Hi Carmen. I'm now going to be presumptuous about you're interest in what i have to tell you about erotic photography.

First off, you should check out Sam Wolov. She's the AU alum I told you about and she's living in San Francisco getting her work put on book covers and stuff. I think photographers like her and like you have an advantage over the rest of us in that people love sex. Her work is at http://www.samanthawolov.com/ and she also has a blog at http://nekkidwithacamera.blogspot.com. Sam's work has an edge to it not because of the way she shoots which i think is pretty traditional, but because it's so honest. these people really want to be fucking each other and that comes out out pretty clearly.

Sam Wolov

Ok, now for some names. The kind of contemporary erotic photography is Terry Richardson. He's a major douchebag but I'm not sure if I only think that because I'm really jealous. He gets paid a lot of money, does lots of celebrity portraits and has sex with most of his models and then gets solo shows at galleries all over the world. I would hate him if his work wasn't so rad. He has a website at http://www.terryrichardson.com/ but there isn't that much erotic stuff on it. He has a magazine at http://www.richardsonmag.com/, but his best stuff is in books. the google image search is kind of revealing though. You might ask yourself, "Why isn't this just straight up porn?" It all has to do with the context in which the work is presented. If you sell it to people with a monthly membership or whatever it can't be the same as what's hanging in the Saatchi Gallery in London. Click on these photos below for bigger ones:

Terry Richardson

In a similar veign, Dash Snow is this guy who lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and was a Graffitti artist until he started taking polaroids. He's part of a crew of people who are sort of relevant in the art scene right now including Ryan McGinley who is coming up in a minute. Anyway, many of Snow's polaroids are and now he's represented by some unbelievible galleries and he was in the Whitney Biennial last year. (I only keep mentioning this art world aspect because I don't want you think these are just people I'm pulling from wherever on the internet).

Dash Snow  

Ryan McGinley is also getting a lot of attention right now. His photography isn't really erotic per se, but its got lots of naked people in it. His website is at http://www.ryanmcginley.com/.

Ryan McGinley

All of this kind of stems from Nan Goldin's work in the 1980s. I'm not sure how much time you've spent looking at her, but you can get some of her books from the AU library and it's totally worth doing. The images in the books are far better than anythign I can find on the net.

Nan Goldin

For a more pop culture take on erotic photography, stuff that's more on the Sam Wolov end of the Spectrum, you should check out Nerve at http://www.nerve.com, which is an online magazine that's entirely about erotica of various kinds. They have a lot of great stuff in their photography section, though a lot of it can be just kind of softcore porn. But hey, we've got to go somewhere for inspiration, right?

Lastly, here's one from me.

 
Greg Wasserstrom