March 13th, 2008 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: March 20th, 2008
L.A. Bondage, Dave Naz.
Someone who’s better versed in federal kink than I am could comment on the validity of a distinct ‘Los Angeles’ fetish culture. As it stands Dave Naz’s newest book combines his signature sparse, natural light, erotic photography and his take on bondage which, if not indicative of an LA style, will help to define one.
The book, by Goliath, is a high-quality artifact, almost too small to be a coffee-table tome. Aside from being cheaper to produce than a larger format, I wonder why the prints aren’t bigger. Naz doesn’t shoot with a low-end digital camera and larger images are available in monthly magazines. Though the book’s easy to pick up and browse, it’s not a useful size for shared reading and, looking at erotic photography with someone else is how I’d normally consume material like this. It’s an expensive, and not particularly explicit, masturbatory aid.
The photographs themselves are excellent. If you know Naz’s work you’ll be imediately familiar with the style. Simple spaces, little make-up, and little focus on ‘acting sexy’ by the models. For a fetish book it’s radical. It’s hard to find commercial images of bondages which don’t carry a suggestion of duress. Models are normally presented as if they’ve been restrained against their will and effect expressions of fear and pain. Naz’s models just look as if they’re playing along. No pleasure or pain. Just a benign insouciance which enhances the feeling of voyerism
February 7th, 2008 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: February 8th, 2008
Maxim Dikunov’s stallion.
Maxim Dikunov’s 3.5 metre tall, 3 ton, stallion, Yaryzh, in the yard of Yar Hotel, in the Russian town of Voronezh symbolizes:
a) The beauty of industry.
b) The struggle between nature and civilization.
c) A man-cocked horse.
B’s correct and I answered c, guess I’m not terribly artistic.
“When the sculptor’s father was asked about the stallion’s human sex organ he said ‘It is just a matter of nature and people should not stick noses in it.’”
So there you have it. Don’t put your nose in the cock. Sound advice.
Models. The reason men become interested in photography.
February 4th, 2008 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: February 4th, 2008
Regular readers will be glad to know I’ve now found Kyla Cole. In fact she found me, via Facebook. Go technology.
Via Kyla, I found Oliver Spillebout who has a ‘might-now-be-his-girlfriend’ load of photos of Kyla, along with other high-end smut. His taste in models is uniformly crazy-hot. We approve.
A lighter hand on the PhotoShop would be appreciated. Still worth a browse.
February 2nd, 2008 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: May 2nd, 2009
Hazel Dooney’s Toys
Hazel Dooney is an Australian painter of erotica who happens to blog in a way which is inclined to make you like her more and not less (which is the the point).
After writting about her collection of sex-toys she began to receive more by mail. These examples are notable for including a Virgin Mary butt-plug and a Buddha dildo, in opposition to the ‘Mary where it’s hairy, Buddha in the bum’ rule we all grew up with.
The ‘Divine Proportion’, or ‘Golden Mean’ is defined as follows:
…two line segments are in divine proportion when the ratio of the length of the smaller segment to the length of the larger segment is equal to the ratio of the length of the larger segment to the sum of the lengths of the smaller and larger segments, taken together.
Not sexy.
However since the ‘discovery’ of the divine proportion it’s been applied to everything from interior design to the human body and when applied to body mechanics a ‘divine’ woman (shown above) can be created who, according to Greek philosophers, would be perfect were she real.
So which pornster does this avatar most look like (proportionally, not ethnically or facially)?
To call this image offensive might seem churlish, but whoever arranged that fight clearly let the guy sweat off water in order to make the weigh-in.
You might also note that a topless model’s being punched in the face by an Aryan heavyweight in front of an audience of zombies. To those people I say ‘Pish posh!’.
That’s how I roll. Pish to the motherfucking posh.
I’d like to tell you this is an ad for a prominent Russian cosmetic dentist. It’s not, but feel free to publicize the lie. This is a really interesting concept for a porn set. Shame almost no one in porn’s got the brains/talent to do it.
"(Women) are not just there to be admired, they are there to be enjoyed." — Ellen von Unwerth
November 30th, 2007 by Sam Sugar
Elle Macpherson by Ellen von Unworth.
