Classic art: Without a trace

As you can probably tell from this blog, I love vintage spanking erotica. Good art makes a connection that photography very rarely can.
So, I was fascinated when I read last night about how photography and art come together in the work of the 19th Century master of spanking art Louis Malteste. It looks as though for some of his best-known images Malteste was cheating - tracing photographs rather than working from life or pure imagination.
'Cheating' is probably too loaded a word to use and the technique certainly produced some beautiful and memorable images, especially his earlier efforts. I wonder if he used a photograph tracing for all of his illustration?
Looking through Malteste stuff on the web today I came across this one, which I don't think I've seen before. I find it fascinating; what did she do to earn herself a punishment? Are they in a compartment, and are we as viewers peeping in on a private moment? Or is it an open carriage and the public nature of the process part of her humiliation?

Picture perfect

What makes the perfect spanking picture? Difficult to say, isn't it? Everybody's equation of perfection would be different, I'm sure.

In my real world job I get to work quite a bit with photographers, so I take an interest in what is - and isn't - a good image in an editorial context. A friend sent me an online lecture by the photo director for National Geographic, who's called David Griffin.

I've just been watching it - it's worth a look if you're interested. He's got an interesting insight. And he uses funny examples, which helps make the point.

Everyone has a great photo in them, he says. But a great photographer has to have great photos to deliver time and again. 

What Griffin says is that although we're bombarded every day with moving images, the still image still has the power to make a connection at an emotional level - if it's really exceptional. It's like the mental image you have after a car crash, that frozen flashbulb moment that encapsulates all the emotional power of the experience.Anyway, it got me thinking about how there's now a deluge of spanko images coming at us where once there was so little. Old Janus and Februs images are remembered like old friends, now nothing much stands out. 

For me David Griffin's flashbulb moment seems to apply to what I see in the spankosphere to some degree. Stills register, video mostly doesn't and it's the still images where I can find my way into the emotion - the ones where I'm sitting in that car that's heading for a collision.I like this picture because I feel like I'm sharing her apprehension, like its me that's going to feel that nasty big paddle. It makes me want to ask questions like what was it that she did that was so very bad?

But there's not so much good stuff around, is there? Maybe that's why I'm so much in love with spanko art. With so many photos out there it's harder and harder for something to leap out at you, but a great piece of art - a Stanton, a Malteste, a Jim Black or whatever - nearly always makes the connection.

As good as it gets?

For atmosphere? It has to be the work of Louis Malteste. His creations draw me in in a way that nobody else's manage to do. I can look at those drawings time and again and never be quite sure of the story behind each one.
I know most (all?) were book illustrations, so presumably he was making pictures to match the stories he was given.  A job of work that he did with real aplomb.
But I like to look at thepictures as stand-alone images without that baggage and love weaving my own little daydreams around them. It is something to do when you're on the train to work.
Here's one for Monday morning. Not sure what's going on here. It's clear she's going to get what's coming. Those pretty drawers are going to be around her knees and the birch on the chair is going to get used. But why are the flapper girls getting to watch? And is that a playful pat on the bottom. or a slap?