TIMOTHY STAPPAERTS

1. Erotic photography: a preamble.

Ever since the invention of photography erotic imagery has asserted itself as a field of application of the medium¹. It has countless enthusiasts, from those actively engaged in the practice – professional and amateur photographers – to those passively engaged in its consumption, of all ages, cultures and ethnic origins. In recent years, with the rise of digital technology, both these groups have grown by leaps and bounds.

While it is true that since the dawn of human culture the visual aspects of eros have been extremely popular with practitioners of representation, it is also true that the invention of photography has triggered an enormous increase in the production of erotic images, greatly extending their ubiquity and consumption.

The consumption of erotic photography is the driving force behind this type of production, perhaps more than in other cases. What makes it so appealing lies in certain aspects of the photographic image itself. First of all, the capacity to freeze a moment of so-called reality in a sign that has been fixed once and for all, not subject to further mutations or developments; hence seen as proof, testimony, on the one hand, of something that has taken place², while on the other hand it lends itself to manipulation that can modify the form of its appearance, mostly but not necessarily for aesthetic enhancement. Then there is also photography as stimulus for suggestions, ranging from the memory of something that has been to the celebration of something that exists and, finally, the anticipation of something not yet experienced, whose iconic characteristics, nevertheless, are comparable to those of something we have already experienced. Beyond all this, there is the photograph as image of the transient and the unreachable, overcoming the unstoppable flow of time and shortening the boundlessness of space. This also implies the capacity to make visible the hidden and the secret, the forbidden and the distant, the inaccessible and the taboo. The entire range of desire is spread across these aspects, including – in this case – specifically erotic desire.

On the side of production I can propose three different models through which to outline the operative attitudes of the photographer in question. Roland Barthes, in his notes on photography³, distinguishes between three figures: the operator, namely the author of the image, who may be the photographer himself, or the person who has decided that that image must be what it is; the spectrum, i.e. that which is the object of the photographic act, in other words the subject of the image; and the spectator, the consumer of the images. Based on this division of roles, I would indicate the following three models.

The first is one that in the past, and for other purposes⁴, I have called the Nadar model. I know of no specifically erotic photographs by Nadar, but his approach to portrait photography can be extended to erotic photography. In either case, the leading role in the definition of the image is that of the operator whose task is to construct the image based on specific modes that correspond both to his poetics and to the style of the era to which he belongs, and that he may have contributed to create: starting with the treatment of the subject and extending to the underscoring of the point of view, the angle of sight, the lighting. In short, the operator has almost total control of the image.

The second model would be that of Lewis Carroll, whose photographs were unabashedly erotic. A major part of the production of erotic photography depends on this model. In this case, the spectrum is of decisive importance; everything that emanates from it determines the quality, the value, of the image. The operator lets himself be transfixed by and “exposed to” the visual flagrancy of the spectrum that penetrates through the camera. His role becomes that of a passive receiver who attempts to reduce his own intervention in the construction of the image to a minimum, with the aim of altering as little as possible the flagrancy of what appears before him at the moment of the shot.

The third model is what I have called New York New Wave, referring to that vast cultural phenomenology that spread through the New York scene in the late 1970s and very early 1980s, especially in the areas of music and youthentertainment subcultures where the image, and the photograph in particular, played a very important role – from Robert Mapplethorpe to Larry Clark, Jimmy De Sana to the early works of Nan Goldin. In this model the spectrum has no status as reality other than in the moment in which it becomes image. So of the three figures of Barthes, here the dominant role is that of the spectator whose expectations as desiring subject must be satisfied or provoked, stimulated, augmented, excited by the image, beyond the reality of the spectrum and the ability of the operator. Every single producer of erotic photographs will pass from time to time from one model to another, depending on the circumstances, often with a certain preference for one of them, which will wind up prevailing and clearly characterizing the image produced.

The project of Timothy Stappaerts, which begins in 2006, after a long period of gestation, and is still in progress, seems to favor this latter model, though still considering the procedures that form the basis of the Nadar model and, at the same time, taking a distance from the early photographers of the New York New Wave model mentioned above as examples to clarify the idea.

