“Venus Revisited: The Photography of Wingate Paine,” at Steven Kasher, December 11, 2008 – January 17, 2009

All sorts of political claims have been made over the years about the photographs Wingate Paine (1915–1987) took for his 1966 magnum opus “Mirror of Venus,” a book-length and resolutely lubricious homage to the female form that came packaged with texts by filmmaker Federico Fellini and zeigeisty French novelist Françoise Sagan. While I suspect that Paine genuinely had no political aspirations for the work, it is almost impossible to look at his work apolitically nowadays. From its invention in the “Mad Men” era (Paine was a highly successful advertising photographer) to its entirely understandable excoriation by generations of feminists, to its reassimilation as what the gallery calls “fresh air” in the era of ubiquitous online pornography, Paine’s soft-core provides plenty to think about.


Wingate Paine, "Untitled" (1964–65)

Courtesy Steven Kasher