Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age

Where have you been all my life, Mr Steinberg?
I wish I had known about this book sooner.
I always hungered for a collection of works of this nature and it wasn't until I was in my 48th year that I was exposed to your work.
Since then I can't get enough.
Thank you for showing me and the world what "real sex" looks like and what "real people" look like when they're having sex.
Also thank you for being aware enough, brave enough and true to your obvious conviction that sex is a beautiful gift to embrace and soak in and lap up with our eyes as well as our tongues and lips.
I could eat this book with a spoon, but instead I keep it by by bedside table and display one on my coffee table for all to see and to make the statement that at nearly 50 years old I have finally "come of age" and that life and love couldn't be finer.
You have an eye for beauty on the purest level and an appreciation of human interaction that reaches far beyond what any one could possibly expect from one man.
Please keep doing what you do.
The world needs more of your "touch" and your vision.
It's my pleasure to get to know you through your books.
Can't wait for your next book to come out!

Steinburg has compiled a very attractive collection. More than thirty photographers contributed over 100 pictures, total, conveying a wide range of moods. Some represent simple affection between lovers, in less (p.14,18) or more (p.46) explicitly erotic. Other images present self-love in its least Platonic form (p.37,50). Beyond that, the whole spectrum of lovers appear: same- and mixed-sex, public (p.40,41) and private, in every stage of life (p.22,36), and in shapes that don't always match current fashions.

As in any collection, some of the imagery appeals to tastes that I don't share. That includes elements of fetish, bondage, and things that look extremely uncomfortable. I enjoy the photos that stay close to the figure itself and emphasize people enjoying themselves and their partners, and many shots do that. Many don't, however, and the ratio isn't wholly to my liking. People differ though; perhaps the fantasy imagery appeals to you.

-- wiredweird

This is an interesting book and in many ways almost refreshing. The subjects are obviously mostly about as oblivious to the camera as one could be under the circumstances and all should be congratulated on their willingness to be part of this project. It's not airbrushed up, it's not all pretty young things, it's not all straight or conventional. It is mixed gender combinations, it is such diversions as a couple of pissing pictures and other bits and pieces that for most of us might be getting a little beyond our experience. Happily it's all part of what we, as a race, do. It's young people, old people, straight, gay, solo, toys and group. More than anything else this book is just a candid look at human sexual expression and as such a nice overview and with a nice balance, neither gratuitous or sterile.

This is a nice quality softcover book (and any photographic record worth having deserves quality presentation) and a good coffee table size, and without lots of text cropping the images, even more attractive. Having said that though-be warned-If you buy this and leave it on your coffee table I accept no responsibility!!! Your visitors would have to be considerably more open minded than most of mine to pick this up over a cup of tea and not be stopped in their tracks a bit.

Cheers

Lloyd

This is a nice compilation of erotic photography from a number of photographers, but is it "fine art" as most folks define the term? I don't think so -- maybe "fine erotic art" would be a more accurate description. Many people will find many of the images pornographic rather than erotic, and a few of them disturbing. Which "few" depends on one's particular sexual preference, habits, experience, etc. -- mine will likely be different from yours. Whatever, this is a volume for lovers of graphic eroticism, not for those looking for "fine art" in the traditional sense -- fans of Roy Stuart or Eric Kroll should enjoy this book, although its images aren't as fetishistic as those photographers'. It's worth the price, if only to add to one's collection, but keep it away from children and folks wearing pacemakers.

One gripe: The reproduction of the images wasn't as good as it should be, with somewhat wishy-washy blacks and whites -- the overall impression of many of the pictures is gray, without the contrast and rich blacks of a true photograph. At the price of the book, I guess this is expected, since great printing costs money, but I was disappointed nevertheless.

Also, many of the images depict what middle-of-the-roaders would consider aberrant sexual activity, so if anything other than straight hetero encounters puts you off, shop for another book. On the other hand, it's obvious from the expressions of the participants that it's all in good fun.

I wouldn't buy this book again, but I didn't return it, either, for what that's worth.

David Steinberg's book Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age
By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com

In the introduction A.D. Coleman says, "the book in your hands is not just another volume of loosely defined `erotic' photography in which formal nude studies and elaborately staged but fictional sexual scenarios predominate. These are photographs of everyday people-not hired models or professional sex workers-engaged in real sex." "Thank heavens," I thought. I've pretty much had it with staged erotica - the kind where a model stands against a black backdrop in a latex maid outfit and a whip in her hand, the kind rife at what he calls the "tens of thousands of unfathomably popular, hopelessly boilerplate, sex websites," but hardly what I see in real life.

Give me instead what David collected in Photo Sex, "Older people, hefty people, skinny people, people with disabilities-these and more mingle here, linked principally by their acknowledgment of their sexuality as central to their lives and by their participation in these acts of photo sex." Yes, people who look like me, and like my kinky friends. Yes, people like me, who celebrate sex as the core of our being. And Yes, real sex and love and affection, the kind I feel when my lover Griffin looks into me, his hands on me and in me.

The photos are beautiful. Sexual. Alive with hunger. But then, it turns out that this book is about a little more than just that. Coleman goes on to discuss this type of photography as inherently political, saying that, "By its very existence, the range of sexual images being produced opposes the core right-wing dictate that sexual activity should properly be restricted to heterosexual interaction between husbands and wives, without accouterments and with procreation foremost in mind-and that sexual activity should never involve shameless public display."

We in the BDSM community are often reminded not to "scare the villagers," meaning don't let them see too much of our practices because they cannot understand what they are seeing and will use it against us. Maybe that's true, but in another way it so damages us both in the public arena as well as in the private one. There is another part of me, a hunger for my vanilla friends to see me, the whole me, not just the fluff I assemble for public consumption. My vanilla friends have responded in a variety of ways, from mild titillation to a blank look. Even my kinky friend Susan exhorts me to keep this side of myself under the blanket so as not to make anyone uncomfortable by "unconsensually" including them in my lifestyle, or because I might appear to have gone "around the bend with that bondage stuff." She is right in one way though, I also don't want to become one of those BDSM-obsessed people who bore us silly, yammering on and on about their sex life.

I cannot keep it all under the blanket though. The only way to remove the stigma of an alternative sexuality is to educate our vanilla brethren. Speaking openly about what we do and who we are is part of that. It's not that I want to share what I did in bed last night, but rather I want to be free to talk about the remarkable world of sexuality and how that affects my personal and public life. I am hungry for compatriots, hungry to connect on a deeper level about what is meaningful. Sadly, in our culture talking about sexuality is often not acceptable, not to mention alternative sexuality like BDSM. Even when I do find vanilla friends open to discussion, they must start at the beginning as in, "What does that B-D-S-M stand for again?" With that in mind, a deeper discussion of sexual politics is never going to be on the table.

One day my life will have its own generational shift, a shift that like David's book, offers "glimpses of the playful, the tender, the intimate, the affectionate, the delicate, the humorful, even the goofy-sex in all its delicious, constantly shifting intricacy." One day I will be known for all of it, and then I too will be a coffee table book of delicious desserts, easy to taste along with all the other flavors of my inner landscape.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications