Klaus Schulze is an important figure in the development of the “kosmische musik” known popularly as Krautrock, being one of the founding members of Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream and a player on a staggering number of releases. While Can was breaking new ground in Cologne and Kraftwerk became international superstars based out of Düsseldorf, Schulze operated mostly out of Berlin, where bands like Cluster and Birth Control held sway, as well as the aforementioned bands Schulze was in.

Schulze’s contributions are littered all over Julian Cope’s top 50 Krautrock albums of all time. His solo albums Irrlicht, Cyborg, and Blackdance all get a mention. He was on Tangerine Dream’s first album Electronic Meditation, but that band went on to its incredibly prolific output without input from Schulze. Schulze also played on Ash Ra Tempel’s incredible self-titled debut as well as their fourth album, Join Inn. He was one of the composers of the legendary album Tarot by the Swiss musician Walter Wegmüller. He participated on all of the Cosmic Jokers releases, and he actually sued Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser (founder of the Ohr, Pilz, and Cosmic Couriers record labels) over the unauthorized release of the final one, which more or less sent Kaiser into exile.

On top of all of that, Schulze has released seven albums under the name Richard Wahnfried and released a dozen collaborations with Pete Namlook and Bill Laswell under the series title The Dark Side of the Moog, which engage a British visionary art rock group called Pink Floyd.

Clearly, this dude is in it to win it.
 

 
In 1977 Schulze put out three albums, two of which were a soundtrack to a porn film called Body Love and a follow-up featuring “Additions to the Original Soundtrack,” as the French release had it. Body Love was directed by Lasse Braun, who was born in Algiers but was from Italy—his given name was Alberto Ferro. Braun was the kind of principled porno director of whom it can be said (per Wikipedia) that he, ahem, “placed himself firmly in the tradition of 18th century pornographers such as Rétif de la Bretonne.....” One thing that made Body Love somewhat out of the ordinary was that the lead actress was Catherine Ringer, a member of one of France’s most innovative pop groups, Les Rita Mitsouko.

As “Yum-Yum” at the House of Indulgence put it a few years back,
 

Seriously, the score is incredible. Reminiscent of the chillout techno music that was semi-popular in the early ‘90s (The Orb, Pete Namlook, The Aphex Twin, etc.), the music—to be blunt—is way too awesome to wasted in a film like this. Okay, I realize that what I just said oozes the worst kind of porn prejudice (what? you don’t think porn movies deserve to have cool music?). What I’m trying to say is that there are only handful movies in this world that are truly worthy of the music Klaus Schulze was making in the late 1970s.

 
Yum-Yum is right! There really is hardly any movie that’s worthy of this soundtrack.

Continues after the jump…

 
Take a pencil and a piece of paper. Sit in front of a mirror and look at your face. Now draw your own portrait in one continuous line. Pencil on the paper, eyes solely on your reflection. This will give you an idea of the technique used by multi-media artist Katie Dunkle to “blindly” draw images taken from pornography. 

In her series of “blind contour” line drawings titled Girls, Dunkle re-creates pornographic pictures in ink, pencil, chalk, and watercolor without looking at her canvas. The finished drawings are recognizable yet disturbing representations of erotica from which the viewer can step back and “reconsider what it means to pose nude for the visual stimulation of others.”

In her artist’s statement for Girls, Dunkle wrote:

The digital adult industry allows females to be groped in the darkness by a disconnected set of hands, transforming a real person into a two-dimensional cluster of flesh-tone pixels. In this respect the artist chooses to literally be blind to her artwork’s unfolding creation to honor these unknown women all the while asking and wondering, who are these women?

Katie draws attention to the countless women who are showcased for pleasure and then hastily discarded. Her priority as a female artist is to give these women a new pedestal for a different audience, whilst honoring the female body in all its glory. Her artwork gives these women a new soul and through the use of mixed media on paper allows the creations to radiate emergent emotional content, which takes the viewer on an intuitive journey through everything from anguish, seduction, pleasure and mystery.

Dunkle’s inspiration for Girls is “the insatiable urge of humanities demand for sexual stimulation.” Dunkle’s intention is to open debate about the nature of pornography and to “breathe life back into” these women making them more than just naked sexual objects for the viewer’s pleasure. See more Katie Dunkle’s work here.
 

