Ever wondered what our great grandparents got up to behind closed doors? A new collection of erotica leaves little doubt, says Guy Kennaway
‘I bought my first erotic photograph in the mid-1980s,’ Danny Moynihan tells me. ‘I had come across some photos of Austrian origin of rather portly looking ladies in petticoats playing with sex toys. I thought they were rather amusing.’
Moynihan is an artist and a curator. He has collaborated frequently with his friend Damien Hirst and has written a novel – soon to be released as a film – satirising the art world. He is also the owner of one of the world’s largest collections of vintage erotica.
‘At the time I was buying and selling 20th-century photographs with the art dealer Paul Kasmin,’ he explains. ‘In those days photos didn’t really exceed $5,000, though we did own a Violin d’Ingres by Man Ray which we sold to the Getty for $10,000, but that was an exceptional piece.’
So presumably, were the dozen or so pictures that started Moynihan’s collection of nearly 500 often explicit photographs, many of which decorate the walls of his Chelsea home, where I have come to meet him.
‘I think the Austrian photos were a few hundred dollars altogether,’ he says. ‘I got them from a German in New York, who just happened to have them on him at the time. I showed them to a few friends and enjoyed their reaction of shock, surprise and delight.’
It is no longer only Moynihan’s friends who will be surprised, possibly delighted, by the photographs. Nearly a third of his collection has been reproduced in a substantial coffee-table book being brought out by the art publisher Other Criteria
. He puts it onto the table between us and gives the lady on the front a pat. ‘Not long after my first purchase I found these photos by Felix Moulin of Manet’s model for Olympia. Moulin had a way of photographing women that made them erotic but not pornographic. They were rather more expensive but it set me thinking about making a collection of erotic photos.’
The model lying naked on the couch is unquestionably the sublime woman in the iconic painting, whose body is instantly recognisable to all connoisseurs of fine art. ‘Manet worked a lot from photographs, rather than live models,’ Moynihan explains.’It’s well documented. If you look at his pictures you can see they are unmistakably photographic.’
Moynihan would certainly object to his collection being described as filth. Instead, he divides it into five categories including ‘the sensual nude, ethnographic tribal nudes, medical photos, posed studio tableaux and straight pornography’. Quite a lot seems to have changed in the world of pornography since these photographs were taken. The invention of the ladies’ razor, for one. Most of the women have their (often wrinkled) stockings on, the men their socks. This might have been considered saucy, intended to represent the haste of the liaisons, or it may simply have been cold in the photographers’ studios.
Moynihan taps the book again. ‘I adore this one, early 1850s woman, but you can hardly notice the pussy.’ I raise my eyebrows. Then I notice there’s a kitten in the folds of her pulled-up can-can dress.
‘The most I have paid for one is $5,000 – when the dollar was a dollar and not a rupee’ – he adds urbanely. ‘I think it was three or four years ago. As time went on I became more discerning, and could see when something really good came up.’
We go past a couple of photographs of a cupboard full of what was then shameful police evidence of sexual perversion but would now not look out of place in an Ann Summers shop window. Another shows a man eating a meal off a tray and prodding the generous buttock of a woman with his fork.
‘A lot of these pictures were photographed by a Frenchman called Monsieur X,’ says Moynihan. ‘His whole collection came up for sale in the Forties, when he died. Nobody was allowed to know his real name. The auctioneers in Paris were bound by the terms of his will to silence. Some people even today have their suspicions, but nothing is known for certain about him. He was obviously an amateur.’
I stare at the shot of a woman on her elbow wearing a revealing pair of knickers with slack elastic. ‘Very personalised,’ he adds softly, ‘note the grainy quality. She’s unorchestrated, unposed; you sense it was all done for himself, whoever Monsieur X was.’
Is there lots of competition between collectors? ‘There are a few collectors. I know they exist – but I don’t want to know them,’ he says. ‘To be part of a tribe of porn collectors would be rather seedy. It’s a curiosity, not an endeavour. If I come across them I get them.’
It’s Moynihan’s personality that gives Private Collection its charm. He doesn’t take the book or the subject of erotica very seriously. Perhaps this is because he has so many other things going on: at 48, he is a happily married father of two, has written the screenplay for the forthcoming film of his novel, Boogie Woogie, throws parties full of famous names and faces, has houses here and there, and an ever changing collection of art.
‘I love this one,’ he says, drawing my attention to yet another photo. ‘Great background.’ His finger alights, rather incongruously, given the content of the rest of the picture, on a bedspread. ‘Look at that textile,’ he coos, ‘isn’t it beautiful? And the wallpaper in this one,’ he says, ignoring the cavorting ladies and gentlemen on the bed and tapping the wall behind an upturned Victorian buttock. ‘William Morris,’ he says, ‘an amazing, early Edwardian interior.’
Has he ever bought contemporary pornography? ‘No, no, no, no,’ he answers, distaste at the very thought flitting across his face. How old does a photograph have to be to get into his collection? ‘Recently, 1930s,’ he says, ‘though I am getting more and more into the 1950s and 1960s stuff. It’s so posed, so of the period.’
I ask whether he has ever thought of taking erotic photographs himself. A faint smile appears on his inscrutable face. ‘I’ve never had a stab,’ he says. ‘Maybe I should. I am coming to the age when that kind of thing crosses the mind.’
Private Collection: A History of Erotic Photography (1850-1940) is published by Other Criteria.
Article from Telegraph.co.uk | Hat tip to Thomas Roche
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