Thursday , March 28 2024

The “Erotic” Earth

I just found a noteworthy photography site called Earth Erotica, which urges us to “explore the sensual contours of the earth’s body.” The images are striking, but I think her work would be more compelling still if her selection of images took the earth’s “sensual contours” on its (the earth’s) own terms rather than finding shots that most closely resemble human reproductive organs. This kind of literal anthropomorphism has an almost adolescent “look what I found – hee hee” tone.

Here is the artist, Heather Firth’s, bio:

    While trekking the high mountain region of the Sinai Desert in 1981 I photographed my first two “sexy” earth images. The Earth Erotica series (sexually explicit found earth forms) did not become a concept or integral to my Heart of Sexuality seminars for nearly fifteen years.

    Born and raised in Northern California, I acquired my love of nature roaming the Sierra Nevada Mountains. At the age of eighteen, I moved near San Francisco to live in an experimental community designed to explore love, sex, and communication. For seven years I participated in extraordinary research programs on sexuality and received a Bachelor of Science in Humanities from More University. In that program, I began leading communication groups in 1972 and teaching sensuality courses in 1973. For eighteen years, I ran affiliate programs, counseled, and taught sexuality seminars in Marin County, California.

Hmm.

    In 1994 the spiritual mystique and vast landscapes of the American Southwest beckoned me. I moved to Sedona, Arizona, where I founded the LoveLife Center, continued counseling, and originated the Heart of Sexuality seminars (integrating traditional, spiritual, and adventurous sexuality). As an artist, I significantly advanced my photographic collections. I moved to New York in 2001 to further both careers.

    The Earth Erotica photograph series was slow to develop. The first two images from the Sinai remained in storage for over twelve years. It was not until 1986, while hiking in Zion National Park, Utah, that I happened upon another sensual earth image. Eight years later I discovered several more “hot rocks” while exploring Anasazi ruins near Sedona. In 1996 I decided to intentionally seek out these images. I planned a photography journey into the Four Corners region of the American Southwest: Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico.

    Never having traveled the wilderness alone, I asked my seventy-two-year-old mother to join my expedition. We took off, itinerant travelers for three weeks, hiking up to ten miles per day, shouldering camera gear, food, water, and protective clothing. Our efforts were richly rewarded.

    Eventually I had to travel into the deserts unaccompanied to expand the collection. Thousands of road miles, solitary days spent searching isolated canyons, and relentless determination shifted my fear of being alone in the wilderness into a spiritual odyssey.

    My artistic vision with Earth Erotica is to portray nature’s sacred union of sex and spirit. I continue to develop this inspiring collection.

It’s worse than I feared.

About Eric Olsen

Career media professional and serial entrepreneur Eric Olsen flung himself into the paranormal world in 2012, creating the America's Most Haunted brand and co-authoring the award-winning America's Most Haunted book, published by Berkley/Penguin in Sept, 2014. Olsen is co-host of the nationally syndicated broadcast and Internet radio talk show After Hours AM; his entertaining and informative America's Most Haunted website and social media outlets are must-reads: Twitter@amhaunted, Facebook.com/amhaunted, Pinterest America's Most Haunted. Olsen is also guitarist/singer for popular and wildly eclectic Cleveland cover band The Props.

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