‘Stephany.’
 

‘Roxanne.’
 

 
See more of Katie Dunkle’s ‘blind contour’ drawings, after the jump…

Motorpsycho, 1965
 
The urge to observe the sex act is probably an un-displaceable mainstay in the human animal, and the 1960s, ushering in revolutions in so many different arenas, also featured a noticeable mainstreaming of the X-rated movie. Interest in sexual subjects was brewing in the period just prior to that, for sure. In the mid-1950s Nabokov’s novel Lolita had been banned in England and France; while the U.S. authorities took no official action against the book, publishers were leery of offering it. Eventually Putnam took it on and it rapidly made the bestseller list.

Porn movies saw a somewhat similar evolution. At the start of the 1960s they were “unmentionable.” By 1970 they were a common topic of conversation among sophisticated adults, and there was even talk, which seems hopelessly quixotic today, of the existence of sex movies that would exist alongside foreign movies, documentaries, etc. as a respectable genre. By 1980 the initial impulse of curiosity had given way to a well-organized industry, and (as Boogie Nights taught us all) the advent of video threatened to do away with brick-and-mortar porn cinemas, and with them would go the amusing and/or startling X-rated poster.

Russ Meyer was obviously a dominant figure in this evolution, especially in the 1960s, and his playful obsession with large mammaries led him to direct several masterpieces of titillation, including The Immoral Mr. Teas, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Motorpsycho, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. 
 

 
If you take anything from the 1950s and 1960s, whether it be TV commercials or matchbook covers or LP cover design or living room sets, it often elicits a powerful appreciation in us, partially out of reasons of nostalgia but also due to obvious aesthetic appeal. The same is true of X-rated posters, it turns out. The need to hide and yet reveal what the movie is about nudged graphic designers to get inventive with the imagery, and as a result the entire genre appears to us today to be simultaneously crass and innocent.

Reel Art Press has a marvelous volume coming out soon celebrating the graphic design of the X-rated poster from the classic age of porno, titled X-Rated: Adult Movie Posters of the 60s and 70s (edited by Tony Nourmand, designed by Graham Marsh). Featuring an introduction by Peter Doggett, author of respected tomes about the Beatles and Lou Reed, the book is jammed with pictorial marvels that are a feast for the eyes. We’ve selected a few sample posters to whet your appetite but the book has dozens more as well as helpful context for many of them.
 

The Immoral Mr. Teas, 1959
 

Eve and the Handyman, 1961
 

The Orgy at Lil’s Place, 1963
 
Many more posters after the jump…..
 

 
In 2004 Timothy Greenfield-Sanders released his photography book XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits, which showed various porn stars in two states, wearing clothes and not wearing clothes. If you want to see Christy Canyon, Ron Jeremy, and Jenna Jameson photographed by a first-rate contributor to Vanity Fair, then you should definitely get ahold of this book.

In addition to the pics, XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits also features written contributions by people like John Malkovich, Lou Reed, and Gore Vidal as well as an interview of Chi Chi Larue conducted by (who else?) John Waters.

Ever-savvy HBO, seeing an opportunity for an interesting bit of programming, commissioned an hour-long documentary by Greenfield-Sanders about the creation of his book; the program was called Thinking XXX. Unusually, HBO put out a DVD of the show called Thinking XXX: Extended Cut, which featured extras, as DVDs are wont to do.

Somehow Greenfield-Sanders amusingly managed to get Lou Reed into a recording studio in order to read a whole bunch of super-nasty porn ad copy, and there’s a five-minute video on the DVD showing Reed reading the text into a microphone. (Note that Reed does not follow exemplary voiceover technique by inserting a toothpick into the side of his mouth for the entirety of the session.)

This content requires a warning, and here it comes…

More after the jump…

 
New York artist Kalen Hollomon creates disruptive collages exploring commerce, fashion, gender identity and the taboo through everyday images. His work examines “the ever-changing relationship between subject and object.”

“I am always concerned with what lies beneath the surface.

“I hope to create conversation that is rooted in questions related to learned social rules, identity, the subtext of everyday situations and perception. Above all, I try to capture a sense of romance in images that are spontaneous and slightly unnerving.”

