Quoted By:
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Olivier: Pornography is the way sex is commercialized by a repressive machine in an isolated ghetto of pictures (on the net, in magazines, films, etc.). Pornography is an industry of repression, a collective enterprise of profit. It’s a visual industry which kidnaps sex as a product for frustrated men.
Terry is actually working against pornography because he is reintroducing desire, seduction and playful sexuality, in real life, in real time, in the studio. He is photographing sex as a real interaction between him and his model. He is not playing the scenario of sexual pornographic control and alienation. He is part of the game. We can see one arm of Terry with his watch, one hand, sometimes his body, sometimes his penis, etc. He refuses the stereotypical function of the porn picture. By placing himself in the picture he is suppressing the illusion of domination and joining the frame. It should be noted however that Terry is not trying to demystify sexuality. He’s just lightening up the whole subject and creating a more equal rapport between photographer and model. A photographer going in front of the camera is not enough, just like the factory owner from the Pasolini film ‘Theorem’ deciding to join the workers is not enough. What is required is a sacrifice like in every film of Pasolini. A sacrifice of the artist who knows that he must sacrifice himself to the system, the fashion system, the pornographic system. The artist must face it with no fear.
Pornography is not only fake, stupid and dangerous, it does not exist. It’s a pure construction, an illusion. Terry’s pictures are the opposite of that. They are deconstructing this faux veneer. That is why it’s so infuriating to hear the press call his work “porn chic” or “porn glamour”.
Gavin: Yeah.
