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Wednesday, October 5, 2005


Getting Off vs. Getting Art

A fellow photographer recently wrote:
“You must be one of the most popular photographers on flickr…”

Ha! I had to roll my eyes and laugh out loud after reading this one, because any casual search on “nudity,” “sex,” or even just “girls,” will result in hundreds, if not thousands, of albums that outview mine at any given moment.

Reality is that one just can’t compete with such salacious content when men are inclined to be more interested in getting off than getting art.

This is certainly not to say that the human form cannot be depicted artistically, far from! Some of my favorite photographers regularly feature erotic art. These include hellophotokitty, Lili-G, Eros Leafar, spanishgirl_in_oxford?,and lightpainter). Moreover, this is especially true not only because woman is God’s highest form of art, but also because our aesthetic sensibilities begin with a genetic bias.

An exemplar nonpareil is the hard fact that my number four most viewed foto (out of 10,000+) is one entitled Victoria’s Secret, which depicts a canyon of cleavage as featured on a giant advertisement taken through a dirty shop window at Herald Square.

Fur phun I added "they say ‘sex sells’..." as the caption, the flagrant irony fully intended.

Moreover, one has also got flickr’s “interestingness” feature to vie against, which apparently has an algorithm that is configured to present a staid round-robin of a handful of hand-picked photographers that get featured quite regularly via the ghost in the machine. You would think that with a million plus members, that have probably posted a billion or more photos, you might get greater variety automatically.

Alas, unless you’ve been featured in the flickr blog or been chosen as one of the staff’s favorites, it seems that your chances are slim to none at being “interesting.”

(Let’s hope that I’m not suddenly and mysteriously flickr’d off for stating my earnest, honest, and upfront opinion here…)

Anyway, point is that one should never vie for popularity when it comes to indulging a passion. Just appreciate it for the sheer pleasure it gives you and don’t dwell on the possibilities of profit or notoriety it might bring. For the truth is—reality stings when you allow the values of others to outweigh your own.




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