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[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

Jaques Biederer, first photographer in history specializing in erotic photos. This photo was taken in Paris in 1928...

Jaques Biederer, a Czech-born photographer who moved to Paris, was a pioneer in this controversial but influential field.

Working during 1920s and early 1930s, he and his brother Charles ran a studio under the name “Ostra Studio,” where they explored themes of intimacy, eroticism, and roleplay, long before such subjects were widely accepted.

Paris at the time was a haven for avant-garde expression, allowing Biederer to push the boundaries of photography both technically and artistically.

This 1928 photograph captures not only a moment of boldness and flirtation but also the growing liberation of the post, World War I era, when societal norms around sexuality were beginning to shift.

Biederer’s work is now considered foundational in the evolution of erotic art and visual storytelling.

© History Pictures

[Alexandra Sorolla @AlexandraSoro]

"Apollo of the Tiber" 🏛️🌹
Roman marble copy after a Greek original,
ca. 450 BC.
Classical sculpture.

[Dr. M.F. Khan @Dr_TheHistories]

The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, the Olympics, and apparently the world’s first “labels are for soup cans” discourse.

Ancient Greece did not have a word for “homosexuality” the way we understand it today. They did not sort people into neat little boxes marked gay, straight, or bisexual. What mattered to them was status, power, age, and who held control in a relationship. The entire framework was different.

A powerful adult man could sleep with women, male lovers, sex workers, or basically whoever fit into his social world without anyone deciding that was his entire identity. The scandal was not same-sex desire itself. The scandal came if a freeborn man was seen as passive, submissive, or giving up social dominance. Masculinity was treated like a rank you had to defend at all times.

Which, honestly, too many men still take to heart.

Greek art and literature are packed with desire between men. Plato wrote about love between men as a path to beauty and wisdom. The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite military unit made up of male couples who were said to fight harder because their lovers stood beside them in battle. Alexander the Great openly grieved Hephaestion like a spouse when he died. None of this was hidden in whispers or coded glances. It was woven into public life.

Women, meanwhile, got shoved to the margins of most Greek records because ancient misogyny was working overtime. That is part of why figures like Sappho stand out so sharply. Her poetry about love and longing between women survived thousands of years because it was too powerful to erase completely.

The Greeks were not “progressive” in the modern sense. Their world was deeply unequal and brutally hierarchical. But they also remind us that sexuality has never been as fixed, tidy, or binary as modern culture pretends.

© Bil Browning

[behappy @BayRobParis]

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[behappy @BayRobParis]

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