“Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.”

Simone de Beauvoir

“That erotic and pornographic photographs were produced almost from the medium’s inception should come as no surprise. That it does so is a testimonial only to the near-total elision of this fact from the standard histories in the field… Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that almost as soon as there were viable daguerreotypes, there […]

“It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.”

Paul Strand

“The difference between porn and erotica is the lighting.”

Gloria Leonard

“If you bring your sexual impulses to your creative work… you’ll be working from deep in the genetic code, down where life wants to make new life and feel good in the process.”

 Eric Maisel

Interviewer: “Are photographs less powerful now because there are so many of them in the world?”

David Bailey: “No, it just makes the good ones even more powerful. Digital and Photoshop just moved mediocrity up a stop, that’s all. They’re still mediocre – they just look better.”