Let’s begin with your two successful coffee table books and your relationship with publisher Salzgeber. How did it all come about? A very traditional business model in this era of crowdfunding and self-publishing.
In 2017, a year after getting my masters in digital photography and launching my social media accounts, Michael Lucas (CEO of Lucas Entertainment) asked me to photograph him at the Belvedere Hotel in Cherry Grove, Fire Island. I agreed and it was a very happy collaboration. I proposed a photo book that would showcase his models, behind the scenes, over a one-year period. To my surprise, he agreed immediately and we did shoots in Mexico, Spain, Fire Island and NYC.
I wasn’t interested in photographing the models while they were filming their scenes. I was curious about what they did before and afterward. About seven months into the project, I came to believe that no publisher would be willing to publish many of the images I would want to include. When I shared my concern with Lucas, he connected me with Salzgeber, a publisher in Berlin who had recently acquired the catalogue of artbooks from the famed arthouse publisher Bruno Gmünder. I sent around fifty images to Salzgeber and in a few weeks I had a book deal.
When I started the project with Lucas, it had been my intent to self-publish and so I took a class. I had no idea how much work was involved: finding the right printer, doing a fund-raising campaign, finding a distributor, and working with shipping, bookstores, buyers and Amazon. None of those administrative elements appealed to me. I wanted to focus on creating artwork and let others handle the sale and distribution.
As it turned out, it was the right decision for me. After the book was published, Salzgeber connected me with a top gallery in NYC and I had my first solo exhibit. There was one hitch, however. The gallery did not believe that images with erections should be included and I was unable to persuade them otherwise. I remember thinking—how do you tell a story about a gay porn company and not include erections?
When that decision became final, I put together a digital collection of my favorite erection images which I posted on my website. A week later, Salzgeber called me to inquire about the erection images. I explained what had happened with the exhibit and, much to my surprise, I got my second book deal.
While my book with Lucas was successful (UNCENSORED is now in its third printing), ERECTIONS has been a blockbuster. More than a year after its release in August 2023, it is still popping up in the #1 bestseller position on Amazon’s Nude Photography listing.
In UNCENSORED you captured the world of gay adult entertainment in a new, revelatory, almost poetic way. Tell us more about this one-year-long journey.
I wanted to capture the unseen side of gay adult entertainment. A high-quality photo book that covered a one-year span of production had never been done before. I thought it would be an interesting challenge. And it was.
When the cameras weren’t rolling, the models were often very affectionate with one another. During breaks in filming, it was not unusual for the action to continue even though no video cameras were rolling. The models allowed me to photograph that as well.
When I am asked to define the type of photography I do, I will say I am a fine art photojournalist. I take images of what is happening and, typically, I am not directing the models. I then take those images and play with light and texture on my computer. This is when a good image will start to sing. Sometimes, the image is about nothing more than beauty. The best images will tell a story.
With THE FINE ART OF ERECTIONS you reclaimed the erection as something ‘art’-worthy. A bold statement, though not the first of this kind (I recall Dylan Rosser’s X). But here I’m mesmerized by the contrast between the raunchy subject matter (including a jerk off and an ejaculation) and the lush, stylized B/W imagery.
Even though I had a book deal for ERECTIONS, the truth is that I didn’t have a concept for how this collection would be created. I didn’t want it to be a collection of random erections. While I was trying to figure out how to make this collection work, I happened to be reading a biography of Richard Avedon. The year is 1963 and Avedon is in Paris to shoot the couture collections. Also in Paris is Rudolph Nureyev who had just defected from Russia and the Ballet Russe. Avedon requested a shoot and Nureyev agreed. Once in the studio, Avedon suggested that Nureyev should be shot in the nude and the ballet star agreed.
Avedon then describes what happened once the ballet star was nude: “…as his arms went up so did his penis. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
It was at this point that I realized that I had my concept—the erections would be those that hadn’t been anticipated or requested for the shoot. It was a concept that had never been realized before. There are lots of reasons why a model might get an unintended erection. Simply being photographed while naked can be an erotic experience for the model for all sorts of reasons.
Most of the time, the model would not say anything if an erection occurred. Sometimes, an erection would happen just once during a shoot. Other times it happened frequently. One model apologized and another said it happened whenever he was nude and someone else was there. A few models thought nothing of taking a moment to achieve an orgasm so they could resume filming without an erection. I photographed that as well. No model ever asked me to stop shooting.
Many models in ERECTIONS are well known pornstars and content creators. A few are not. How did you go about casting?
I reviewed every nude shoot I had done over the last 20 years and selected only the unplanned and unintended erections from those shoots. Despite the broad timeline, it was a challenge to find the necessary number of images to create a book. Today, I mostly shoot models with fan sites and it is usually anticipated that an erection will happen; orgasms are much less common. Perhaps one day I will have enough images to create a photobook that focuses on just orgasms.