Ellen von Unwerth is responsible for a lot of the advernography in which celebrities disrobe to draw attention to uninteresting, unpublicized or bad, ideas. Like PETA. She’s also a fantastically talented shooter whose work covers a range of topics but who never leaves sex far behind.
William McFadden’s homage is pant-trighteningly comprehensive. Might be time to loose an afternoon…
We’ll never know if Bob Carlos Clarke would have been the heir to Helmut Newton’s art-porn crown but since his untimely suicide his work’s moved from being erotica’s low-cost best buy, to an easy way to spend twenty grand on a fast growing art-cult.
His photo’s are amazing though. Unless you founded Facebook you can’t afford to buy anything, but his dealer site is a great introduction to porn’s own Jeff Buckley (died too soon, fantastically talented, doomed to be deified).
Though short, the US constitution lacks the boy wizards, albino monks and household tips most Americans chose to read about. Until now. Donny Miller, author of The US Constitution Erotic Coloring Book puts it this way:
This book celebrates The US Constitution.
Why I made this book. Not many people, I’ve found, are very familiar with the U.S. Constitution. Which is to say many people are not entirely conscious of their rights. I began asking people if they had read the Constitution. Many had not in years, if at all. The number of people who owned it – far less. I believe the Constitution is something every U.S. citizen or anyone interested in better understanding the government of the United States should own and be well versed in, after all, the words of the Constitution and the principles written therein make up the very foundation by which the United States was built upon. But how to get people to take interest in and read these rights? Aside from provocative imagery and once you’ve digested the primal aspect of the images, the focus then becomes the Constitution… – Donny
The closest I’ve come to having a foot fetish is the creative use of an instep when positioned appropriately but this photo-story works for me (and by me I mean my penis). I know that foot fetishism should involve feet, but Bela Borsodi’s collages of torsos and pumps exude enough sex to make shoe fetishism seem like fun. Now the problem is where do I get the tiny women/massive shoes.
V magazine is one of the large format fashion/music/art tomes which have cleverly usurped porn and lad-mags as the best source for high-quality erotic material. For fans of legs (my hand is up), and lingerie (both hands up, typing with my cock) their lingerie shoot is everything Playboy wants to be and isn’t; non-nude, sexy as hell and artistically relevant.
If you’ve never picked up a copy of Playboy you’ll be surprised to know that most of it isn’t over-retouched photos of fading stars and wannabe celebs from the flyover-states. In between the demi-porn is a magazine which reads like Vanity Fair – if Vanity Fair was edited soley for the benefit of Harley Davidson dealers and cigarette manufacturers.
One Playboy staple is the ‘erotic’ cartoon and one of the most famous practitioners of the genre is Eldon Dedini. Though racy when Playboy was the only porn magazine you could legally own, today most of his stuff is sweet enough to share with your Dad. Who probably remembers it from the first time around ( take my word for it, asking him might be weird.)
Metafilter’s published a rough guide to Dedini online. If you get fired for looking at it you’re probably out of an environment that’s not doing much for your soul.
The Idler, a magazine dedicated to chillaxin’ (like that kids?), has published its ‘Carnal Knowledge’ issue with a cover by Damien Hirst.
To my educated eye I see a metaphor which shows America (the cucumber) trapped in Iraq (breasts) while trying to ease its passage with the blood, sweat and tears of soldiers and the Iraqi citizenry (the vaseline). Yeah… I’m pretty sure that’s it.
I’m still waiting for my copy but I can be pretty sure there’s sex inside.
Michael Sullivan’s movie, the Sex Life of Robots, has got so much press I haven’t bothered to pile on with my hilarious robot-sex comments or, um… you know – jokes about metal cocks and stuff.
Unfortunately the prudes at YouTube have taken down the nudity free film, so if you’re looking at last week’s links with your trousers down you’re out of luck. Thankfully Wired Magazine seeking easy ways to increase traffic from sex searches, in a service to transformer fetishists free-thinking art lovers has reposted the movie in whole. Normal service resumes.