2. Timothy Stappaerts: the project.

The first use Timothy Stappaerts made of photography was to take pictures of his sculptures, on which he worked from 1991 to 2000, which never reached definitive results, always remaining on the level of projects in progress, with the phases of that progress documented by photographs.

In parallel with this photographic practice he made drawings, already with erotic subject matter, starting with the comics he produced when he was a teenager. From the outset his drawing did not reflect an artistic intent, but concentrated on the most realistic and immediate possible transcription of a vision or a fantasy. His photographic practice developed during the voyage around the world he undertook in 2001-2002. This was the period in which his ongoing project began to take form.

Its first manifestations are the photographs of gorillas made in Gabon in 2005.

A more precise definition emerged later, with the choice of erotic photography, as demonstrated by the first photographs of this series made in Ghent in 2006. Next came South Africa and the island of Patmos in 2007, Brussels, again South Africa, then back to Patmos in 2008, to South Africa and Louisiana in 2009, and still Louisiana in 2010. There were also other places where he took pictures that nevertheless have not led to acceptable results, in his view, such as the images made in Thailand, in Italy and in northern Uganda, and the works still being made in Montana, Israel, northern Florida and Serbia.

While these places, with their respective human, social and landscape substance, play a fundamental role in the project, the subjects of the images are equally important, though in a different way. Timothy relies for their recruiting on persons who hold casting calls, based on his indications. Therefore he comes into contact with his actors (mostly actresses, actually) only shortly before the time of the shoot. The subject or subjects, when couples are involved, are taken to the place. As he puts it⁵: “places are not replaceable, people are”.

The relationship that is established between the subject and the place constitutes the essence of the whole project, even when in the individual photographic image that is the ultimate, unique result of this long, detailed process – drawing as graphic materialization of a vision and therefore as storyboard for the shoot, casting in which the economic aspect of the entire operation enters the picture with all its impact, the shooting at the site and everything that came prior to it in terms of scouting of locations and investigation of environmental conditions, where again the economic aspects play a major role – very little can be recognized of all this. The result is an erotic photograph. To use his words, again: “I never question an image. I keep it or I leave it. I just produce them”.

But while the outcome is a series of erotic photographs, behind the entire project lies the intention to establish a relationship between an image as materialization of a vision of the unconscious and a widespread iconography like that which is manifested, for example, in magazines, therefore between an archetype and an icon. Just as an unconscious vision is based on an archetype, and therefore does not depend on any particular individual trait, so an icon responds to a collective doxa that goes beyond any individual concerns. The fact that this connection is made by an erotic photograph simply implies assertion of the exemplary pertinence of the photographic medium to the expressive necessities of man the animal, and at the same time identification of eros as one of the basic foundations of the existence of the species.

Pier Luigi Tazzi
Antwerpen, at the radiant blossoming of Spring 2011.

1. I would date the invention back to the communication on the part of François Arago on 7 January 1839 to the Académie des Sciences of the invention of the daguerrotype by Louis Daguerre. In effect, the origin of the medium is much more complex and rival claims to its invention were immediately advanced.
2. The "ça a été" proposed by Roland Barthes in his analysis of photography. Cfr. Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire: Note sur la photographie, Cahier du cinéma - Gallimard - Èd. du Seuil, Paris 1980.
3. Op.cit.
4. I developed these three models of analysis of the application of photography to the portrait between 1980 and 1985, during the course of a seminar entitled “The Representation Machines” that set out to analyze many other applications as well. I conducted the seminar from 1977 to 1985 for the course in Decoration (later renamed Tools and Techniques of Visual Representation) at the School of Architecture of the University of Florence. It did not seem very inappropriate to go back to them for this brief discussion of erotic photography, though at the time of their development that was not their specific focus.
5. From a conversation between Timothy Stappaerts and the undersigned on 22 March 2011 in Antwerp.