Naked Flickr Sex Erotic Bodies

I’ve been told that the internet floats on a sea of pornography. That there is pornography there, I know. About the ratio of porn to non-porn traffic, I don’t know, though I’m prepared to believe there’s a lot of porn, if not quite enough to float the rest.

But this isn’t about porn. Or, more precisely, it’s not about the sexual and erotic images, still and moving, which are for sale on the internet. It’s about images which are available free, many of which would be considered pornographic, but not necessarily all. These images are on Flickr, a social networking site based on photographs. You put your photos there so others can see them. And you look at other peoples photos according to your interests.

Flickr Naked

I joined Flickr in 2006 so I could post photos of graffiti. As I photographed other subjects, I posted them as well. But it wasn’t until a year or so ago that I realized that Flickr also had photos of naked people, some of them engaging in sexual activity. Anyone can see these photos; you don’t even be a member of Flickr. To be sure, Flickr has ways of restricting photos and there are nude, sexual, and erotic photos that are restricted. But I haven’t seen any of them. I’m just talking about the ones anyone can see – though, of course, you must be old enough, or be willing to misrepresent your age.

My basic impression of these photos is of the enormous variety. Youthful, middle age, old; varying degrees of dress; various postures; solo, couples, and more; hetero, gay, lesbian; good looking, plain, unattractive; color, black and white; technically excellent, mediocre, poor; attentive to composition, indifferent to it. Various in those and other ways.

And then there’s the matter of motivation and intention: Why are these people taking these photos and putting them on public display? I assume there are various answers to that question, but I don’t know off hand what they are. Why, for example, would a man take a snapshot of his erect penis laid over a dollar bill and covering much of it? Who’s he want to see it? What’s he expect them to think? Is he looking for feedback?

Lots of people are. This is, after all, a social networking site. You can comment on the pictures, and some people explicitly ask for comments; some even ask for dirty comments. Not only that, but you can make notes on the picture surface. You draw a rectangle around part of the photo and make some comment. Some photos have 5, 10, 20, or more notes on them, most about strategic bits of anatomy and what the annotator thinks about or would like to do with / to that bit of anatomy.

Artistic Nudes

But let’s consider a specific example. I’m not going to put the photo here because doing so would impact THIS blog in a way that I can’t control. And it’s not obvious that the photographer and model would let me do so – though I suppose I could ask. Yes, the photo is where anyone on the internet can see it, so why should it make any difference if I post it here? Well, on Flickr they’re among friends. They have some kind of relationship going with people who comment on photos there – this particular photo has over 20 comments, but it has been viewed over 1600 times (what do the anonymous viewers think?). If I were to post it here, well, this is a different place, different bunch of people, and I’m using the photo for a purpose quite different from what the photographer and model intended. In any event, you don’t really need to see the photo. A description is good enough for my purposes.

Let’s call the photographer David and the model Denise – not the screen names they actually use. David is not a professional photographer. According to his profile he’s a middle aged tradesman who took up photography a few years ago. He’s quite serious about photography and has photographed a wide variety of subjects. He’s taken many photographs of Denise, with nude and partially nude photos in the minority. She’s the only model he’s photographed in the nude. I’m guessing, though I don’t know this, that they’re lovers.

In this particular photo Denise is laying down on her right side with her head held up by her right forearm. She’s completely naked except for some piece of cloth around her waist. She’s drawing her left leg up and back, holding her shin with her left hand. Her genitals are thus exposed. Thus, this photo could not have been in Playboy during its first decade, and probably somewhat later. It shows too much. There are many photos on Flickr that show more.

What interests me about the photo is that note that David wrote. He explained that he and Denise had discussed the photo a great deal and he wanted people’s opinion on whether or not it was an “artistic nude.” The consensus among the commenters, who seem overwhelmingly male, is that it is artistic. Some comments were quite brief, no more than 10 words or so, while others were longer, 50, 100, or more words, mini-essays on the aesthetics of the nude.

When I read the question I keyed in on “artistic” and, as you might imagine, went nuts for a few seconds: Artistic? What is that, art? How do you define the difference between art and not? No one said that in their reply, nor, I suspect, would it have been helpful. David (and Denise?) were using the word to draw a line between appropriate and inappropriate, legitimate and illegitimate photos.

David and Denise aren’t the only ones interested in drawing that line. Nor are they the only ones who use the concept of “art” to make the distinction. There are some Flickr groups the proclaim an affinity for art: Fine Art Nude, Explicit Art Photos, ART & SENSUALITY, and perhaps “Erotic" defined - an exploration of the concept. But there are more groups that could care less: Pervert Girl, Deep Insertions, PussyStyle, and Fuck me Miniskirt. And then there are nudist groups, which have a different set of concerns: Naturist pics & naturist life, Clothing Optional Planet, and naturist and nudist lifestyles. Just what types of photos actually show up in these groups, well, you have to look for yourself. That’s one of the things that’s so fascinating about these photos, the obvious variety of ways in which people think about them. Sorting that out would be a forbidding task.

A New Mechanism for Creating Social Norms?

If I’m right about David and Denise being lovers, then it follows that their modeling sessions are a part of their relationship. They are exploring who they are as individuals and as a couple. But why put the photos online? Well, David is serious about his photography and wants people to see his work and to give him feedback. In the case of this particular photo it would seem that they want a communal sense of legitimacy, even if the communal judgment comes from people they know only online.

They certainly aren’t the only ones who are using erotic photography within their personal relationship. I’ve seen other cases where that’s going on. A somewhat different case is where a couple poses for a third-party photographer; that’s out there as well. The photographer’s interest is one thing; the couple’s is another. Some photographers are snapping dirty pictures, some are getting girlie shots, and still others are investigating the human form. And then there’s Mr-erection-on-a-dollar-bill. There’s that as well.

And this and more is out there on the web. It’s really quite marvelous. It would have been impossible back in the days when Hugh Hefner started Playboy. There was no way for people to create such images and share them, both so easily. If there had been, would the technology have been used in this way? I really don’t know. The obvious answer is that, no, it would not. The culture was too repressed to allow it. If that’s the case, then what happened to change things?

That, of course, is way beyond the scope of this essay.

And where are we going?