If it looks like a duck,.....

I think <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo.tcl?

photo_id=978996

" >this photo</a> crosses the line into porn. Note the comments.

(I intentionally put in a non-descriptive title so as to avoid him

getting a million hits.)

It's not porn

I would not call that porn.

�I shall not today attempt further to define pornography . . . but I know it when I see it.� � Justice Potter Stewart, U.S. Supreme Court, <i>Jacobellis vs. Ohio</i>, 1964.

Is is close? Note the comments that it received. If the moderators say it isn't porn, I'm OK with that, but it is over the line for me.

I don't like it. I also don't think it's striving to be porn necessarily. It's not particularly tasteful IMO, but that's just my opinion. Perhaps this person needs help in composition and layout, as most are takes on common poses seen here in nude art, but are not lit as well and suffer from cluttered backgrounds.

 

What is it? To me (and this is only my opinion) it's porn trying to be arty, or very poor fine art nude photography.

 

The next guy won't agree however and that's a-ok. It certainly isn't up to the quality and finish of much of Kevin's work.

<I>I think this photo crosses the line into porn.</I><P>But I don't. I'm not sure I find aesthetically stimulating either, but that is another issue. let's try to have serious discussion: What about makes it pornographic for you Chris?

Surely the distinction between pornography and, I presume, erotica, is <i>end use</i>?<p>This is not a flippant comment, by the way: I throw it up to sidestep aesthetic questions.

...though on reflexion, maybe that's a bad idea...

Speaking in generalities and with quotation marks omitted�� Nudes fall in two categories, porn or art.

 

Art tries to reveal something about the human condition, teach us, challenge our assumptions, make us think or appeals to the brain due to its geometry, color, texture, etc. The image fits none of my art criteria.

 

Porn is sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal. The image does meet the porn criteria due to the explicit nature of the photo, the bed in the background, the subject�s breast implants and her shaved public area. Any of these things by itself would not make an image pornographic. However, in combination they convince me that the photographer�s primary goal was to cause sexual arousal in the viewer.

It's not porn, but it's not very good either. Looks like all you need to do to get a good rating here is show a boob or two, probably because or the male dominated audience. It's cheesy and amateurish (in the pejorative sense of the word).

 

I don't think it quite warrants booting off photo.net as porn, but I think that sooner or later photo.net needs to introduce some sort of content rating scheme if photo.net is going to accept this type of image. While it's not possible to really define the line between good nudes and bad nudes, it's certainly possible to draw a line between nudes and non-nudes.

 

If we charged to see the nudes section, we could probably double our income...

 

Please note I resisted any tempation to say no-nudes is good nudes...Opps, I guess I didn't.

Do you really think that no nudes is good nudes? There are some perfectly fine examples of fine art which happen to contain nudes. There's also the occaisional PJ shot of protests where women feel the need to run about topless to prove their point. While that may arouse some men (and women) some of those photos are also very good simply in a PJ nature, others are just photos that have topless girls running about in them.

<br><br>

It's not a thin line to walk, is a big smudgy gray area that's easy to slip and fall on. It would be difficult for photo.net to enforce anything that would seem fair. I wouldn't pay extra to view nudes, but I do think I might miss out on seeing some good <i>art </i>if there was a charge for it.

<br><BR>

Maybe we heroes can be exempt? :-p

Definitely not porn. Not good photography either, but what are you, the pubic hair police?

It would be free for patrons of course!

 

Nudes are a well respected art form in painting, sculpture and photography. When done well they can be of great beauty. When done badly they are trash or worse. Since photo.net doesn't delete really bad pictures of any other subject, it's hard to justify deleting really bad nudes if they don't cross the line into porn (whatever that is).

If you don't think this is porn, then let's turn the discussion on it's

head. How would you change the pose, lighting, or whatever in

his image to make it clearly pornographic?

Actually I do think the photo tells us something about the model's choices in life: treating pubic hair as ornamental, the way one "Styles' the hair on their head or under their arms, or on their legs, there is the pierced navel. I only looked at the photo briefly but as I recall she appeared to have enhance the size of her breasts with prosthetics -implants- and that too is reflective of societal mores and what is currently thought to be, in parts of "western society", sexually attractive. By looking at her we of course are engaging in the sexual act of voyeurism, and she in the sexual act of exhibitionism, but the former is a rather passive sexual act, and the latter is a bit more pro-active. We might speculate on why she has done this, or why she has decided to treat her body they other people treat clothing: as something that makes a statement of identity and as a tribal or class marker. The background also tells something about who, or at least where, she was when the photo was made.<P>So it is possible to read the image as making a statement about the human condition. <P>The only context pornography has is sex, and this image has greater context than that.

