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.. the ha»d at

the rigbt degree oj openness, the ńght Jensśty of ahandonment

R. MAPl-l.hlHO*PE: YOUNC MAN WtTH ARM ESTENDEO

sents the scxuai organs, making them into a motionless objeer (a fetish), flattered like an idol that does not leave its nichc; for me, thcrc i$ no punctum in the pornographic image; at most it amuses me (and cvcn then, boredom follows quickly). The erotic photograph, on tl»e contrary (and this is irs very condition), docs not make the scxual organs into a central object; it may very well not show them at all; it takes the spcctator outsidc its framc, and it is therc that I animate this photogtaph and that'ir~aąi-mates me. The punctum, then, is a kind of subtlę beyond —as if the image iaunched desire beyond what it permifs us to sce: nor only toward "the rest" of the nakedness, not only toward the fantasy of a praxis, but toward the abso-lute cx cci lence of a bcing, body and soul togetlter. This boy with his atra outstretched, his radiant smilc, though his beauty is in no way classical or academic, and though he is half out of the photograph, shifted to the extreme left of the framc, incarnates a kind of blissful eroticism; the photograph leads mc to distinguish the "heavy" desire of pornography from the "light" (good) desire of eroticism; after all, perhaps this is a question of "luck”: the photog-rapher has caught the boy's hand (the boy is Mapplc-thorpe himself, I believe) at just the right degree of openness, the right density of abandonment: a few milli-meters morę or less and the dmned body would no longer havc bccn offered with bencvolcnce (the pornographic body shows itsclf, it does not give itscif, thcrc is no gen-erosity in it): the photographer has found the right moment, the kairos of desire.