Alexandre Dupouy - Erotic Photography

The aim of this History of Erotic Photography is to present previously unpublished images, taking care to avoid those well known images taken by famous photographers which have already been the subject of monographs or numerous publications. The selection made here has no encyclopaedic value, and is based on entirely suggestive criteria.

Untitled

c. 1855

Auguste Belloc

Hand-painted albumen print mounted on canvas,

Stereoscopic View, 8.5 x 16.5 cm

It is neither about presenting an exhaustive inventory, nor a specific objective. Choosing images is, above all, an expression of ones own personal tastes - ones infatuation for those women of old-fashioned charms, who, thanks to the wonder of the photographic miracle, have been preserved from the ravages of age and time.

It should be pointed out that the first decades of erotic photography were essentially French.

Visiting Card

c. 1855

Anonymous

Print on salted paper mounted on board,

6.5 x 10.3 cm

The main reason for this is that photography was first developed in France, where research into new procedures of iconographic reproduction began in the 18 th century. In the 19 th century, liberalism was more widespread in France than elsewhere. Licentious French images were imported into Italy, Spain, the United States, Germany and Great Britain, as production in these countries was limited, due to the fact that these works were more severely repressed.

Untitled

c. 1855

Auguste Belloc

Print on salted paper from collodion humid negative,

20.7 x 15.5 cm

As far as the first century of the history of photography is concerned (1839-1939), all the international collections - both old and contemporary - comprise mainly French images. When the English authors Graham Ovenden and Peter Mendes entitled their work Victorian Erotic Photography , it was, in fact, largely made up of works of Parisian origin from Belloc, Braquehais, Durieu, Vallou and Villeneuve.

Annex 652, Visiting Card

c. 1860

Andr Disdri

Albumen print mounted on board, 10.3 x 6.5 cm

When the American Richard Merkin, professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, presented his collection in the work entitled Velvet Eden , the majority of the images were French. The first American images that he selected date from 1920, the first German ones from 1930, and together they only represent a tiny fraction of the total number.

Bacchante

c. 1860

Ch. Naudet

Print on salted paper toned with gold,

21.5 x 10 cm

One of the leading reference works in the field of erotic photography Die Erotik in der Photographie (three volumes published by half a dozen eminent doctors in Vienna in 1931) brings together the best of the German collections of the period and includes several hundred reproductions, the minority being German and Austrian, whereas the French production accounts for the majority of the period preceding the First World War.