. Patrick’s Day sale, viewable on AZBlogX here. Carefully composed — certainly not great art, but well crafted — with a dose of humor in the green shamrock on the model’s ass. What makes it porn is in part the context, plus the presentation of the model as a hole to be fucked. (But there’s male photography not much different from this: Steven Vaschon’s two Rear View books, for example,)

This entry was posted on March 19, 2013 at 9:08 am and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.