Dirty thoughts encore...

The entry deadline for the next incarnation of The Dirty Show is the end of the month, and I've been trying to narrow down the contenders to a final four to submit for consideration. This is always tough for me, trying to decide what's going to stand out in a crowd and catch a judge's eye as opposed to images that are personal favorites of mine. I have to separate the personality component of the model from the images, too, which can be tricky. For instance, a model shooting something that's out of character for her may carry more weight with me, but that fact will be lost on a judge who has no idea who the model is or what types of work they usually do. So, it's an effort to be "objectively subjective" and focus strictly on what the image in itself contains and conveys.

Plus, for this show, the more over-the-top the piece, the more likely they'll want to hang it, or so they say. It seems last year, the photography was a bit milder than the other media, with a lot more "beautiful" images than raunchy stuff. A few potential reasons for this... one is that with photography, you have to find a model (or models) who are willing to commit the raunchy acts envisioned, whereas with a painting, there's no limit to the actions, or the size/shape/endowments of the subjects. Plus you actually have to have the nerve to ask the model(s) to DO the thing you envision. ("You want me to put my what WHERE?") There's also the potential censoring factor of "if I send this to the lab for prints, will that cause a problem?" That's minimized if you have made the investment in your own archival-quality pigment inkjet printer, but not everyone has that option. Also, there's the factor of what is someone actually going to hang on their wall at home...something subtle and suggestive has a better chance than explicitly sexual. (The piece that got me into last year's show *I* won't even hang in my house.) Now all of these factors are based on others; concerns for how people involved in the process will react. Some might make the arguement that a true artist would not allow the vision to be limited by these kinds of constraints. That is valid, and that seems to be part of the mission of the show -- prompting artists to push these boundaries regardless of how society might react.

But I think the primary reason that the photos in the show tend towards the "beautiful" is that most "artistic" photographers don't shoot Dirty Show style images as a rule, and even when they do (such as with this show in mind), they bring the "beautiful" component of their style to the images. And I guess that's about where I'd draw the line between "erotic" and "p0rnographic."

The image is the beautiful Alicia, enjoying herself in her apartment a while back... thinking dirty thoughts, I'm sure.