When Jo Ann Callis returns to her hometown Wednesday to give a FotoFocus lecture at the Cincinnati Art Museum, it will be as a Los Angeles photographer getting renewed attention for some groundbreaking erotic work done in the 1970s and then forgotten.
In 2014, the Aperture Foundation published the book Jo Ann Callis: Other Rooms, which featured photographs of the nude body as well as sexually charged situations that were part of her Early Black and White and Early Color series.
Those include a color photograph in which a hand holds a small flashlight to a bare thigh as a red slip is pulled up — the viewer looks down on the scene and does not see the model’s face. In “Untitled (Tied Up),” a woman in a studio faces a luscious cream-colored satin backdrop as Callis shoots her nude body from behind — lines across her back and buttocks reveal the markings of tight binding. And in “Untitled (Hand and Honey),” a hand covers spilled, spread-out honey like it’s slipping into a mitten. Read more about Callis here.
Callis’ presentation, with Rose Shoshana of Rose Gallery, is free and begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Cincinnati Art Museum. More info: cincinnatiartmuseum.org.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2016.