 

 
Hollomon’s collages juxtapose images of sports stars with fashion models and porn actors, celebrities and brand names with down and outs and environmental disaster, porn with the utterly mundane.
 

 
Hollomon photographs his collages on his smartphone and shares them via his Instagram account. He has a following of over 100,000.

All subversive art is ultimately subsumed by the establishment it attacks. Hollomon’s success subverting the medium has led to a demand for his work from the very fashion magazines and brands he satirizes—Gucci, Calvin Klein and Vogue have all commissioned him or used his work.
 

 
His most recent project Fortune Portraits combines pages from porn mags taped over with happy, predictive tidings from fortune cookies.

Sayings like: “Business is a lot like playing tennis; if you don’t serve well, you lose,” “Expect much of yourself and little of others” and “Financial hardship in your life is coming to an end!” are plastered across wet-lipped young models who look directly (and suggestively) at the viewer creating a false sense of sexual intimacy and arousal. In the same way the fortune cookie promises some false good tidings to whoever happens to read it.

Hollomon describes the Fortune Portraits as being about “open-ended questions, seduction and desperation, both the wild unknown and the cliche, false promises and first impressions.”

Prints of the Fortune Portraits series are for sale—details here. More of this interesting artist’s work can be seen here.
 

 

 
More of Hollomon’s work, after the jump….

 
This vintage porn is all about cocks. Big cocks, small cocks. Permanently engorged cocks. Cocks to lead a goddess’s chariot. Cocks to ride into battle. Cocks that even look like Donald Trump.

They’re everywhere. Lurking in the undergrowth, hiding in baskets of fruit, frightening the horses and offering gratification wherever they go.

Drawings of cocks must have been the money shot—or money etching—back in the 18th century when these illustrations were first produced. I suppose that’s why artists will always be a prerequisite to civilized society—because when the Internet implodes and electricity eventually fails, artists can still can draw porny pictures. Just like the ones gathered together by Pierre-François Hugues, the baron d’Hancarville (1719-1805), for his volume of adult entertainment Veneres uti observantur in gemmis antiquis (1785).

Pierre-François Hugues almost had as many occupations as vowels to his name. He was an art historian, art dealer, poet, ideas man, writer, collector, intermediary, charlatan, con man, profligate, and producer of pornography. In his later years, he added the title baron d’Hancarville to his name—probably as he was convinced he deserved some recognition for all the hard work he carried out during his lifetime—most notably bringing a large collection of vases to diplomat Sir William Hamilton—which was eventually sold to the British Museum in London.

d’Hancarville and Hamilton compiled an inventory of these ancient vases—tracing their history and provence back to ancient Greece and Rome. While these four volumes had a certain fame among academe—it was d’Hancarville’s work as a pornographer that was his most popular and controversial work.

Between 1771 and 1785 (years vary depending on source—but invariably between these dates) d’Hancarville produced three volumes of pornography—Monumens de la vie privée des douze Césars, Monumens du culte secret des dames romaines, and most (in)famously Veneres uti observantur in gemmis antiquis. These books mixed drawings of artworks—stones, statues, sculptures, etc.—from antiquity—usually featuring Greek or Roman gods indulging in sexual shenanigans. D’Hancarville’ provided a text to explain in an amusing manner the symbolism and myth of each image. These books proved exceedingly popular which unfortunately led d’Hancarville into serious debt—which meant he had to eventually flee his home in Naples.

Veneres uti observantur in gemmis antiquis was originally written in French with color text and plates. It was soon published in numerous pirated editions in black and white. When asked why the images in the book were so small, d’Hancarville answered the images faithfully represented the size of the original and to be any bigger “would have still been more indecent had they been otherwise.”
 
18th century filth, in B&W and color, after the jump…

 
After the launch Playboy in 1953 a deluge of adult entertainment magazines spilled across America. A “flood tide of filth” as one critic described it. Magazines like Adam, Dude, Rogue, Gent, Torchy, Candid, Twilight and Sultry filled the magazine racks. These girlie mags were blamed for the “promulgation of decadence” intended to corrupt America’s youth and make it impossible “for men to revert to normal attitudes in regard to sex.”

Adult magazines were deemed as great a threat to the American way of life as Communism.

