Hans van der Kamp

One of my biggest mistakes in day to day life is that I love to sit behind my computer with a stiff drink in one hand and do nothing but watching other people direct me to blogs, tweets and posts that I am sure will upset me. Than I put the glass down and start typing. As I said it is a bad habit and I usually do not follow up on it but at times I simply cannot help myself and start posting under my own name as if there was no Google on this planet.

My only excuse is that I think it is good for my coronary system. I just have to blow off steam once in a while. So after a very long day of photographing utterly obnoxious people I found myself – once again – in such a mood, when Ancilla Tilla tweeted about an article by Christine Kessler who seemed to have a nervous breakdown over the fact that “her friend” the portrait photographer was losing work because there were to many fake photographers around who were stealing away his clients. It was a simple point but Kessler went on and on about it as if she was not talking about a friend but about her own precious career as a photographer who likes to dress up women in condom-like outfits and calls this very popular art “Fetish Photography”.

When I woke up the next day I had no urge whatsoever to reread my comments, because I knew that – much like Keller – I had blown a fuse and I regretted my actions in all sincerity. But as weeks passed I became interested once again and I went back to that post and found my two comments. Instead of being ashamed of what I had written, I felt almost proud, so I am re-posting them here.

So here is the original article: Dear Models (and “photographers”) For some reason Google still cannot deal very well with indexing blogs, so just Googling for it won’t do.

And here are my two comments:

1/

Yes, I can see you are upset and I understand why. Still, this happens everywhere and in every profession. Everybody is a hairdresser and everybody is a carpenter or a plumber. I live in the center of Amsterdam, Netherlands and whenever the 18th century house/apartment needs some restoration some very cheap and unprofessional people are hired. Everything they do falls apart in a few weeks and yet another crew is hired by my landlord to create an even bigger mess.

They do not even bother to print business cards, hey I am not even allowed to know who they are.

The same thing goes for models. Not every exhibitionist is a model. Yet there are millions of thrill seeking exhibitionists out there who claim they are models. They often do not follow up on appointments, or show up way too late. And last but not least they are often abusive towards photographers if they feel that the pictures being taken are not what they are looking for.

With 30 years of experience in this profession I would say that there are more fake models around than fake photographers, but then again things may have changed with the arrival of the digital camera. Did they get so cheap in your opinion? My Nikon D3 did not feel half as cheap as the Rolleiflex 6×6 I started out with in 1977.

You may have aired some of your discomfort, but I do not think that it will change much. Media today are owned by “the people”. Many say that is a good thing and in a way it is, because we receive pictures and video of events that would normally be censored for political reasons.

>>> …and as I became more irritated by the other comments…

2/

Why is almost everybody agreeing with this statement? Are we willing to say that amateur photographers are a real threat to professionals?

How professional are we than? Every baker has to compete with Mum’s favorite apple pie…
What I see here is a bunch of masochists licking the somewhat famous photographer’s ass. Come on, let’s be reasonable about this. I do not give a flying f*** about amateur photographers or amateur models. If the clients can’t see the difference, it is their problem, not mine.

I saw the same thing happening in the seventies when cheap SLRs were introduced. That did not last for long either.

My advice to the models is: Always demand RAW files. If you have those, you can go to your local suck up nerd who thinks he is a graphic designer and have them Photoshop into something that fits your portfolio.

God, you people make me sick. Stand tall, for crying out loud. Photographing every exhibitionist in a dress that looks like a condom isn’t exactly going to better the world in any aspect either.

>>>

The difference in quality between post #1 and #2, both morally and intellectually, is astounding. Having had the opportunity to delete the second post would have been nice. But on the other hand it is what it is. I still feel strongly about what I posted there. What’s the fun of Internet if you cannot blow a fuse once in a while? What an incredible outlet for both Kessler and me.

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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.

>>>>>

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.

>>>

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

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