Porn?

Porn is not dead; but it’s not feeling itself either. The quantity of pornography being consumed is greater than ever, but what was once disguised by a brown paper bag is now the subject of mainsteam movies and the subtext of global news stories. Somewhere between the explicit revelations about President Clinton’s sex life and the making of The People vs Larry Flynt, dirt lost much of its ability to stain and in the process left a cultural vacuum. With bulk pornography over-exposed and rendered anaemic, the need to ask provocative questions about sexual imagery and the sex industry in the Western world has been answered by an idea storm in the form of a groundbreaking book: Porn? Concepted by leading edge British monthly Dazed & Confused and creatively overseen by award-winning art director Tom Hingston, Porn? brings together a sexually balanced orgy of the world’s top fashion, art and documentary photographers, illustrators and writers, filling a space between low-brow porn and high art erotica. Sensual images mix with absurd and provocative conceits: Martina Hoogland Ivanov confronts on the first page with pigs having sex; David Weightman’s beautifully layered images of antique family portraits are combined with hard-core shots in a subtly disturbing mix; Richard Fearless slows the pace with his snail porn shots. From studies of sex aids to the succulent surfaces of meat, Porn?’s razor sharp design and luxury engineered production act as a prism for the concept of pornography, deconstructing the industrialised voyeurism of ailing medium-core and turning it into something far more stimulating. Cum shots are over: Porn? has arrived to herald the age of the conundrum shot.