Compared to today’s porn industry—these jazz mags are tame. Codes of censorship meant models were more artfully photographed. Full nudity was forbidden—well, until Penthouse broke that ban in the late sixties and Playboy followed with its first full-frontal centerfold in 1972. The focus was mainly titillation or T & A.

There was always some moralizing religious do-gooder (like future financial felon Charles Keating, see below) who claimed these images encouraged perversion, fetishised breasts and were intended to “appeal to the sodomist.” With all this in mind, it’s quite remarkable that our baby boom grannies and grandads grew up to be average, run-of-the-mill, suburbanites.

Or did they?
 

 

 
More from this ‘flood tide of filth,’ after the jump…

 
On April 19, the state of Utah resolved that “pornography is creating a public health crisis.” There’s definitely a hinky stank to that resolution, as Jamie Peck explained after the resolution’s passage: “The resolution is based partly on pseudoscience and takes for granted that the only ‘healthy’ channel for sexuality is a non-kinky, heterosexual, child-producing marriage.” So if you are queer or trans or pansexual the state of Utah just might pass a resolution stating that your private sex life is “creating a public health crisis.” Utah. Land of Republicans, Mormons and… more Republican Mormons.

Either way, some law enforcement officers in the state have taken the hint. Abutting the state’s famous Great Salt Lake, the municipality of Weber County, which contains the city of Ogden, has acquired a dog to help with the struggle against demon porn.

You might think that sniffing for porn is an impossibility, because you might as well be sniffing for old copies of Newsweek or the L.L. Bean catalog, right? But you’d be wrong! It’s 2016, when was the last time you held a copy of Penthouse in your hands? Nowadays, porn = internet = computer technology, nobody’s looking for printed smut anymore.

The dog’s name, URL, is a hint as to the skills that are being brought to the task. From the same trainer that produced the doggie that helped snare vile pedophile and TV fast food spokesman Jared Fogle, URL is “trained to sniff out electronic storage devices such as thumb drives, cell phones, SIM cards, SD cards, external hard drives, tablets and iPads.”

So URL is also sort of an “office work product”-sniffing agent as well.

Weber County introduced the dog to the public on its Facebook feed on Tuesday. Here’s the text that went along with the post:
 

A NEW DOG IN TOWN

Say hello to “URL!” Utah’s first Electronic Detection K-9, or what some may jokingly refer to as Utah’s first “porn dog.” URL is a 16-month old, Black Lab, recently acquired from Jordan Detection K-9 in Greenfield, Indiana. He is only one of nine certified ED K-9s in the country, and the only one in the western states region. URL comes from the same trainer as Bear, the ED K-9 who played a key role in the arrest of Subway pitchman, Jared Fogle.

Specially trained to sniff out electronic storage devices such as thumb drives, cellphones, SIM cards, SD cards, external hard drives, tablets and iPads, URL offers a unique set of skills to aid investigators in fighting crime. Whether it’s child porn, terrorism intelligence, narcotics or financial crimes information, URL has the ability to find evidence hidden on basically any electronic memory device. He will assist our investigators on these specific types of cases, and he will also be used in our correctional facility to seek out contraband such as cell phones.

Now we realize some of you may be skeptical and wonder how is this possible? URL does not actually search for illegal materials, but rather his highly sensitive nose has been trained to detect the unique chemical compounds found in the certain electronic components.

Rescued from a shelter when he was a puppy, URL went through six months of training in Indiana before becoming certified. His handler, Detective Cam Hartman, also received nine days of expert training and the pair will have to be re-certified on an annual basis.

URL’s purchase was made possible through funding from the Weber Metro Narcotics Strike Force, and his acquisition has been strongly supported by the Weber County Attorney’s Office. The Sheriff’s Office will be responsible for his care and deployment as he serves the Northern Utah area.

 
As the good people of Weber County admit, URL may be known as a porn-sniffing K-9 officer, but he can also be used to detect “terrorism intelligence, narcotics or financial crimes information” because we all know that Utah is a hotbed of that shit.
 
via Death & Taxes

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Hare Krishnas psychedelicize Utah

 
Last year the “dad bod” became a full-blown cultural phenomenon, and there’s a company called Film911 that caters to a set of fetishes that’s completely in the same ballpark.

