Photography's relationship with pornography is as old as photography. That kind of unholy relationship is formed from the very beginning, and there's a reason why: it's thoroughly enjoyable to be that voyeuristic. Voyeurism is a very old modality, and most of the history of photography is in some way related voyeurism.

Charlotte Cotton

Categorized in : Reason Kind Photography

The internet does not adhere to the inherent, necessary asymmetry of high-versus-low-art categorizations that we use in the cultural sector: in a banal sense, all photographs on the Web are orphans ready to be claimed.

Charlotte Cotton

asymmetry doe art

Photography is, and has been since its conception, a fabulously broad church. Contemporary practice demonstrates that the medium can be a prompt, a process, a vehicle, a collective pursuit, and not just the physical end product of solitary artists' endeavors.

Charlotte Cotton

photography artist practice

We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers.

Charlotte Cotton

editors photographer civilization

I think that the role of curating an exhibition is to reanimate history and make it relevant to a contemporary viewer.

Charlotte Cotton

relevant thinking

Your image is your currency in this world. by Charlotte Cotton

Your image is your currency in this world.

Charlotte Cotton

currency world

In an era where digital or virtual is the default, the actual coming together into a physical space has to be an experience that you don't want to miss.

Charlotte Cotton

missing together

I think the twenty-first-century modality is exhibitionism. Exhibitionism is our contemporary strategy for maintaining our boundaries, which is to be boundary-less - to put everything out there before somebody comes and violates or penetrates something that we're keeping sacred.

Charlotte Cotton

strategy boundaries thinking

I have to admit to you, I am the person who's done probably the least analysis on the selfie, because it's a bit like pornography for me. It's this masturbatory, repetitive act that I'd rather wasn't part of my routine.

Charlotte Cotton

repetitive pornography done

The limitation of the vlog format is that it may seem to give people enough, when they actually have no real autonomy.

Charlotte Cotton

real giving people

There's something quite magical that can happen when a secret is no longer a secret - or is a shared secret or a common secret. By allowing those boundaries to be porous, certain forms of oppression may be lifted.

Charlotte Cotton

oppression secret common

More platform-sensitive generations will make distinctions between online and in-person intimacy, whereas fourteen-year-olds have very nuanced online selves and might embody their virtual identity in the physical, analogue version of themselves. They have a much more pluralistic understanding of the self. I don't think we'd be here now in this amazing sexual and gender revolution without the online space where young people can see and share other versions of identity and sexuality.

Charlotte Cotton

understanding people thinking

The real beauty of the time we're living through is that we can deploy our self-image in ways that can have radical social implications.

Charlotte Cotton

real-beauty radical real

Every time you enter a space, you are on public display. Nothing... by Charlotte Cotton

Every time you enter a space, you are on public display. Nothing is private.

Charlotte Cotton

I love bells, clocks, watches - and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing.

Charlotte Cotton

clock love-is