What would you say to someone who calls your work pornographic? Note I wouldn’t call your work anything other than absolutely beautiful and inspiring.

Well that’s a good question. I get asked that, or rather the topic of my works classification comes up, a lot.

For me the line between pornography and art, and not to say that one is better than the other, they are just different, I love both, would be the intended PRIMARY result. I watch porn to be sexually aroused. I look at art to be intellectually stimulated. Don’t get me wrong they certainly can, and should, overlap, but for me the primary goal is how you can define it.

My photography is not intended to provoke arousal as its primary function. I present try to models themselves as art, intended for more of a intellectual stimulation than a physical one; but of course intention does not always equate to reception.

People doesn’t walk through an art gallery and look at nude photography to contemplate masturbating, generally speaking; and conversely I doubt many people pull up artistic photography to masturbate. However, I think the more you can overlap, the more you can provoke a variety of feelings in the viewer maybe the better. I think that Ellen von Unwerth does this really well. Her work is often artistic yet playful. Erotic yet thought provoking. To be able to present work that has a primary motivation, but effectively can exist in other realms I think is where the best work lives.

However, the term “pornography” in the US particularly, has been some what taken up to mean “lewd or vulgar.” From a censorship perspective, unfortunately, some people now a days seem to see the entire nude human body as pornography. To lump all nudity in as pornography really takes up this kind of anachronistic view of humanity that simply the act of seeing the nude form produces “unpure or lewd or vulgar” thoughts. This whole idea really presupposes the reduction of human intellectual faculties down to those of a wild animal when it comes to nudity.

This notion essentially says “if one sees nudity they will be so taken by it that their very thought processes will irrevocably altered, and therefore people need to be protected form themselves and the scandalous pornography that is nudity.” These ideas metaphorically presuppose we are all zombies and should be kept away from images of brains for fear of inciting our ravenous hunger. To me, and with no sense of hyperbole, that idea is insane and barbaric.

Its honestly something that shocks me in today’s day and age. How have we become so progressive in so many ways and still things like instagram, the momentarily proposed, but revoked, tumblr nsfw rules, and facebook, that are striving to digitize the human experience fail to understand nudity in that experience. Sadly, my favorite all time company Apple, and probably most inspirational business idol Steve Jobs, are a lot to blame. The rules and regulations of the app store pull a large financial weight to influence how apps can allow edgier content; and sadly that is driving a lot of censorship decision for the digital human experience. Anyway, here’s hoping marketing concerns wont be what drives us to become more prudish while all other aspects of our culture strive to betterment.

Sorry, I went on a bit of a tangent there at the end, but I hope that makes sense.

Thanks for your question. Its a good one!

Derek