I’m going to guess that since the earliest days photography young women and men have agreed, for any number of reasons, modeled for nude or sexual photography, and then years later been confronted by blackmailers, enemies, and/or sensationalists who seek to embarrass them or worse.

Just off the top of my head there was Miss America Vanessa Williams, movie star and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, right-wing radio host Laura Schlessinger, and most recently Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo have been inconvenienced at the least. Some have lost their titles or positions.

We have no idea how many have successfully submitted or succumbed to their blackmailer’s demands, but the Schwarzeneggers and Polumbos are surely only the thinnest layer of frost on the tip of the iceberg.

But here’s the deal: Since he became a credible star in the 1970s Schwarzenegger had to go to untold effort and expense to suppress photos he posed for to support himself when he was only an aspiring body builder. In 1984 when William’s photos appeared there was no question that she would have to resign and so, following a fairly dispirited defense of what was then still indefensible, she did. In 2007, though, when pressed by blackmailers Polumbo simply took her photos to the press herself. (Pretty easy for her since the anonymous group called “Committee to Save Miss America had found the photos on her Facebook page.) At least two of the five Miss America arbitration board think the photos aren’t a big deal.**

And into this evolving context comes word from Art of sexblo.gs about an entry in Documenta, a major contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.

In 1987, film director Hito Steyerl was 19 and agreed once to be a model for a bondage photo shooting in Tokyo. Lovely Andrea (dubbed “A La Recherche du Cul Perdu”) narrates the search for that photography in the Tokyo bondage scene. Helped by self-suspension performer and guide Asagi Ageha, Steyerl and her team find the image in a sex archive and set out to meet the photographer.

This is just an excerpt of a much larger post that you can read here.

Now there are actually a couple of twists to Hito Steyerl’s story that I’ll try to get to in a follow-up post, but for now I’d just like to say that her move seems like a predictable development in the process of acknowledging that a) humans are sexual, b) humans are visual, c) humans take photos, d) humans take photos of sexual situations, e) photos of sexual situations document us as we are (e.g. “orgasm face,” sticky body parts) rather than as we wished we appeared and f) consequently if those photos are discovered it’s a problem only to the extent we continue to deny or fail to get over items a-e.

But here’s what I see is the most important part of what Steyerl has done. By inverting the age-old procedure outlined in the paragraph introducing this post, by taking ownership of the process of uncovering her early photos, she’s turned the tables on the pornographers who, in 1987, often exploited the economic or social vulnerability of young people like her. (And even 20 years ago pornographers took extreme psychological and sexual as well as economic advantage of their models.)

If, as Polumbo demonstrates, there’s no longer a penalty for having posed naked in one’s youth (even when, as in Polumbo’s case, you’re still a youth!) then scrutiny can finally turn from the subjects of the photography to the potentially exploitative original photographers and/or, even better, any potential blackmailers who have unquestionably seek to exploit them.