Sex, Lies, and Art

I've been thinking about sexual art lately. I just got the news that I've been accepted into the 2004 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, and I'm psyched about that. And then writer/photographer David Steinberg rolled into town to promote his new book, Photo Sex, and I got to spend some time hanging out with him and talking about making art of people having sex.

Photo Sex is a collection of 115 photographs by 31 photographers, many of whom are artists I've admired for years: Michael Rosen, Jan Saudek, Barbara Nitke, Mark Chester, Jill Posener, Michele Serchuk, and Craig Morey. The black-and-white photos range from tenderly erotic to playfully raunchy to sizzlingly explicit. They cover all possible combinations of gender, and a broad spectrum of race, age, and body type. The people in these photographs aren't professional porn models, they're just gutsy people who clearly felt okay about getting sexual in front of the camera, and by extension, in front of everyone who sees the photos.

There's a lot to like about Photo Sex, but even apart from the sheer artistic value, publishing this book is a political act. The Bush administration, and the Christian fundies who dominate it, would like nothing better than to roll our freedom of expression back to the Puritan era. This book slaps back at their assertion that sexuality is a furtive, shameful thing that must be restricted by ignorance and isolation.

I'm a sexual creature; so are you. Regardless of how you choose to express them, sexual feelings are a part of the human experience. But we make those choices based on what we see as our options. Photographs of real sexuality are important, because they show us what we can be if we so desire. David Steinberg addresses this when he writes, "How we think of sex, and how we think of ourselves as sexual people, is shaped to no small degree by the images of sex and sexual attractiveness we see around us.... Images that portray sex as complex, intimate, profound, and mysterious encourage us to open ourselves to sex in all its depth and power." Our government's attempt to prevent us from seeing sexual images is an attempt to create an erotically disenfranchised nation. The best way to prevent that is to vote early and vote often for beautiful, genuine sexual art.

Photo Sex, edited by David Steinberg, published by Down There Press; Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Jan 30-Feb 1. For more information go to www.seattleerotic.org.

matisse@thestranger.com