Erotic by nature

David Steinberg talks about the sexually frank photographs he's collected and how he thinks they can change the culture.

By Michael Castleman

Oct 3, 2003 | To me, David Steinberg is the Allan Freed of sexual photography. Freed was the pioneering Cleveland DJ who, in the mid-1950s, introduced suburban white kids to the driving beat and emotional authenticity of African-American rhythm and blues. Steinberg is leading an equally daring cultural revolution -- an effort to free sexual photography from decades of wholesale dismissal as "pornography" and have it taken seriously as fine art.

Steinberg is the creative force behind "Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age," a collection of 115 exuberantly erotic images by 31 of the world's leading sexual photographers. "Photo Sex," says New York photography critic A. D. Coleman, "represents a generational shift in the social acceptability of frankness about sexuality and its representation. It offers tangible evidence that the current administration in Washington in no way represents a majority of this country's electorate, who would, given a fair chance, reject its cultural neoconservatism. It shows us that this country's attitudes regarding matters sexual have changed radically, most probably, for the long term."

Steinberg, 59, grew up in Queens, N.Y., a child of leftist activists. He graduated from high school in 1960, with two passions -- mathematics and peace. "I was a member of the Student Peace Union, the group that invented the peace sign," he says proudly. He attended Oberlin College intent on becoming a math professor, but became a civil rights activist instead. He switched to political science, and wound up working in Washington, placing college students in community organizing projects in impoverished areas around the country.

A fascination with the counterculture led Steinberg and his wife to San Francisco. In 1972, they moved 60 miles south to Santa Cruz, a beach and university town that, in recent years, has become a suburb of Silicon Valley. Steinberg bought and expanded a small business that distributes culinary and medicinal herbs to health food stores and restaurants, which he still owns. He also began writing about sexuality, and became a cornerstone of the Bay Area's burgeoning sexual underground with, according to San Francisco TV station KRON, a "cutting-edge reputation for the erotic." He currently writes a monthly column, "Comes Naturally," a commentary on sexual culture and politics.

Steinberg's e-mail address, at EroNat, hearkens back to "Erotic by Nature: A Celebration of Life, of Love, and of Our Wonderful Bodies," the lavish, groundbreaking coffee-table book of erotic photography, poetry and fiction he published in 1988. "Erotic by Nature" was Steinberg's personal addition to the feminist critique of porn: "Men and women I respected were criticizing porn for being sexist, too male, too genital, too mechanical, and disrespectful of women. I thought, if we were criticizing porn, we had a responsibility to come up with an alternative, something that reflected our own sexual values." The book contains more than 100 black-and-white photographs Steinberg considered fine art -- beautiful, imaginative, thoughtful and very different from commercial porn.

A few months after "Erotic by Nature" appeared, Steinberg was contacted by the editor of Cupido, a Norwegian sex magazine, that was eager to distribute the book in Scandinavia. "And by the way," Steinberg recalls the man saying, "since you seem to know so many photographers doing the kind of work we publish, would you become our photo rep in the U.S.?" In 1989, Steinberg did. The gig allowed him to delve deeper into the exciting but semi-underground world of serious erotic photography. He discovered that dozens of photographers were making intriguing erotic pictures that no one in the U.S. wanted to publish. "The sex magazines said their work was too artistic, and the art magazines said it was too sexual." When he told them that Cupido was looking for exactly what they were doing, he was greeted like a long-lost brother. Those relationships eventually led to "Photo Sex."

Salon interviewed David Steinberg in the San Francisco offices of his publisher, Down There Press, an offshoot of the woman-friendly sex shop Good Vibrations.

Your subtitle proclaims "Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age." But photographers have documented sex ever since photography was first invented. What do you mean that sexual photography has "come of age"?

It's fine-art photography that has come of age. Sure, there have been photographs of sex for as long as there have been photographs of anything. But the vast majority of those images have been in the pornographic style -- images that draw their power from being "naughty," and breaking social taboos about sex. Porn's outlaw stigma and appeal are the underbelly of our antisexual culture, and the cultural marginality of pornography has limited and distorted the way sex has been portrayed in photography. There's a lot more to sex, and to sexual photography, than what porn offers.

Fortunately, starting in the 1970s, and gathering momentum in the last dozen years, many thoughtful photographers have developed sexual aesthetics that go far beyond the boundaries of porn. They have made photos -- imaginative, artful, complex, perceptive photos -- of every imaginable aspect of sex, from playful caresses to intense bondage. Unlike the nudes that have long been accepted as legitimate art photography, the new sexual photography is unapologetic in claiming sex as its subject. Unlike porn, this new fine-art sexual photography invites viewers to think about -- and maybe even experience -- sex in new ways, as a subtle, profound, humorous, intimate, perhaps even mystical experience.

I believe that fine-art sexual photography has come of age because, for the first time, sex is being taken seriously and seen as a legitimate subject for complex and artful photography. The resulting -- and rapidly expanding -- body of sexual photographic work is delightfully imaginative and diverse. It's as far removed from the conventions and limitations of pornography as it is from the photographic conventions of nonsexual photography. Unlike porn, which is remarkably uniform in its emotions and aesthetics, the styles and interests of the photographers in "Photo Sex" are as different from each other as Picasso is from Monet. I find that very exciting. It says that there's more than one way to be sexual, more than one way to be sexy.

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