"Digital Diaries"

Natacha Merritt's photographs of herself giving head are a high-tech display of sexual narcissism.

By David Bowman

May 6, 2000 | Natacha Merritt could be Cindy Sherman's worst nightmare. Merritt is a 22-year-old transplanted California girl living in Manhattan who poses for her own photographs, just as Cindy Sherman did so famously in the 1980s. A difference between them is that Sherman might photograph herself wearing plastic pig snouts and prosthetic breasts, while Merritt snaps photos of herself giving blow jobs. Real ones, not using prosthetics.

To be fair, Merritt's work is far more expansive than a document of oral sex. In some of her self-portraits, she is being mounted (rather conventionally) by men. In others she is engaged in seemingly chaste lesbian encounters, or teasing a dildo. But Merritt's blow job pictures are the most memorable images in the book because, I believe, it's unprecedented for a woman to take self-portraits depicting herself as a cocksucker.

Most of Merritt's oral sex pictures are close-ups of her lips swallowing the lighthouse. Others were taken from strange angles that tend to exaggerate the size of the fellow's equipment; in one shot it looks as if Merritt is swallowing a child's arm whole.

But there is one photograph in particular (on Page 66) that is haunting somehow. Most of Merritt's face is in the frame, as well as the member that is halfway up her yap. But it is the girl's expression that is a complete mystery. She's not posing as faked-up porno. She does not appear to be enjoying the particular penis she is sucking -- not that she finds it distasteful. In the photo, Merritt is looking up and a bit to the right, concentrating on something. After I talked with her, I knew what she was looking at.

But before I share my revelation, let's first dispense with the concept of art with a capital A. Sherman considers her own recent photographs of mutilated sex toys Art. Merritt isn't so sure.

Is it true you're not an artist?

I said that, right?

Yes. In your book you said that.

I don't know what an artist is.

Photography is not art?

That's me quoting someone else. What is an artist? I didn't set out to be an artist. The idea that I had of an artist when I was little, I didn't want to be. I don't know. What is art? You tell me.

So what are your photographs if they're not art?

They're art, but I'm not an artist. What I meant in my book was I had just read the introduction to [artist and photographer] Alexander Liberman's book, where he's talking and says photography is not an art, it's something else. He also says that his wife is more important than his art. Up until I read that I had put photography in front of sex and my love life and everything. That was really the diary entry of me realizing that art wasn't the most important thing to me. Does that make sense? Next question. [Giggles]

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To understand the secret of the particular blow job photograph on Page 66, you need to know about Merritt's camera. She doesn't work with a Kodak or Warholian Polaroid. She uses a digital camera.

I've never seen a digital camera. How is it different from a regular camera?

I've never used a regular camera so I don't know how it's different.

You put film into it, right?

No. The film is either internal or it's on the memory of the camera. On the first one, I had to plug it in with a cord to my computer and that's where the images were stored digitally. Now, they're stored on these little cards or memory sticks that you download into your floppy drive.

What I know about regular color photography is that Kodachrome tends to emphasize warm colors like ...

I don't know what Kodachrome is.

Next Page: Almost a photo of an artist at work

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