It’s now clear that digital photography has irreversibly changed our relationship with pictures. I would add that Photoshop (on which I’ve written before, also here) has intensely changed that relationship as well, from adding captions to making fake celebrity images, right up to extreme photoshopping. Take this one (found in the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.oral Newsgroup) for example.
(click to enlarge)
It looks like an early ’80s picture “revamped” in Photoshop. I find this mirror-image extravaganza almost physically unpleasant: the overall color tone, the girl’s expression and hair, the dizzying frame – multiplied a thousand times, some kind of nausea-inducing porno-fractal. And I wonder: why did someone create this image (which I believe took some time to make)? Is it sexually arousing (for blonde fetishists or fractal nerds)? Is it decorative (perhaps an impossible wallpaper)? Is it a devotional image of The Secret Church of the Holy Double Penis (in many traditions, from Roman Catholic to Tibetan, symmetry is considered divine)? As usual with me, too many questions and no answers (that’s why I don’t call myself a theoretician).
I’ve often said that I believe Amateur pornographers are truly digital people, that learn to use technology to reach new peaks of sexual pleasure – or different ones anyway. I have a whole collection of images that document this fact; we could even say that the first instances of technologies appearing within porn are to be found in Amateur stuff: cameras, PCs, webcams and of course remote controls.
Remote controls are interesting objects – that embody, even in the name, the true meaning of technology as an extention of our bodies or senses. Of course there’s a variety of remote-controlled sex gadgets, wired or wireless, USB and Bluetooth. Toys that can be controlled remotely, even from elsewhere, via internet. This is a screenshot from a video, and the remote creates an odd effect: are we being watched by two persons having sex (one of which is certainly a crossdresser, but probably both), and we’re so boring that they’re switching channel?
I found Babette in the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.exhibitionists newsgroup. Sissy Babette is a 50 yo guy from Berlin, he’s gay and submissive. But things aren’t that simple: here’s what he says about himself: “My tiny cock looks like a fat clitoris and I get only premature ejaculations. I’m not able to have sex with women, last I’ve had sex with a woman at the end of the year 2000. I’m not able to satisfy a woman, I ejaculate my useless cum after few moments in women’s vagina. I’m sure that I’ll never be allowed to have sex with a woman, that’s why I’m a ridiculous, fat sissy since many years.” Babette has a very imaginative and verbal website, where he found new and more powerful ways to humiliate himself in public: graphics with the exact dimensions of his penis, a brief history of his previous lives (and marriages), long descriptions of the free services he offers. It seems as if, for Babette, this public act of digital humiliation is as fulfilling as wet sex.
The disclaimer for the images is absolutely outstanding: “This file is published for Sissy Babette’s public humiliation. Please distribute and share this file on the web as you like.” You hear? Copyright can become part of sexplay, and CC can be arousing.
One of the new sexual practices made possible by digital photography and the Internet (the key elements of Realcore) is the Tribute: one performs a sexual act using a print of someone’s picture, this act is photographed and then posted. There are many variations on the tribute theme: this one is performed by Marion, a pro-am of many talents (perhaps too many: Marion and her husband run several websites, devoted to different genres, all featuring her as the star); the dick pic should be from one of her subscribers (and the hard-on could have been obtained looking at Marion’s website).