Technique. You obviously favor B/W –and with extraordinary results–. But you also experiment with color photography. What makes you decide for one or the other? Is there a ‘Gruenholtz aesthetic’?
Typically, it’s the image that decides its fate. Occasionally, when the model and background look perfect in color, I tend not to mess with it. It’s an organic process and the decision isn’t made until I see the image on my desk computer.
Having said that, I do favor black and white images. You can really push the light and dark to create a sensibility that will work for the project at hand. When I began work on the ERECTIONS book, I anticipated that all of the images would be in black and white like UNCENSORED. I did not want the work to be perceived as pornographic (where the primary intent of the work is to cause arousal). When I began reviewing my images, however, there were some really cool color shots where the focus was more about beauty than anything else.
I remember reading that when the artist Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland} was creating his drawings, he would sit at his desk naked, cigarette in hand, and create only those images which gave him an erection. I understand that some people may become aroused by my work. But that has never been the purpose of my work. All of my projects have a concept which, when seen as a whole, hopefully transcends the prurient element. With ERECTIONS, my concept was to show the beauty of erections in a non-pornographic context.
As to whether there is a Gruenholtz aesthetic… A year after getting my Masters, the dean of my program wrote me to say that she could always tell when one of my images appeared on her Instagram scroll. It had to do with how I had lit the models and the composition. It had never occurred to me that my work was being recognized in that way.
What do you think of the OF revolution? It has democratized porn on one hand, but yielded a number of issues on the other (from queer baiting to impoverishing a once florid adult industry).
I think it’s great that sex workers can control their content and make money unimaginable just a few years ago. Also, I see more and more “fan” models working for established adult companies. So, sometimes there is a bit of cross promotion. Having said that, a lot of that fan content is not high quality. I think most people don’t realize how hard it is to create quality content on a regular basis. There is a huge burnout rate.
The advent of fan sites, however, has been good for photographers. More and more models need nude and other erotic imagery to promote themselves. When I started doing nude shoots prior to fan sites, models tended to cover their genitals. Now, that never happens. When the model is comfortable with frontal nudity, I usually get good images.
And the next revolution, AI?
To date, my artwork has had only one encounter with AI and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. A few weeks ago, I noticed that Amazon had an AI summary of my ERECTIONS book’s ratings/reviews. Fortunately, the AI summary was very positive and helpful. I have yet to see a reason to incorporate AI in my own work. I was happy to learn that an image created solely by AI was not eligible for copyright protection because it was not created by a human.
Let’s talk about censorship on social media in general and your role with Dontdeleteart in particular.
I started posting on my Instagram account in 2016. And, for the first year, Instagram left me alone. As my page got more popular (currently over 200K followers), they began removing my images they said didn’t comply with “Community Guidelines.” But,that wasn’t true. None of my images violated the guidelines. I never showed frontal nudity or close-ups of butts or explicit sexual images. So, it was very frustrating and I started working with Dontdeleteart. It has gotten a little better because you can now appeal the decision to remove an image. But even then, they don’t always get it right.
Now, I post when a new project, book or calendar of mine comes out. Even then, however, I don’t like to censor my own work so I am much more focused on promoting my work on Twitter. They have never deleted or covered up a single image I have posted.
Who are the photographers who have influenced you the most?
There was a great photographer in the golden age of Hollywood named Hurrell. He did these gorgeous head shots of many stars with incredible lighting. Although I wasn’t entirely aware of how he did it, it became my goal to capture that kind of glow on the models I shot, head to toe.
I think Mapplethorpe gave photographers the freedom to think about creating books like ERECTIONS. Also, I am a big fan of Luke Smalley and his authentically tender portraits of young men. I very much admire Collier Schorr’s sensitive images of high school wrestlers. I would also include Avedon, who had the courage to comment on the beauty of erections in 1963! And, of course, Bruce Weber, whose 1980 photo spreads of male models in GQ and elsewhere were always beautiful, fresh and sexy.
Where’s the male nude as a genre today? In fashion, publishing and art photography
Given the nature of my work, I am glad to see that we are making progress in terms of full frontal male nudity, especially on television. While that is certainly progress, most of the penises you see are unusually large prosthetics which creates its own problems culturally for both men and women. I was delighted when an actor on Euphoria commented that his nude scene did not include the use of a prosthetic.
What’s next for Ken Gruenholtz?
There will be sequel to ERECTIONS as well as a retrospective of my best nudes (dating back to 2006). But the project I’m most excited about is the creation of a photo book on the gay Kama Sutra currently in pre-production. There has never been a comprehensive photo book of this nature which makes it especially appealing.
