When photography was invented, it was both praised and criticized for its ability to precisely render its subject in clear detail. Painting and literature could be blurred. An individual could be composited with to create a factious character, or a generalized, or idealized image. But the camera captured every detail. A photograph of a woman was not any woman in general, but the specific person. So photographers of the 19th Century turned to prostitutes for their models--women whose reputations had already been "soiled."
In this image, the woman in the center as her eyes blotched out. Perhaps an unexpected blemish of the old paper and chemicals. Very possible. Yet look closely, there are no other blemishes. The faces of the other two women are clear. Enough, even, to identify them on the street. No other part of the women's bodies are blotched. A nipple on the left is clearly visible. Even a darker spot, perhaps a dab of the photographer's touch-up brush has accentuated the anus of center woman. It's as if the photographer wants to conceal the woman's identity, while drawing attention to her buttocks, parted by the two harlots beside her.
In ancient Rome, the prostitutes were exhibited naked on rooftops above public highways. It is said that when the legions of Roman's citizen-soldiers marched back to Rome, some of the Patrician wives would stand on rooftops, wearing only masks. The danger and excitement that discovery could bring. Now, thousands of wives post themselves online, sometimes fully exposed, and sometimes holding back just enough details to maintain their anonymity. Being looked upon with the thinnest mask of anonymity is a thrill indeed.
I'd like to think that this image shows a woman of means and status, who wanted the thrill of posing in a "French postcard." For this one sitting, she could expose herself, conceal her face, and draw attention to her lewdest, most forbidden part. Sodomy, after all, is a Biblical sin.
That fact doesn't stop us now, and no doubt, more than a 125 years ago it didn't either.
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