Interview: Part Two

Last week I posted the first part of my interview with Richard (the man behind some of the most exciting and original erotic sites on the internet: Beautiful Agony, IShotMyself, and IFeelMyself, among others). He has a lot of interesting things to say about his work and about pornography, erotica, and sexuality in general. You may have come to this site looking for pictures, but I really recommend that you take a minute to read this— it is enlightening, interesting, and well worth the time:


The Pornoisseur: The popularity of Beautiful Agony has grown so much; you must get a stupendous amount of submissions. How do you filter out the bad from the good, and decide what to publish?

Richard: It's not as hard as you'd think. We look at the tape and if it looks performed, or exaggerated, we ditch it. Reality is our foremost criteriea, and after that is technical quality.

TP: In a similar vein: What is the most peculiar submission you've ever received?

R: I think it would have to be the clip which we're putting up next week, in which a young woman ejaculates on her own face. Hers is a wonderful contribution in many ways, and no less so her Confessions, which reveal her to be a very honest and sexually aware person with a particular gift that she can control to some extent.

TP: Some people would say that Beautiful Agony is an invasion into the most private of private moments, and that this is a bad thing. What do you say to people who are concerned about the fact that such a private thing is being made public in the most public of places- the internet?

R: It's the individual's choice after all. If you want to impose a philosophy on us, that we're breaking some ethical boundary, I reject that outright. On Agony ther's a sharing agreement between those who like to be watched, and those who like to watch, and that's as far as it needs to go.

TP: Some of the same people might object to making money in any way from human sexuality. Do you think sexuality can be bought and sold without running into the possible ethical problems of marketing sexuality?

R: We aren't dealing in sexuality, rather a rendition of it, like the relationship between an image and its subject. Didn't some native tribe, seeing a camera for the first time, fear it would steal their souls?

TP: What are the most common reasons that Agonees submit- curiousity, exhibitionism, just on a whim?

R: I would say curiosity, specifically a sense of adventure, like "I wonder what it would be like to..." At least that's what we are hearing in their Confessions.

TP: Has Beautiful Agony spawned any new sites recently? I remember hearing about sonicerotica.com, and now IFeelMyself is up and running... What other things are in the works?

R: Yes sonicerotica.com, our site for vision-impaired users, will be up very soon. That wasn't a spinoff from Agony, it came from a different place altogether. Ifeelmyself.com was a result of the reaction we had on Agony to a clip where the entire body was shown, albeit with clothes on. At first it seem to challenge our credo that sensuality was centred in the face, until you consider that for some, the image of face and body together was even more stimulating. On IFM we've gone a step further than Agony; it certainly has nudity, but the focus is still on the face. There are no gyno closeups, and the lighting is subtle. It has a lot of fans but there is still a core audience for Agony which isn't interested in anything more. Curiously, the instant reaction from women to ifeelmyself has been even more zealous than Agony when it first started, and we're starting to get quite a few submissions, even though we aren't seeking any. Ifeelmyself differs from Agony in that most of the subjects are in a controlled environment, though they aren't given direction and are mostly alone during filming.

TP: Do you see Beautiful Agony as a social movement? Do you have hopes that it will in some way change the way society views orgasm, or even sexuality in general? What are its (and your) goals?

R: The facettes aren't put up there to be judged or made an example of, and I'd hope people don't use them as some sort of model. But if it changes peoples perceptions of what is or isn't erotic, then we have achieved something. If it reduces the consumption, and therefore the production, of soulless, degrading, male-oriented porn, even a little bit, then I'm very happy with that.


Click here for nude photographs...