Hans van der Kamp

This discussion about the question what separates porn from erotic art continues. Again I am stupefied by how uneducated some in the land of the “free” are. Today I woke up with a post by an American artist who assumed that there must have been censorship in the Ice Age, because all depictions of copulation were made in hidden and dark places.

I explained to him that these were cavemen. They were doing – almost everything – in dark hidden places, thus the name CAVEmen. They did not like to be eaten alive by sable tigers or to be stampeded by mammoths. Heck, suicidal artists might have even carved on trees for all I know, but the trees are no longer there.

I generously added that these drawings were not meant to be porn or erotic art. These were spiritual, religious fertility symbols.

My irritation with some of these emotional and intellectual retards who call themselves “erotic artists” is growing. They remind me of a college student from North Carolina who sent me an email in 1996, just after I started AMEA, telling me that he was surprised to see that people already had sex before the Sexual Revolution. (But hey I am no Einstein either, because I was just as surprised to learn there were colleges in North Carolina.)

I am starting to think that History Of The World by Mel Brooks was understood by (too) many as an educational movie instead of a comedy.

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The discussion of erotic art lovers is still going on. Still about that lame question: “What separates erotic art from porn?”. I am adding my response here, as well as on my Facebook page, since this question is asked very often in my line of work. Now I can relax and send links through Email. :)

Part One is here.

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The problem is that porn is also culturally and geographically defined. Show a female nipple on a photograph in the US and some if not most will find that distasteful or even pornographic. Show a male nipple in a Calvin Klein ad in that same country and you can buy all the billboard space you need. Show half a male butt, and have a bunch of female office workers licking their lips while looking at it, bingo you have a Pepsi commercial.

I do not doubt the military leadership of the US, but as cultural leaders, I’d prefer the Europeans. We are not scared of nipples male or female, we show sex on tv and we have Rembrandt etchings of copulation in museums for children to watch. In fact most of our famous artists since the Dark Ages and even before have depicted sex in the most explicit ways. These artists were rarely excluded from exhibits, not even in the most prestigious museums. Not even today.

This particular site – http://eroticsignature.ning.com/ – I believe is hosted in England, the country of the private schools where homosexual behavior is quite normal even amongst heterosexuals, but please, please do not show an erect penis here, because they will faint on the spot.

It is not porn or the definition of erotic art we are discussing, we are discussing moral, cultural issues and above all the hypocrisy of countries that somehow got lost in a mostly global effort to celebrate the act of love. That could be Saudi Arabia, Iran, the US, or China. Countries that celebrate industrial production more than anything else. Sex distracts from production. Worker bees should not be distracted, they should produce, preferably 24/7. It is an old trick that goes back to feudalism.

If we return to the original meaning of the Greek word pornography, the meaning is much wider. In this meaning Fox News is pornography and showing pictures of innocent children being slaughtered is pornography. I think we should keep that in mind once in a while. And do not forget that the Greeks did not think of the depictions of erect penises on their plates and drinking mugs as pornography.

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I am starting to really enjoy clubbing seals in a zoo…

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Facebook friend Christopher Keeley posted a page called Tokyo Camera Style. A small collection of cameras hanging around people’s necks. It is hard to check, since there are no details on the persons owning the cameras but after 30 years of photography it feels like I can guess the characters of the owners behind those cameras. Just to give one example: I have never known an owner of a rangefinder camera who was not a neurotic and a perfectionist. I would even go so far as to say that photographers with range finder cameras have unhappy sex lives.

So I really was enjoying myself with Keeley’s page and I was struck by a quote of William Eggleston:
– I don’t think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day -
I simply do not buy that, or better I cannot imagine this to be true. I can see myself picking a camera that is best for the job, supposing I had a dozen laying around, which is not the case, believe me. So it must be a pose, I assume, much like the late Helmut Newton’s answer on what his photography is about: “Oh, it is all about entertaining models”.

I am strictly monogamous when it comes to cameras. For two years I worked with the Fuji S3 Pro and even named it Prima Donna, because of the poor focusing and some other unexpected electronic behavior one would not expect in a 21st Century camera. But I really loved working with it, because it always kept me on alert.

When I was finally able to afford the Nikon D3, I swore to myself that I would never take it outdoors and use Prima Donna instead, just in case I ran into a junkie who thought the D3 represented a few weeks of smack. But the Prima Donna ended on my shelves. After the D3 I never used it again. D3 is named Vera Donna (True Lady) because of its unbelievable technical achievements and most of all because its reliability under all circumstances.

Now I am carefully avoiding camera shops because the D3x has been out for some time now. That has everything to do with my budget. I know I will not be able to resist that camera if only to name her Ultima Donna.

With the D4 I will be running out of names in the Donna sequel, maybe then I will start naming them after actual people. If it comes to that, I will seek professional help, rest assured. :)

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