Film911 specializes in “male gay fetish videos,” which mainly presents men engaging in activities that are not traditionally considered “masculine,” like stuffing their faces with food, tickling each other, receiving CPR, and, most intriguingly, giving birth.

This footage is apparently getting a few people off, but it’s not even clear that these videos qualify as porn, because, as Brian Moylan at Vice astutely observes, the scenes generally feature “no nudity, no dongs, no anal, and no money shots”—indeed, no sex at all.

At Film911, the male pregnancy videos fall under the category MPREG, and they feature men behaving in traditionally “feminine” ways that transcend the mere act of giving birth. In the MPREG video embedded below, “Connor” is shown at home, and he’s definitely showing. He’s at the kitchen sink describing his day on the phone to his unseen mate, as he demurely relates that he’s been cleaning up the house and that he can’t wait for his mate to come home so they can be together again. Before long, he’s in an OR experiencing painful contractions.

This is a man who speaks in hushed tones, who would seldom raise his voice or insist on getting his way. And maybe therein lies one of the secrets to the power these MPREG videos hold for some. 
 

A still from one of the “Inflation” videos
 
Predictably, you can also obtain ebooks of MPREG erotica if that’s your thing.

Film911 makes movies in several other genres that have little to do with the familiar porn categories of bondage and creampies. For instance, there’s the “Vore” category, short for vorarephilia, which denotes the sexual desire to be eaten—not in the sexual sense but in the culinary sense.

In the Vore videos, one man will devour another man, only then to regurgitate him so he can ask him how it felt. The descriptions of these videos are quite amusing. “Jonny is hungry for more,” a preview of which is embedded below, comes with the following synopsis: 
 

1. Jonny comes home and Connor at his pizza so he turns and eats Connor.
2. Jonny is working out and needs more protein to get larger so he eats Connor.
3. Connor and Jonny are in bed when Connor decides to eat Jonny. Connor gets sicks and throws his boyfriend back up.
4. Connor is doing laundry when Connor knocks him down, drags him into the bathroom, and chows down.

 
There are also videos dedicated to men stuffing their faces with a table full of food and then moaning about the burrito babies now inhabiting their bellies (those are coded “Stuffing”). Some show men blowing each other up like balloons (“Inflation”). As you can see, imagery of men with distended tummies is one of Film911’s main stocks in trade. None of these genres have a large following as such, but the site still turns a tidy profit.

The founder of Film911 goes by Jay in Vice’s article (last name withheld); he started the company when he realized that “there was no content out there catering to what I’m into. I own a production company, so why don’t I produce content geared toward what I’m into?” He uses friends of friends as well as guys who he finds on Craigslist. One advantage of keeping matters so un-explicit is that he can get attractive and fit straight guys to appear in his movies, in which everyone keeps their clothes on and there’s no genital play.

As Jay says:

“When people told me what they were into, I was like, ‘Wow that’s different.’ There are certain people who tell me their ideas and send me their scripts and feedback all the time. I’m very connected to them and they’ve driven the business in the right direction.”

 
More after the jump…

 
I Modi or The Ways was a book of engravings depicting sixteen sexual positions. Think of it as The Joy of Sex for Renaissance times. The book, also known as The Sixteen Pleasures, was published by the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi in 1524. Raimondi based his explicit illustrations on a series of erotic privately owned paintings by Giulio Romano. The book was widely circulated. It led to the first prosecution for pornography by the Catholic church. Raimondi was imprisoned by Pope Clement VII. All copies of the book were destroyed.

Our story doesn’t end there, as the poet and satirist Pietro Aretino heard of the book and wished to see Romano’s original paintings. Interestingly, Romano was not prosecuted by the Pope as his paintings (unlike Raimondi’s book) were not meant for public consumption. Aretino decided to write a series of erotic sonnets to accompany the paintings. He also successfully campaigned to have Raimondi released from prison.

In 1527, a second edition of I Modi was published with Aretino’s sonnets. Once again the Pope banned the book and all copies were destroyed—only a few small fragments of I Modi or Aretino’s Postures survive which are held at the British Museum.

