Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Playboy.com in 2020.
With nary a twinge of self-doubt, Webster’s succinctly defines erotic as “tending to arouse sexual love or desire.” We’ve always thought that definition left a great deal to be desired concerning what actually is erotic. Since one man’s turn-on could be another’s turnoff, the term remains open to wide interpretation.
As a result, Playboy asked a number of leading photographers to visually define what erotic means to them. While we had certainly expected the creativity and imagination of these premier lensmen to produce a broad spectrum of powerful pictures, the range and variety of their efforts proved a captivating surprise. We think you’ll agree that eroticism is in the eye of the beholder.
Ben Rose: “It has been a lifelong ambition of mine to perform the sex act on a horse or, as in this illustration, on a zebra, because the action of a rider on a horse that is galloping is exactly that of screwing. Consequently, since the horse is taking all the physical work out of the act, why not take advantage of it?”
Will McBride: “Here I was simply trying to make a beautiful photograph—not sensual but sensory—to show a man and a woman in the cold and the rain keeping each other warm. But perhaps that feeling of warmth against the cold makes this picture erotic.”
Francesco Scavullo: “I really cannot define in words what in art is erotic to me nor what is erotic to others. Maybe Michelangelo’s David is erotic to some. But I’m an artist, not a writer, so my photograph will have to stand alone as my expression of the erotic.”
Pete Turner: “Eroticism is a personal thing; it’s whatever turns you on as an individual. While my photograph of a woman pulling another woman’s nipple affects some viewers emotionally, I like it more because the design is graphically exciting.”
Douglas Kirkland: “To me, eroticism is in the mind’s eye, rather than a literal thing you can reach out and touch. Here I tried to bring those two things together, to give a sense of being in an erotic atmosphere and a feeling of actual participation. In fact, I participated in the picture—the man’s arm is my own.”
Joel Baldwin: “A sensual photograph cannot be planned; it simply must happen. While shooting this photo, I don’t think I was consciously trying to create an erotic picture but, rather, an image that was inherently dramatic and visually arousing, with a man and a woman who together were graphically exciting.”
J. Frederick Smith: “Eroticism exists in every animate and every inanimate object, depending on the attitude and the eye of the beholder. For the photograph of the superblack dog with the superwhite lady acting out her fantasies in a private world, I played the voyeur—and the aroma and vision of eroticism literally exploded.”
Art Kane: “At first glance, one questions what it is he’s looking at. It’s the uncertainty of identification and the suggestion of what it might be that provides the viewer with an erotic response to the image. In reality, the photograph captures a woman’s cheek, the lobe of her ear and the soft creases of her curved neck.”