If the Franklin Mint’s ongoing refusal to knock out a set of ‘Porn Pioneers’ plates – which could start with Nina Hartley and Dave Cummings posed as American Gothic – frustrates you, Neal Mather has come to the rescue. Along with the ‘Julie Strain in a metal Bikini’ fantasy art we all know and love, Iconia also produce figures posed with working clocks (that’s ‘clocks’ with an ‘l’) which each come with a pervert approved backstory:
The cute and blushing maid appears with a tray of delights including a dildo, ball gag and spanking paddle. A spilt cup sits atop the bedroom cabinet and a smashed plate is on the floor. Was it the clumsy Maid or the startled Master? Who’s doing what to whom, and with what? You decide!
Remember to list as ‘art collectibles’ on your household insurance, not ‘porn stash’.
In 350 bi-annually published pages ‘S Magazine’ mixes models, fashion photographers and high production values to create a large slab of coffee-table porn which relies on the quality of its photos, not overblown articles or self-censorship, to justify its existence.
One of the joys of being in Europe an environment where nudity and sex and deviance are all still seen as separate things. It allows us to mix nudity, sex and deviance without any of the guilt or annoying “Check us out and how groovy we are!” vibes of the militant pro-sex crowd (we get it – calm down).
S Magazine, the ‘Play’ issue
In 350 bi-annually published pages ‘S Magazine‘ mixes models, fashion photographers and high production values to create a large slab of coffee-table porn which relies on the quality of its photos, not overblown articles or self-censorship, to justify its existence. Hard to find but worth it.
A look at Helmut Newton's life and work through the eyes of his wife.
June 13th, 2007 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: July 19th, 2007
Helmut by June is an HBO wankumentary shot by his wife and covering Newton behind the camera from his late eighties peak to his death at 75 in 2004. Though he never fully recovered from being daubed ‘the king of kink’ by Time magazine, a periodical which doesn’t know the difference between a hot lemon and a hot lunch, Helmut Newton did more to popularize softcore erotica and fetish than anyone in the last twenty years.
Even though getting people excited about nudes of Cindy Crawford wasn’t hard, Newton pushed far harder than many people know. This is a man who said:
“(models are) a commodity…paid to be made into what I want.”
Despite which deriding his work now marks you as a philistine, not a progressive hater of porn, regardless of the fact much of his work would only look out of place in Hustler thanks to its quality.
The Doc’s now showing all the time on HBO, don’t be put off by the presence of Brett Ratner, he really has almost nothing to do with it.
May 15th, 2007 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: July 12th, 2007
Olivia is the best known modern pin-up artist, a very talented woman who specializes in painting photoreal images of unreal women. She works from photographs and uses a cadre of the best looking nude models to pose as the basis for her work, if you’ve thought some of her images look familiar your porn surfing is beginning to furnish you with artistic insights.
Models love Olivia, she paints perfection, doing an image manipulation job so thorough all that’s left of the model is how she wishes she looked and her famous images of Bettie Page present a taller, leaner, cuter woman several orders of magnitude hotter than Bettie ever was.
She’s just finished an image of Justine Joli she started working on in 2005(!) JJ’s cute to start with but this is really elegant and so beautifully idealized my commitment to a platonic relationship with her now appears fucked fragile. Here’s hoping it ends up on a poster…
May 14th, 2007 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: July 12th, 2007
…even in 2007 few people understand what an artist with the ability to do more than crop, paste and colorize can do if asked.
The most beautiful models – the really famous ones – are intimidatingly flawless genetic exceptions as atypical as Stephen Hawking and Michael Jordan but in far less inspiring ways. For the rest of us trolls there’s Photoshop and even in 2007 few people understand what an artist with the ability to do more than crop, paste and colorize can do if asked.
Normally changes tend towards the subtle but because it’s easiest to start as close to your intended result as possible. If you have the skill, the inclination and the armagnac (the secret of all great creative personalities) but not the models to match, you can remake people Steve Austin style as this video shows.
Hence the ’she looks like what?’ faces you see at porn conventions and the make-up artists who travel with most major celebrities. Depressing until you realise it vaults the person you’re diddling into the ranks of world-class poon.
