Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

XXX: 30 Porn Star Portraits

Very gay but that’s OK.

The Photos. New York fashion and portrait type photographers do everything to avoid melodrama and an exaggeratedly composed look in their graphics. That approach is probably necessary in this case where the extremes of the glamour photo look and the gritty documentary look would both be clichéd and inappropriate. Besides, the celebrity portraitist conveys a sense of glamour just by shooting in his own understated style. Yet the restraint can be deadly repetitive just like the miles of gray seamless paper. Briana Banks and Jenna Jameson overcome this. By just being themselves they turn the mondain portraitist into a Botticelli.

The Texts. Janine’s bio is the best in a group so diverse it could be any cross-section of the American public. Malkovich’s musings are the most entertaining and Rushdie’s the most informative. Some of these writers should define what they mean by “eroticism” and “pornography” before they propound their dismissive commonplaces. Vidal needs to engage in some serious fact checking and pull himself out of the self-indulgent haze. He may one day be the American Voltaire, but not if he keeps writing like this.

Best Quotes:

“Porn is the ceiling toward which all photographs asymptotically climb.” Wayne Kostenbaum.

“What separates us from animals is porn.” Richard Johnson.