In 1798 a completely new version of I Modi was published in France under the title L’Arétin d’Augustin Carrache ou Recueil de Postures Érotiques, d’Après les Gravures à l’Eau-Forte par cet Artiste Célèbre, Avec le Texte Explicatif des Sujets (The ‘Aretino’ of Agostino Carracci, or a collection of erotic poses, after Carracci’s engravings, by this famous artist, with the explicit texts on the subject) based on engravings by Baroque painter Agostini Carracci was published.

These 18th century engravings mixed classical myth and history within a contemporary setting—though their intention is still the same—to arouse and “educate” users to the joys of sex.
 

The frontispiece to the book the goddess of love, sex, beauty and fertility Venus descending on a chariot.
 

Husband and wife Paris and Oenone try out penetration side-by-side.
 

Angelique and Medor—two characters from the opera ‘Roland’—perform the ‘reverse cowgirl,’ although they probably had a different name for it back then.
 
More sex positions of the 18th century, after the jump…

Balloons set (2004)

I was once on a porn set. It wasn’t how I had imagined it would be. I was part of a production crew making a documentary about online porn. We were in the upstairs bedroom of a small terraced house in the north of England. Outside all the houses looked the same: red-bricked back-to-backs with cobbled lanes. Quiet streets, half-net curtains hung in windows. In a small bedroom a man who looked like Benny Hill wearing a blonde Beatle wig was directing two young girls in bikinis to cover their bodies with various food products. He was filming their antics for his web channel, telling the girls to squirt more mayonnaise down their cleavage, splatter more beans on their bottoms, get that ice cream all over their chins and so forth. Downstairs Benny’s wife sat by a coal fire patiently knitting, and sipping weak sweet tea.

Behind the fantasy set of latex curtains, paddling pool, ketchup bottles and assorted props was a small dingy room—the kind seen in Britain’s black & white kitchen-sink dramas of the 1960s. The smell of congealing food was nauseating but the girls who were smeared with it were laughing and joking and egging each other on to be more outrageous. Their onscreen activities seemed very unsexual. I was seeing the whole absurd scene—the bare floorboards, the peeling wallpaper, the small tripod lights—not the close-up titillation being broadcast to an excited online audience paying by the minute.

This dissociation between the pornographic image and its creation—between location and use—form part of Jo Broughton’s photographs of empty porn sets.

Broughton was studying a foundation art course at Thurrock, Essex, when she was sent for work experience to London, as she explained in an interview with Jean Wainright.

I thought what I was being sent to was a glamorous fashion shoot when in actual fact I walked into a studio in Hoxton to a nurses set being set up and a girl walking out of a changing room wearing suspenders and stockings, the full monty kit. Quite an abrupt Yorkshireman approached me and asked if I’d ever seen a “fanny up front” and I squeaked “No” and he replied “Well today’s your lucky day”.

[Fanny is British slang for “pussy” not rear end—the difference of meaning once disconcerted English jazz singer Cleo Laine when her American doctor said he was going to give her “a jag in the fanny.”]

Jo was supposed to be doing two weeks work, but dropped out of college and stayed with the studio for two years.

For a long time I had quite a problem with what was going on there, I was quite conflicted. I was green as grass; I’d never ever walked into something like that before…

..It was very contradictory in some respects to have this space where I was safe and had a connection to people that were “family” and yet it’s perceived as very unsafe to other people: it’s a safe industry because they work very safely but it isn’t your desired environment, I wouldn’t desire it for my child to work as a pornographic model. My conflicting emotions stayed with me and I hid it very well, where I’d been and what I’d been doing, for a long time.

She worked as a studio assistant.

...my job was to paint the set, make lots and lots of tea and to sweep up. I was just the dogsbody, to put up the lights; always give Steve a “pop”, meaning I’d have to dump the power on the light packs for him to do the light test. I had to put up the poly boards and all the normal stuff you do in a studio with the content of a sexual nature, which actually was very tame and quite tongue in cheek now.

Having left college and finding herself temporarily without a place to stay, Jo started sleeping on the studio sets at night. During the day she was working as a photographic assistant at major Sunday broadsheet the Observer. Because of how people perceived porn, Jo could tell no one what she was doing or where she was staying.

