Ambisexual

"The photographs aren't part of the genre that people might associate with them," says German photographer Diana Scheunemann of her intimate portraits of friends in sexual situations. Only the most superficial assessment of her consentual domestic disrobings could categorize them as pornographic. Scheunemann's deceptively matter-of-fact images of her secual confidants are refreshing in that they manage to enter the private world of home sex without releasing any of the frisson of violation and coercion, almost always present in erotic photography. The friends and models are clearly at ease, and in framing their playfully sexual selves without adding significant styling, Scheunemann takes the images into an uncharted terrain where the sex is real but its intention is not to titillate. Codes for responding to exposures as complex as these don't exist in a visual culture flooded by male-conceived fabrications of sexuality, and it is partly through the resulting interpretive dissonace that Scheunemann's images acquire their strength. Scheunemann studied at the Horschule fur Gestaltung und Kunst in Zurich and her work has featured in shows and magazines across Europe. Her photographs should not be shown to those unaware that the brain is the largest sexual organ.