Barbara Nitke
Barbara Nitke‘s open-minded art makes Seventies free love look like hand holding and pecking cheeks. A publicity photographer on hardcore porn shoots in the Eighties and Nineties, her personal collection of documentary images is provocative, humanistic and revealing. To both eyes and psyches.
As a member of The Eulenspiegel Society – the oldest sado-masichist support group in the US – and the Lesbian Sex Mafia (hold onto your knickers ladies), i’m assuming that she shares the same no-holds-barred-only-mouths-barred attitude as her subjects.
But Barbara doesn’t glorify underground sexual pursuits, nor represent them as deviant or ridiculous. Her images capture instinctive sexual desire, passion and intimacy. She embraces the freedom of individual expression in an entirely non-judgemental way: ‘Freedom is having the courage to be who we are’.
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The humanity of her subjects is contrasted by the professionalism of the industry. It’s a business. It’s a film set, the days are long, the sets are hot, get the fucking money shot. There is what she describes as ‘boredom, surrealism, vulnerability and disassociation inherent in the X-rated world.’ Sounds like any other job.
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Aside from S&Ming, leading the 11th National Leather Leadership Conference and proposing a censorship free sexy society, Nitke is a pretty nice lady and a mean photographer. To be perfectly honest her new stuff stinks, but her old work more than makes up for it. I’ve collected some images from her American Ecstasy and Resurrection series’.
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barbaranitke.com
