Barbara Nitke is an internationally known photographer who specializes in the subject of human sexual relations, especially in the BDSM community. Her work has been exhibited and collected for over 20 years.
Nitke was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1950 and grew up in both Virginia and Alaska. She later moved to New York City where she found work as a set photographer on pornographic films. She found the porn world interesting and took to documenting the porn industry and its people when she was not working on the set. Her art from this time captures much of the surrealism of people working in such an offbeat profession.
Nitke and the porn business
The hardcore porn business moved to the west coast in the early 1990's, and Nitke found work in the fetish and BDSM film industries which had remained in New York City. She found the SM scene fascinating and very unlike the mainstream porn industry. In large part, the people in SM porn were actual partners, not just actors, and had a special chemistry that attracted her.
In 1994 she attended her first meeting of The Eulenspiegel Society, one of the country's first BDSM organizations, to see a presentation by the famous photographer Charles Gatewood. There she met many real consensual SM couples and began photographing them in actual BDSM scenes rather than in staged or posed shots.
The resulting photographs were collected in her first book, "Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism". The book was published in 2003 and was a major success.
In addition to her artistic pursuits, she still works as a commercial photographer on movie and TV sets and has had photographic exhibitions in New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, Provincetown and Philadelphia. She is President of The Camera Club of New York (founded in 1884 by Alfred Stieglitz), a member of The Eulenspiegel Society and is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York.
"The photographs of Barbara Nitke, which represent a form of extreme sexual play, fall squarely within the boundaries of high art. " Arthur C. Danto, Art Critic, The Nation Emeritus Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University
Nitke v. Ashcroft
In 2001, Nitke created a website to display some of her artwork. When she was told that her documentary photos of the porn industry and the SM community would likely be restricted on the Internet by the Communications Decency Act, she replied that nothing she did was obscene. She was told that under the CDA, obscenity is defined according to local community standards which vary from state to state and even town to town. To be fully in compliance she would have to meet the standards of the most restrictive community in the country.
This could mean that one community with exceptionally restrictive standards could decide what the entire nation could see on the internet.
In December 2001 she filed a lawsuit as a co-plaintiff with the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom to have this portion of the law declared unconstitutional. John Wirenius, the lawyer in the case, agreed to work pro bono.
Districe ruling =
On July 26, 2005, a decision handed down by the Federal District Court for the Southern District of NY, in case #01 CIV 11476 (RMB) decided that the plaintiffs presented "insufficient evidence" to support findings that the variation in community standards is substantial enough that protected speech is inhibited by the CDA
According to Nitke, "This law is a form of unfair censorship that must be stopped. I am absolutely going to appeal this."
Appeal
On August 22, 2005 Barbara Nitke and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the District Court's decision in the Communications Decency Act (CDA)challenge.
Their appeal contends the District Court applied an incorrect legal standard for determining whether protected material was improperly banned under the CDA. The District Court also committed legal error in finding that many local communities do not have pre-determined standards of obscenity that can be verified--and then ruling the plaintiffs failed to prove what those standards are.
Nitke claimed that she was "genuinely at risk of prosecution under the CDA" and her speech has been inhibited according to the decision handed down by the Federal District Court for the Southern District of NY, case #01 CIV 11476 (RMB). However, the three judge panel stated that the over 1,000 images and text by 150+ artists and website owners presented by the plaintiffs was "insufficient evidence" to prove that the variation in community standards is substantial enough that protected speech is inhibited by the CDA. (from NCSF press release, August 22, 2005)
See Also
External links
References and further reading
- Barbara Nitke Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism - Kehrer Verlag (June 15, 2003). ISBN 3933257948