Can soft porn be the salvation for mankind?
Confessions of a commercial photographer and recovering porn addict.
I had the pleasure of meeting the international performer Derek Allen Watson on a trip to Ibiza, Spain. A charismatic hombre with a husky voice and look. He is remarkably humble for a star with 300.000 followers on twitter. We were introduced by a mutual friend and we shared a villa together for a week. He saw me swinging my camera. ‘Would it be weird to ask you shoot some content?’ he asked nicely. I felt a moment of reluctance. I think sexual expression is a beautiful thing, something we could all endorse more. At the same time I don’t necessarily believe in porn as the salvation to mankind.
I sell Desire
I think the sex positivity movement is an amazing movement. Teaching each other to own our bodies, fully, unapologetically — and respecting the bodies of others. Netflix series as Sex Education drive this point home to a whole new generation. At the same time,
I feel we are confronted by a flood of biblical proportions: cheap dopamine. With everything instant at our fingertips — food orders, retail therapy and sex — we experience ever diminishing returns. Have you felt it too?
According to author of Dopamine Nation, this all makes total sense. Anna Lembke reveals in best selling book a big misconception: dopamine is not the pleasure chemical, but the chasing chemical. What does this mean? As humans, we derive pleasure from the chase — the active imagination of getting something that has a (perceived) value to us. Wanting pleasure gives us pleasure. Wanting pleasure is desire.
And instant pleasure is the opposite of desire.
Instant pleasure is killing us softly. I have two important confessions to make to this regard.
Confessions
As commercial photographer, I weaponise Desire. I take great pleasure in creating the siren song, inviting you along on the rabbit chase. My understanding for Desire is my value to brands who want to sell and for consumers that want to buy. In 2016 I wrote a mission statement called ‘I sell Desire’. I struggled to explain clients what it was I actually do. How do you explain a feeling? I was tired of hearing ‘Oh, you are a photographer. Do you do weddings?’ Now I had the perfect response: ‘No ma’m, I sell Desire.’
‘You don’t quite know what it is I sell, but I know you are buying.’
The philosophy surrounding Desire came from my inner core. I felt I had hit gold: this was my truth. And the world needed to see it. I wrote the poem on a trip to Belgrade. And a month later I created a video which I directed in New York City. To this day, it still gives me goosebumps. And I hope you too.
The other confession is much more personal. I am a recovering porn addict.
I am not ashamed to share this for many reasons. Porn is ubiquitous. It is at the tip of our fingers. According to some estimations, 30% of the internet is porn. What does this mean? Our external reality is a fluffy pink candy shop with 24 hour acces. I was the first generation of boys that had their own computer when these machines were still the size of a suitcase.
The internet was a safe space to experiment sexually in a family ridden with generational Catholic Guilt. No witnesses. No crime. All flavours.
It also means that as teenage boys, when our sexual brain is in full development and we are at the mercy of this new bodily thing called testosterone, there is an implicit danger in over-exposure. What are the long term effects of this saturation? Maybe this become hardwired in our brains in a way that disturbs our dopamine baseline for a whole generation.
Is that where this void came from, that I tried to fill with more of the same?
What does this mean? It means that in my teenage years, I trained my mind to use porn as a way to fight my feelings of overwhelm and loneliness. And there was lots of it. And in my twenties, I stuck to it. Porn was a coping mechanism long before I ever touched alcohol. The more often I used it as a way to get out of something I did not want to feel, the flatter the experience of pleasure. I learned two important things from this experience.
Firstly, the seeds of addiction are sown in our most vulnerable times. Secondly, something of much bigger consequence.
All these premeditated and explicit scenes were killing my active imagination muscle softly.
Active Imagination
Professor and psychoanalist Carl Jung describes active imagination as a meditation technique wherein the contents of one’s unconscious are translated into images, narratives, or personified as separate entities. It can serve as a bridge between the conscious “ego” and the unconscious. And in extension, the collective unconscious.
What does this mean? It means that as humans, our natural state of mind is an incredible rich internal world. Just have a look at your kids. They can manifest a car out of a tree trunk. That is magical. ‘Manifesting’ and ‘vision boards’ have become household terms in the strong wake of books like ’The Secret’. So I came to a chilling conclusion.
I have come to believe that porn was killing my inner magician.
Observer effect
I want to to live up to my full potential as a human being. This means before I can create anything, I have to be able to imagine it first. If you look at Michelangelo’s the Creation of Adam, we see that God floats on a cloud that has the shape of the human brain. It is thought that Michelangelo was expressing the idea that all creation comes from the human mind. What does this mean?
It basically states that all humans are gods.
Although this makes most peoples head spin, this thesis has basically been proven in Quantum Theory with the double slit experiment. The double slit experiment explains something scientists call the observer effect: on a molecular level our mind bends reality when we observe with certain intention. Reality behaves differently when we focus on it. This goes against any Newtonian worldview. It just shouldn’t be possible. But it is.
Cure
What does this mean? With great power comes great responsibility. And in order to move forward, we need to take full responsibility for our thoughts . We can step up by training our active imagination. So what is the cure for the decline in active imagination? How can we learn to stimulate our manifestation muscle?
I believe we have to disconnect with the ‘real’ world, to connect to our inner worlds. And that sounds a lot simpler than it is.
Meanwhile, the black mirror pointed at our face is lulling us into submission.
Dennis Emaar is the founder of upgradeproject. His mission is to help men increase their testosterone levels to pre-1900 levels. He has his own confession to make: the quickest cure to boost your testosterone is do keep your cortisol in check. You can do this by lowering your dopamine exposure. The body uses the same building blocks for both hormones. The creation for testosterone and cortisol is thus a zero-sum game.
‘The last chapter in my book is about dopamine fasting. Everyone wants a quick cure. But this is the most important one. This is the Pareto principle: if all men would create strict boundaries about their dopamine intake it would elevate the testosteron level and mental health of a whole generation of men — and in extension will cause a huge ripple effect for women.’
His main advice? Limit your screen time drastically.
In addition, in a recent episode of After School called ‘The Slow Poison of endless Fantasy’ podcaster Chris Willx from the podcast Modern Wisdom narrates a myth about a boy who wants to become a knight. He gives up his sword practice so he can spend as much time as possible with a ghost that shows him exactly what he wants to see. Spoiler alert; it does not end well.
So here we are. In a world of abundance, we need restriction.
Wisper
So I agreed to shoot Derek with the explicit promise that I would not create ‘content’. Instead I promised we would make art together.
Inspired by Michelangelo, I would create something that would whisper instead of scream. A simple touch instead of a firm grip.
That was my promise. And so the FRAMED by Derek Collection went from being an idea, to a manifested art collection.
Active Imagination for on your wall, not in your hand.
Will soft porn save the world? Most likely not. Will it foster our appreciation for the finer things in life? Absolutely.
The FRAMED by Derek Collection is now available as limited edition Print Only or Framed.
Thank you for reading,
Stefan M. Gerard
Photography Artist
Follow me on instagram for more.
