Helmut Newton claimed to be a feminist and denied that he made women look absurd or objectified. Running counter to the aims of feminism when women are its subject, objectification, a process, is described as a ‘narrowing of sexual responsiveness’ by Andrea Dworkin in her book ‘Pornography’; it involves disregard for all but a surface, procurable quality when seeking gratification, hence ‘narrowing’. Of course, if a photograph is gratifying it must be objectifying because a photograph is necessarily an object, incapable as it is of providing more than an inanimate image of a person. Thus the question need simply be ‘is the image (of a woman) gratifying?’ If so, it runs counter to the aims of feminism; I would love to be disabused of this apparently logical idea, to see the provision I have missed, for it seems to put an instinct within me at odds with feminism when I have no real desire to be. Is it enough to treat women as women and photographs of women as photographs? What, then, if you are a photographer?

Reading

Helmut Newton a perverse romantic Life and style The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/may/05/weekend.lindsaybaker

‘Pornography’ by Andrea Dworkin