CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/14/2024

Vintage Valentine

"Looking at photographs of people with no clothes on is always exciting," Cressida Connolly begins her semi-redacted essay in Valentine’s Day Staff Pick Private Collection: A History of Erotic Photography, 1850-1940. "The experience can also be funny, or troubling, or arousing: the pictures here assembled are all three. This collection has a unique claim on our attention, not only for the remarkable candor of many of the images, but because some of these pictures are among the earliest erotic photographs we have. No one had ever photographed nudity or genitals or the acts of sex before. There were no rules. It is the revolutionary newness of these images that makes them as exciting as their subjects." Featured image is courtesy Other Criteria © Danny Moynihan.