How do you feel when confronted with a graphic image of mating damselflies? Are you shocked, offended, fascinated, or intrigued? Is it art or is it pornography?
I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like a voyeur as I crept closer and closer on Monday to the mating Great Spreadwing damselflies (Archilestes grandis) with my macro lens. As I prepared the photos for this posting, it seemed like I had extracted a couple of pages from the Damselfly Kama Sutra. What exactly were they doing as they assumed more and more acrobatic positions? It was like watching an R-rated (or maybe X-rated) Cirque du Soleil performance.
Art or pornography? Sometime in the distant past I remember studying a Supreme Court case in which attempts were made to define obscenity. With the help of Wikipedia, I refreshed my memory. It was a 1964 case and Justice Potter Stewart wrote some words that have become a guideline for assessing a given piece of work:
“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”
So that’s it, “I know it when I see it.”
I’ll boldly contend that my photos are art. I am glad, however, that I am not a parent who has to respond to a young child’s curious question about what these damselflies are doing. The birds and the bees are simple to explain by comparison. With damselflies, I think the Facebook expression fits—”it’s complicated.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Wonderful shots.
Wonderful photographs. I’m glad you overcame the ethical dilemma and shares them here. Given that my kids and I have studied all sorts of beasties while they are “getting jiggy with it” I feel compelled to cast my vote in the debate for it not being pornographic.
Thanks for weighing in as a parent, Laura. I am heartened by the way that you handle this issue with your kids. When I was growing up, I feel like I would have been more shielded from this reality of life.
I’ve always answered my kids’ questions honestly and at a pitch appropriate to their level of understanding and chronological age. They spent the first years of their childhood in a rural area so saw plenty of animals mating. It didn’t take much of a leap for them to then work out how human babies were made. It’s part of life. I obviously wouldn’t permit them to watch movies containing sex scenes but I refuse to make sex some kind of shameful taboo. I don’t think that’s healthy. Insect sex is pretty tame in the whole scheme of things.
*shared not shares. Autocorrect made me sound like Gollum.
So many years into the internet I am not sure we have an ethical barrier…I find the shots really fascinating and yes even to be a bit of fine art.
It’s nature happening as nature should and we should all be happy about that.
But it does look complicated. Nice shots!
Thanks, Allen. I agree we your perspective about showing nature as it is.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen that position before. 😀
Don’t try it at home-you will be in serious need of a chiropractor.