When I was working as an assistant we would get phone calls all day, somehow people had got hold of the studios number and they would scream obscenities down the phone and make threats. People were repelled and absolutely disgusted by the subject of porn; you just didn’t mention that you worked in the porn industry. So in order not to be tainted by that brush, I didn’t dare mention it when I was at The Observer because you just didn’t knew how people would take it, take what you did.

Then Broughton enrolled at Royal College of Art. She also continued visiting the studio every week and began working as a cleaner there.

I’d had these conflicting issues about these models seen as meat and I was doing all this feminist work and then I became Steve’s cleaner every two weeks. I became this… I don’t know how to describe it, this Igor character, cleaning up after someone. But also, I felt more humanistic towards the models, the industry and suddenly I started becoming more comfortable with it myself. I started to see this more human aspect because I’m seeing bodily fluids and I’m washing things and I’m in contact with almost what the untouchable is. You know, washing dildos and whatever, you’re there, at that point. And suddenly I started to laugh and see the funny side of it and going in and putting the radio on and seeing the set week after week after week, it would change. It made me laugh because you see the set, there’s so much work that goes into those sets and yet it’s still the same subject; tits and arse.

Broughton started photographing the sets at night. She was interested in revealing the reality behind the artificial glossy sex of porn mags.

I’m letting the audience in to see what I saw and also to take the power out of it almost. It is to say this is false, which I suppose pornography is, it’s false. I like the fact that there’s a brick holding up the poly-board that reflects the light, the ambiance coming in, the floor boards coming in. For me it’s really important to have those elements, also it shows humanistic elements of imperfections. Because in the magazines that its published in that would all be cut off and straightened and it would all be very glossy, so that was important. Also, I wanted to show the space I had this relationship with, that was important to me as well. This space doesn’t really know what’s going on, a table doesn’t know it’s a table, a porn set doesn’t know it’s a porn set and that’s almost what I was trying to do.

Each of Jo Broughton’s photographs was taken on a porn shoot. The bed sheets are crumpled and stained, stockings and shoes lie on the floor, discarded sex toys and lubricant are visible. The frame is devoid of people, only the evidence of sexual performance and the illusion of passionate intimacy remain.

More of Jo Broughton’s work can be seen here.
 

Christmas November Set (2003)
 

Nurses (2002)
 
More after the jump…

Hawt.
 
Golden Girls is one an unlikely show to have cross-generational appeal to both women and gays. Just as likely to be seen on Logo as Lifetime, the campy sitcom featured sassy broads of “a certain age”—all divorced or widowed—living together in perfect harmony with the aid of canned laughs. Some of the appeal may have been in the frankness of the show, with serious issues like gay rights and drug addiction discussed—and those women had sex,lots of sex. That may be why Hustler chose the show for its latest porn parody, This Ain’t The Golden Girls XXX. The film even features such grand dames of the smut genre as Nina Hartley, Luna Azul, Karen Summer, and Darla Crane!

My theory is that not a lot of straight guys are going to watch this. Don’t get me wrong, Nina Hartley looks fantastic (girl is 56!), but this smut is purely for “the fans”—a pornographic homage, really. The trailer below is so UNsexy I think you can probably get away with watching it at work—unless someone is paying very close attention, they’ll just think you’re watching Golden Girls!
 

Porn was a different beast in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Often times, actors, looking for their “big break,” would do adult films under assumed names to make rent while struggling to land legit roles. In the history of porn, only a small minority of stars, such as Jenna Jameson, Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn, were actually able to make the transition from “blue movies” to the “silver screen.”

The Rialto Report is an online historical archive of information related to “the golden age of porn” (mostly ‘70s and ‘80s) in New York. It’s an excellent, exhaustive source of interviews and articles related to the subject. If the topic holds any interest for you at all, you’ll want to check them out by following the previous link.

Prior to the shot-on-video, amateur quickies of today, it could be argued that porno flicks in the ‘70s—especially in New York—made some attempt at “real movie” production value. Indeed, many of the actors in these films were poor souls who had come to the Big Apple seeking fame, but were struggling in bit parts for little-to-no money. As Deep Throat star, Harry Reems, told Rialto Report:

In the beginning, I could get $150 for a few hours in a sex film – compared to next to nothing for appearing for weeks in an off-off-Broadway play. These X-rated films helped prolong my existence as a struggling actor, and therefore increased the chances that I’d eventually get a big break.