April 24th, 2007 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: July 9th, 2007
I remember seeing a book dedicated to the cards posted by London’s prostitutes in telephone boxes. The cards have since been made illegal and therefore fractionally harder to find, but any tourist can find thousands of them papering the walls of our famous red phones, making talking to your mother difficult (unless she’s someone else’s MILF and you’re a mother lover).
Designed to convey a phone-number and brief menu along with a description of the sex-service provider, the cards tackle the issue of describing the women they promote with the same forthright honesty we’ve come to expect from the White House press office. Believe the cards and know that most of porn valley is making ends meet selling bareback blowjobs in flats along the Edgeware road (we all know they stay in the 818 and only visit hotels). Putting ‘actual photo’ beside a picture of Tera Patrick and claiming she’s a 22 year old Japanese tranny isn’t seen as any big thing (I know it’s not her ‘cos I’ve been back three times and it’s always the same dude. Tell him Sam sent you).
The Bunny House blogs hooker flyers from South America and, due to a lack of access to DTP software and cheap color inkjets, the level of creativity on display is high. They putting the ‘uc’ back in folk art and, for someone with no allusions to being a whoremonger, the prices are eye-wateringly cheap. $10 is the price of a Big Mac meal in London – does she even undress? If so what’ll she do for a KFC family bucket? (or is the “KFC Family bucket” a sex act “Big Mac” will perform for the $10?)
My favorite provider to date is Paula, because after a session with her you can claim to have gone out for a haircut and still pass any polygraph test known to man (and she doesn’t have a cock. That works for me too.)
It was all in French, but people who saw it said it was basically a depiction of American life from birth to death, portrayed in the most extreme way possible.
After stripping off their grubby clothes, the pair gobbled potato chips and spit them on the crowd, vomited into a filthy commode and threw around fake feces and urine before being shut down about a half hour into what was to be a 45-minute performance.
Okay. I get it. America.
The last straw, apparently, was a simulated sex act involving a carrot.
Gotta love the Midwest. Vomit and shit are just fine but sex with a carrot? That’s just disgusting. The unitended climax was reached during the song ‘Torture is Fun’ whose lyrics are below:
TORTURE IS FUN ( music : Costes – words : Costes & Lisou Prout )
- The carrot ! ahaha, the carrot !
- Aaaah ! not the carrot ! i hate shredded carrots !
Torture is fun ! Happyness is slavery
- not the pan ! not the swinging pan !
You’ll be singing that all day. (My favorite is ‘We Want Sex’ which you’ll find here along with the rest of the libretto in English)
The joke’s got to be on the gallery who booked Costes. He’s often described as ‘The French GG Allin’ and is both less dead and equally obsessed with coprophilia. Any superficial googling would have turned up a plethora of clues to the content of the show. This shut own smells like a publicity stunt to me, but I’m a cynical ex PR so I tend to see marketing everywhere (it’s like ‘They Live‘ – I have special sunglasses)
Coates website is pretty sexy if you’re into shit. It’s a place where nudity, blood and sex are indivisible.
Moral? In 2007 you can tell how crazy someone is from their use of HTML.
December 21st, 2006 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: July 19th, 2007
I don’t play poker but I do like cards. If anyone has £10 to spend and the desire to make me happy, invest in this new set of playing cards by Lascivious, Londons hip panty manufacturer, featuring design and illustration from some of the UK’s finest new talent (with special props to David Foldvari of ‘we-went-to-school-together’ fame).
The illustrations are pan-sexual and range from tame to ‘wood’. They’re universally beautiful and doubtless this deck will become collectible. At £3 for an unboxed set they’re cheap to the point of stupidity. I’ve already invented an interesting twist on snap involving this deck and a willing partner but, I’m deviant so what did you expect?
