Daily Inspiration Quote by Jock Sturges

There is a disarming flatness to Sturges's claim: a photographer as pure instrument, taking in the world without hierarchy, without shame, without selection. "Anything" reads like an alibi and a credo at once. By insisting he "didn't think" one body part is "more or less obscene" than another, he positions obscenity as a cultural projection rather than an intrinsic property of flesh. The rhetorical move is clever because it reframes the debate away from what he photographed and toward what viewers bring to the image: who is doing the sexualizing, who is inventing the transgression.

The subtext, though, is that this neutrality is itself a stance - and a strategic one. In photography, pretending to have no boundaries can function as an ethical argument: if the body is just form, then the artist is absolved. But the camera is never innocent. What counts as "anything" is still curated: subject, framing, setting, audience, distribution. Declaring oneself unbothered by "obscene" distinctions can read as liberation from prudishness, or as a refusal to engage the power dynamics that make some bodies more vulnerable to scrutiny than others.

Context matters because Sturges is not speaking in a vacuum. His work has long been pulled into the culture war over nudity, art, and exploitation, particularly around minors. In that arena, his line isn't just philosophy; it's defense. It works by daring the audience to confess its own gaze, while quietly asking to be judged by intent rather than impact.