Getty Museum

Two Women Embracing (84.XT.172.6)

Date

about 1848

Medium

Hand-colored daguerreotype

Culture

French

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Two nude women gaze adoringly at one another and physically interact. The woman lounging on the couch places her hand under the other's breast as if caressing it, but their frontally oriented and ultimately awkward-looking poses are clearly meant for the pleasure of the observer, not for each other. The photographer has carefully positioned both bodies for full revelation. The two women mirror each other in their pose and flesh and are even placed in front of a mirror so that seemingly no inch of them is left unrevealed. The lesbian content of this plate might seem surprising for its time, but Paris supplied a booming international market for erotic imagery in the mid-nineteenth century. Other erotic French photographs commonly featured a single woman whose suggestive posturing teetered between artist's study or *académie* and pornography, which was surging in popularity at the time. Adapted from getty.edu, Interpretive Content Department, 2008.

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