<P>Maybe it's easier for me because English isn't my native language, so I happen to have an English dictionary, and according to that this isn't even a borderline case, it's undisputably not pornographic. (Incidentally the definition I've always heard of pornography in Danish is pretty much the same, and this picture still isn't)</P>

 

<P>What it is is a picture of a naked woman. Not a good one and though that shouldn't matter, it probably is the real cause of the excitement (no pun intended, but I don't mind it).</P>

 

<P>Of course subjective definitions of pornography vary, some people would call a picture showing a womans bare ankle pornographic and ban it.</P>

 

<P>The most common distinction seems to be that black and white nudes is art and colour nudes is pornography. Obvious nonsense but more people use that defintion than are willing to admit to it.</P>

 

<P>A variation on this is that it's pornography if it isn't good enough (or doesn't pretend) to be art, as if the two were mutually exclusive. Lots of pictures are neither, and though I'd have to do some digging in my memory to find specific examples, there is no reason why a picture couldn't be both.</P>

 

<P>What the dictionary says is that pornography is a depiction of a sexual act in order to cause sexual excitement. Being nude doesn't even enter into it. "Sexual act" does, and this woman doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. If her hand was in a different position horizontally and maybe indicating movement, there might be a case, but it isn't.</P>

 

<P>The intend of the picture may indeed be to cause sexual excitement, but that alone is not enough to make it pornographic. (Nor would I consider it successful, but that's beside the point)</P>

 

<P>In the same way there are lots of depictions of sexual acts including actual intercourse that are not pornographic, because they are not made to cause sexual excitement. (And yes, I can remember specific cases)</P>

 

<P>I'd save my ammo for something worth getting excited about.</P>

 

<HR WIDTH=100 ALIGN=LEFT>

 

<P><A HREF="http://www.wind.dk/photographs/gallerypage/weirdcustomers/Y02M05D31P35">Porn? Or just a porn star...</A> Whatever it is, it's the most popular page on my web site <CODE>:-D</CODE></P>

Ellis - you could be right....on the other hand the Emperor may be totally naked.

 

It's possible to read complex motives into any image, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

<i>...Porn is sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.</i><p>

I've known guys who could get off by looking at a couple of water balloons. I believe (male) sexual arousal is influenced by maturity, mindset, beliefs, experience with and amount of exposure to females. <p>

By the above definition then, one mans porn is another's art and I certainly would disagree with Justice Potter Stewart in applying his standards to all.

I think that the pose, expression, framing, light and background

all suggest a theme of a woman as a sexual object. It's meant to

be titilating, plain and simple. Ask you mother, wife, girlfriend,

sister, or daughter what they think. Our judge Potter would

classify this as porn and he'd have an awful lot of people beyond

the reactionary prudish contingent agreeing with him.

<i>"Actually I do think the photo tells us something about the model's choices in life: treating pubic hair as ornamental, the way one "Styles' the hair on their head or under their arms, or on their legs, there is the pierced navel."</i><br><br>

It's called a Brazilian Wax, (well, almost) it's the hip thing to do these days if you're going to the beach. You don't want any unsightly pubic hairs creaping out of your ultra skimpy bikini do you? LOL.<br><br>

Anyway, back to the subject. The only real way to know if it's porn or art is to just ask the photographer. Other than that, to rule that it's one type of image or the other would be a purely subjective judgement, thus being unfair.<br><br>

Remember when my picture was POW? There was quite a debate about whether or not it was pornographic and even one member even threatened legal action over it being displayed on the site. Did it even show any nudity? No, it sure didn't.

Whether or not it is porn is open to interpretation, what I find slightly disapointing (although not surprising)is the huge number of page views, 8,800, and the relatively high number of critiques and comments recorded for this image. Would a truly outstanding photo of anything other than a naked woman attract so much interest?<br>Surely there's something a little sad about so many PN people putting subject content above all other qualities.

Whether is porn or not is a question everybody has to make up for itself. But as I go through the critique forum I see that nude women are really making the photographer !

 

I agree with Bob and Garry that it appears that it is enough to put a nude on a photo to receive attention and high ratings. So I am very glad this topic pop up here. It makes it finally possible that it is sayd with so many words that such photo's are not even worth the electricity spoiled to keep the computer running when looking at it.

All � I�m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination and I�m not against pornography. Nude art is one of my favorite subjects and some explicit images fall in my definition of art, but the quality of photo.net is degraded by images such as the one discussed in this thread. Pornography has its place in world, but I don�t think photo.net should be its place.

 

Mark � �Definitely not porn. Not good photography either, but what are you, the pubic hair police?� No, I�m not the pubic hair police. That should be clear.

 

Ivar � the online dictionary at �Dictionary.com� disagrees with your definition. No sexual act in required.

 

Hal � My definition requires the image to be sexually explicit.

 

Bob�s idea about only letting patrons view the nudes is a great idea. I think he may have underestimated the increase in revenue that we would get.

"If we charged to see the nudes section, we could probably double our income... "

<br>

i'm not completely sure of this. The ones who want+can pay for viewing nudes on their screen, can have much more of it for the same price on Those Websites...the "articity" i guess wouldn't be important.

<Br>

Moreover, what would make the difference between photo.net's gallery and the usual pay-porn sites in that case? Your freely viewable landscape?

<br> With a bit of exaggeration, I think it would look like when a nice day your girlfriend (ok, one's, to make it less personal) would start to ask money from you for the last night...for "accessing her nude sections".

<p>

In the same time I also dislike the fact that most attention is around the photos containing naked female persons over here...but hey, we get into the digital era! get yourself a digipix mix and you can start shooting 'nude art photos', you don't even have to go to a lab for development...

<br>

It would be interesting to see some PN statistics, how many of the photos submitted with nude content are still film-based.

<p>

PS: i still consider the human body as the most beatuiful & exciting (not necessarily =arousing) subject. I hope i'll never be alone with that. Cheers.