The always great Charles Taylor on female oriented erotica. The subject is a book of erotic photographs of women, shot by women photographers. This is actually a very interesting idea, and, if Taylor is right in his observations, then the failures of the project are quite meaningful. As Taylor writes,

Were the photos in "Women by Women" presented without crediting the photographers, it would be hard to tell whether they were shot by a man or a woman. Still, the photos here feel different. It's not a case of their being "softer." That's only a politically correct use of the canard that when it comes to sex women are interested in the gauzy and prettified. Some of the work here, like Marie Accomiato's soft-focus sepia print of a pregnant woman, do fall into that category. Maybe the best we can come up with is to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography: I don't know what female erotica is, but I know it when I see it. But, like those Goedde photos of Aria Giovanni, the photos in "Women by Women" seem more interested in the totality of the model, in a low-flame sort of a turn-on rather than an immediate one.

Do women "see" each other differently than men do? It would be interesting to see photos of men taken by straight women and compare to them to traditional pornography (that is, pictures of women taken by men).

If, as Taylor suggests, it is impossible to tell the difference (and looking at the gallery, I certainly can't), then is it all a matter of context? In other words, just because I know the photograph isn't meant to be exploitative, then does it cease to be so? And why deny heterosexual men the ability to make these claims as well? Obviously, this is highly po-mo territory, but I think the real work here is done by the viewer, in the terms of how they decide to contextualize the image, and the use they put it to.