Artful, intimate, humorous, queer, liberating and subversive, here’s a round-up of the most potent, lust-filled photo stories of the year
Erotic photography has long been ridden with stereotypes – historically defined by the white male gaze and ruthlessly objectifying anyone in front of the lens. Yet, in 2023, we saw the genre continue to rise as radical, playful and empowering art form for those who were previously forbidden or discouraged to embrace their sexual power. Erotic photography can push boundaries like no other medium as it plays the raw emotions of shame, guilt, joy, embodiment and connection; evoking polarised reactions as it gets to the core of who we are.
In our highly digitalised society, we are accustomed to performing for the camera and almost always being watched by our own devices and social media audiences. In this context of hypervisibility it’s more important than ever to be aware of the power erotic gaze holds – and the possibilities it offers of being in control of your own story. Erotic art has always been a perfect medium for the outcasts, for those fighting for their subjectivity as artists and people.
Below, we’ve gathered together ten galleries from the Dazed 2023 archive which offer a novel take on artful, intimate, humorous, queer, liberating, and subversive erotic photography while allowing a glimpse of the unique communities they document.
Erotic calendars have been a somewhat trite staple of the genre for decades, but through her series Year of the Dragon, photographer Alexandra Leese subverts both the form and the content. Having grown up between London and Hong Kong, she has always been drawn to erotica as a freeing medium that resists shame. Her lunisolar calendar celebrating the Year of the Dragon casts 13 women – including singer Beabadoobee, model Kiko Mizuhara, artist John Yuyi, and photographer Erika Kamano – to embody the Eastern dragon – “playful, wild, sacred, iridescent, and unstoppable” – to defy persistent stereotypes of Asian women’s sexuality.
White socks are the most everyday items – everyone owns a pair. Yet they also have a history of being one of the most eroticised garments, communicating intimacy, playfulness, innocence, or linked to sports imagery or vintage erotica. “White socks are so pervasive in popular culture, the references are endless… old American Apparel ads, boys’ bedrooms with dirty socks, hot girls on halloween, Kogyaru school girl culture, or sukeban girl gangs from the 90s,” Dazed 100 photographer Sly Morikawa says. Through tracing various appearances of white socks in her photographic archive, Morikawa has put together a zine as an ode to their simple yet powerful erotic appeal.
Historically, the erotic medium has been dominated by white photographers and artists, but the work of Quil Lemons treds in the radical footsteps of Ajamu X in redefining Black masculinity. For his show Quiladelphia, Lemons documented friends, models and sex workers whose identities range from straight to trans and queer to compile an intimate and sincere series, which was met with an uproar from the more conservative viewers. “I feel like Black queer sexuality is fetishised at the same time that it’s wound and bound up,” he explains. “And I don’t know, if there’s a moment where it’s ever just free, where it’s allowed to be, it is always attached to something else other than itself or the person. It’s so loaded but at the same time, it’s not.”
In 2023, Taiwanese artist Yun-Pei Hsiung conducted an experiment at Pawnshop, Taipei’s underground nightclub. Inspired by the radical nude art of Yayoi Kusama and Yves Klein, he initiated an immersive painting workshop, inviting clubbers to enter a safe space adjacent to the dancefloor, undress, cover themselves in paint, and use their bodies as their artistic tools. The resulting photos then became a key part of the exhibition Temple of the Body, which took place in Berlin and brought together LGBTQ+ collectives in Taiwan and Berlin musing on the body as a vehicle of art, experimentation, play and liberation.
Jonny Kaye’s debut book GROT is an expansive collective portrait of UK’s kink and fetish community. Compiled from the photographer’s archive, it depicts gimps, pro-dommes, sex workers, fetishists and queer friends unapologetically expressing their erotic selves on camera. GROT is an archive for the community and an active protest against cultural censorship. The word grot usually means “something unpleasant, dirty, or of poor quality” but, for Kaye, it signifies “the liberation behind embracing your inner filth”.
Photographer Adrienne Raquel is known for creating dream-like portraits of artists such as Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Nas X and Travis Scott. Her book ONYX is a documentation of a neon-lit world of a Houston strip club of the same name. Using vivid colours, intimately close perspective and signature dream-like gaze, Raquel captures the empowerment and inclusivity which thrive within the club but are often overlooked by the mainstream. “One thing with my work is that I try to highlight women and femininity; to really capture beauty without it being objectified; without it being overly sexy. And I think with ONYX, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to go there and visually tell the stories of the girls and portray a sense of fantasy, but also portray their power – the artistry of exotic dancing,” she told Dazed.
Exiled from Russia for his outspoken queer art and activism in the 1990s, Slava Mogutin spent the subsequent decades in the US, amassing multi-media body of work often dealing with queer sexuality and radical eroticism. He admits that his photo book Analog Human Studies is “perhaps less sexually explicit” than some of what’s come before it, yet the imagery is more “pansexual and intergenerational”. He describes this collection as an “exploration of transgressive and radical expressions of human nature and sexuality, marginal subcultures and fetishes”. Focusing on queer intimacy, self-expression and the unapologetic presentation of different queer bodies, Mogutin aims to resist digital and cultural censorship in the face of rising homophobia and transphobia worldwide.
The potency of erotic imagery often lies with the onlooker’s gaze. Does looking make you a voyeur? Does it draw you into the transgressive enjoyment? Does it perpetuate a flawed power dynamic? The work of the London-based Filipino photographer Ezekiel tackles these complex questions. In the book SMUT: Volume 1, Transgressions, the photographer explores the everyday lives of women working in the sex industry. The project blurs the boundaries of art, erotica, documentary and fashion – the photos offer an alternative take on “a part of sexuality that our culture deems most ‘transgressive’, and repeatedly vilifies“.
Real-life lovers and fetishists, duo The London Vagabond are deeply dedicated to documenting deviant sexuality in all its wild expressions. All the rumours you heard are true brings together a selection of their work which spans fetish clubs, intimate moments, graphic scenes and numerous exhibitionists who were happy to let them in on private pleasures. TLV never shy away from the gritty side of the erotic to cut to the emotional core of our deepest drives. “What are the things that make us feel most alive?” the show asks. “Is it to love? Is it to fuck? Is it when we are at our most vulnerable?”
Namio Harukawa was a Japanese artist at the foundation of the contemporary fetish canon, best known for depicting voluptuous women dominating subservient men. His radical, excessive and playful vision has long inspired creatives – most recently photographer Rémi Lamandé and stylist Kyle Luu, who came together to create a series starring Lovisa Lager. With subsequent inspiration being the work of Nobuyoshi Araki and Shomei Tomatsu, we see Lager dominating several naked men far smaller than her. The series is atmospheric and charged with erotic energy, yet also remains intimate and humorous as the contemporary take on a classic image.
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