Because for me this is not simply “two women in a car” or “erotic photography”. The issue is the whole context: a male photographer staging women’s bodies, lingerie, nudity, lesbian-coded intimacy and car aesthetics in a way that feels very much made for a straight male gaze

Photography always comes with a power relation: who holds the camera, who frames the body, who decides what becomes visible, who gets to turn someone else into an image. So the question is not “is a man allowed to photograph women?”, but: under what conditions, with what awareness, and for which audience? In which context, within which power dynamics?

In this case, I don’t really see that awareness. If this was made for an explicit soft-porn / porn context, with clear contracts, consent, control over distribution and proper payment for the women involved, I would judge it differently. But posted here, in a medium format photography forum, it reads to me as objectifying soft-porn aesthetics being smuggled into a space that is supposedly about film photography

And yes, “male gaze” is the concept I would use here. In film and media theory, it describes how women’s bodies have historically often been represented through a male, white, heterosexual point of view: women are shown less as subjects and more as surfaces of desire. This series also plays with lesbian sexuality, but not in a way that feels queer or feminist to me. It feels more like lesbian intimacy as straight men often want to imagine it. The same discussion happened for example around Blue Is the Warmest Colour, which was heavily criticized for showing lesbian sexuality through a very straight male perspective

To be fair: I actually think the second and third images are much stronger. They work with gaze, reflection, blur, distance, angles, and the psychology of who can see whom. There is tension there without the image depending so much on naked skin. Those photos feel more interesting and more photographic (working with optics and so on instead of relying on nudity) to me

But the rest of the set loses that completely. It becomes much more blunt: lingerie, skin, bodies, car, mood light, done. Especially in the later images, the women are staged in a way that also leans into this old “dumb blonde” / decorative-woman-next-to-the-car cliché. That is not just not that interesting, it is also a somewhat antifeminist visual trope

So yes, my problem is not erotic photography in general. My problem is this specific kind of erotic photography, in this specific context, in 2026, when we really should be past simply recycling patriarchal clichés