March 28th, 2006 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: June 29th, 2007
I would have called it ‘Tarts with an Art’ but hey – no one asked me…
‘SEX WORKER VISIONS’ OPENING TOMORROW
$pread Magazine Produces Sex Industry Art Exhibit
NEW YORK, NY – $pread, a quarterly magazine by and for sex workers and their allies, presents Sex Worker Visions, an exhibition featuring art by sex workers and about the sex industry, at the LGBT Community Center David Bohnett Cyber Center at 208 West 13th Street, New York City, from March 29 – May 20. Visions kicks off with an opening reception on March 29 from 6 to 9 pm. Visions is curated by Audacia Ray, Executive Editor of $pread and former Assistant Curator at the Museum of Sex. Artists include sex activist and educator Heather Corinna, former SuicideGirl and illustrator Molly Crabapple, exotic dancer and photographer Charise Isis, and former prostitute and filmmaker Anne Hanavan, as well as Paul Sarkis and George Pitts’ intimate portraits of porn stars. Photographs by Erin Siegal and illustrations by Fly and Cristy Road originally appearing in $pread will also be on display. Sales will benefit the non-profit magazine. The March 29 event is also the opening night of the Sex Work Matters conference, a joint venture of CUNY and the New School (www.sexworkmatters.net). For $pread, the evening will also mark the start of its second year of publication. In its first year, $pread won Best New Title from the Utne Indepenent Press Awards. The Spring issue of $pread will be available for sale at the reception. For opening night only, the exhibit will be completely interactive with a webcam video project, “30 Second Sex,” masterminded by multimedia artist and erotic professional Melissa Gira and featuring webcam pioneers Ana Voog and Echo Transgression camming from remote locations. Computer monitors around the Cyber Center will display the websites of sex worker rights advocacy groups for the public to peruse. Former call girl Tracy Quan along with sex worker activist Carol Leigh (aka Scarlot Harlot) will be signing copies of their respective books, Diary of a Married Call Girl and Unrepentant Whore. Get a sneak peek of the exhibition at http://sexworkervisions.blogspot.com
WHAT: Sex Worker Visions opening reception
WHERE: LGBT Community Center’s David Bohnett Cyber Center, 208 W. 13 St., NYC
July 2nd, 2005 by Sam Sugar | Last modified: June 18th, 2007
Photograph by Anna and Barney.
The dividing line between porn and art, if it exists at all, is very hard to define. After a long academic study of the subject I’ve decided it comes down to two things.
The education of the person behind the camera
The quality of the lighting
For example – someone who picked up a camera after studying at Harvard can automatically call their work ‘art’ regardless of how bad it looks. Conversely, if the closest you got to performing a scientific experiment was building a water-pipe, but your work looks amazing, again – you’re an artist.
If you’re poorly educated and can’t light for shit you’re a pornographer whatever you tell your friends.
Why is ‘arty’ porn such a cliche?
I’m not thinking about these things because the voices in my head are telling me too (mother’s taking a nap right now. I love you mommy), but because I’ve been looking at the work of Anna and Barney.
Even for German’s it’s pretty hardcore. Women in Burka’s walking around Paris with their VBLT’s out (VBLT = Vertical Bacon Lettuce and Tomato). The picture at the head of this post shows a woman standing in a Burka, naked from the waist down and standing on a grave. It’s like Marylin Manson’s entry in some bizzare piss off a Muslim contest.
If you did that in the name of porn you’d get accused of racial insensitivity and then killed by angry fundamentalists. Mason, an ex-child star who now directs hardcore movies but carefully guards her identity, used to wear a Burka whenever she was photographed but stopped doing so after thinking it through.
Anna and Barney can work to different rules because they’re artists. Who makes that decision? Why is ‘arty’ porn such a cliche?
I think Anna and Barney’s work is beautiful (and less safe for work than handguns and crack). Wouldn’t it be nice if interesting sexual explicit material didn’t have to pretend that that turning people on wasn’t the reason for its existance? Do sex and thought have to be mutually exclusive activities?
JohnIan "Wow. I haven’t been here in some time. More than that. It’s awesome that you’re still around. Very sway.…" on Pixel Porn [more]
Iamcuriousblue "Are people dying, Sam? Last I heard, the story of the last “outbreak” was retracted by the LA Times, and subsequent investigation has lead to the contention...…" on Porn’s 2009 AIDs Outbreak [more]
Iamcuriousblue "Glad to have checked this URL, because its good to see your writing again. After your “Porn HIV Outbreak” article, it seemed like you’d walked away angry,...…" on Justine Joli – Hardcore [more]