Rialto Report has tracked down several headshots of these struggling actors “before they were porn famous,” for a two-part series.

I have to admit some amount of ignorance when it comes to many of the actors featured there, as I’m no expert on ancient porn loops—but a few of them were instantly recognizable, even with my personally limited knowledge (basically limited to woods porn and 10th generation VHS dubs at teenage friends’ houses). Maybe it’s because the male actors “worked” more, but I recognized far more of the men than the women. If you ever watched any porn from the ‘70s or ‘80s ever, then you are bound to recognize some of these.

Here are the ones I found instantly recognizable:
 

Jamie Gillis. Real name, Jamey Gurman. Shown here as “Jamey King.” One of the most prolific male porn stars. His interview at Rialto Report can be found here. Gillis played “Burt The Enema Bandit” in the unbelievably sleazy 1977 film, Water Power.
 

Shelley Graham, better known as Georgina Spelvin, star of The Devil In Miss Jones. Her Rialto Report interview can be found here.
 

Joseph Nassivera, better known as Joey Silvera got his start in adult films in 1974. He currently is a leading director of transsexual pornographic films.
 

Sue Rowan, better known as Bree Anthony, who appeared in many adult films in the mid-1970s. As “Sue Richards,” she was also the editor of High Society magazine for a short time.
 

Taija Rae entered the adult film industry in 1983. According to Rialto Report, the first part of her stage name, came from an Asian cocktail waitress with whom she worked before porn. The last name, Rae, was a tribute to Fay Wray.
 

Ronald Hyatt, better known as Ron “the Hedgehog” Jeremy—for better or for worse, he is the most recognizable male porn star of all time. He has an unbelievable 1,405 (both porn and “legit”) film acting credits to his name.
 
Via Rialto Report

 
During the Qing Dynasty (the final imperial Dynasty of China, 1644 to 1912), smoking tobacco was illegal, but the use of snuff was permitted for medicinal purposes. As the habit became pervasive throughout the country and across every class, beautiful little snuff bottles were produced, made from materials like jade, bone, ceramic, glass and ivory. Many of the bottles depicted pastoral scenes or images of nature. Others—like the ones pictured here—were hardcore and would make pervy potter Grayson Perry blush!

If you’re in the market for a tiny antique porn collection from China—or you just want to do bumps from a smutty little snuff bottle—you can find them for around $50 on eBay or Etsy (much cheaper if they’re missing the stopper-spoon). If you’re really looking to drop some serious dough, Sotheby’s and other high-end auctions sell Qing snuff bottles that will run you thousands of dollars. It can be difficult to tell a reproduction from a legitimate Qing, but a little research will help you find the real thing (and for a reasonable price). For instance, many knockoffs are made of light-weight resin, and real Qings are often dated on the base.

There’s something so charming about these itsy-bitsy explicit tableaux—how could you resist?
 

 

 

 
More smutty snuff bottles of imperial China after the jump…

 
First up, a “trash compactor” cut of the incredibly earnest Christian anti-porn film, Every Young Man’s Battle.

My favorite part comes when the fat kid invites the guilty ginger… er, wanker (not that he seems like a bad person, I’m just being descriptive here) over to his [most assuredly no girls allowed] porn-watching party and then excuses himself to pick up “some special buzz juice, if you catch my drift...”

Oh, but we do.
 

 
If that taster wasn’t enough for you, please feel free to watch the entire thing below. Dig the football coach guy explaining to the boys how to go on the defense against yanking their cranks. And that sublime Ted Bundy interview conducted by Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, on the very day before he was executed in 1989.

Porn leads straight to death row! Heavy-handed much? Nah!

Every Young Man’s Battle was produced in 2003, but it’s so dated that it seems like something made ten years earlier. It’s worth mentioning that many Bundy biographers cite multiple instances of him saying that he had almost no interest whatsoever in pornography. The Dobson interview is considered by many to be Bundy’s final chance to manipulate the public’s perception (and why Dobson, specifically, was granted the interview). Bundy also blamed alcohol and brainwashing by the TV as reasons why he became a serial killer, so take his confession here with a hefty dollop of salt.
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares