Part I – From a Private Room to a Personal Image
I have repeatedly written about boudoir photography. About its elegance, its sensuality, and the fact that I also offer commissioned work in this genre. There is just one small detail I have rather generously taken for granted: that my esteemed readers actually know what I mean.
So it is time for an explanation. And since the amateur historian in me rarely sits still for long, we shall begin with the history behind it. My own journey into boudoir and the photographic work will follow in the second part.
To begin with: today, boudoir photography means sensual portraits with a personal quality and an atmosphere of privacy. Clothing, lingerie and nudity can all play a role. The amount of visible skin, however, does not explain the genre. Body parts are not a genre definition. Not even when you put a French term on top.
First, There Was a Room
Before boudoir described a photographic idea, it was a room. A woman’s private, often elegantly furnished room where she could withdraw or receive people close to her. This is also how the historical dictionary of the Académie française describes it.
A boudoir was therefore not simply a bedroom. Privacy was what mattered: a place outside formal public life, alone or in selected company.
For me, this offers the clearest connection to photography today. A boudoir image conveys the impression of a personal moment. It can show closeness, tranquillity, confidence or a playful relationship with one’s body. The person photographed appears in a situation to which not everyone would ordinarily have access.
That impression may be carefully staged. As we have already established when discussing posing, photographic spontaneity does not necessarily happen spontaneously. Even an apparently accidental glance may have taken several attempts.
Sometimes Boudoir Simply Meant More Cardboard
Anyone looking for the term in old photographic catalogues can easily follow the wrong trail.
In the nineteenth century, people visited photographic studios to have their portraits taken and ordered prints to give away, send or keep. Relatives and friends exchanged likenesses and collected them in albums. Portraits of famous people were also available to buy. Your own aunt could therefore find herself next to a celebrated actress in the album. Social advancement by turning a page.
Many of these photographs were pasted onto stiff cards. The card supported the thin print and gave the studio space for its name and advertising. Common formats included the small carte de visite, roughly the size of a calling card, and the larger cabinet card. Such images were keepsakes, gifts and small objects for display at home. The National Science and Media Museum explains this world of photographic cards.
One variant was the boudoir card. Here, the name referred to a format, not a way of portraying someone. The Getty Research Institute accordingly classifies boudoir photographs as a card format. Even landscape and railway photographs were offered on these cards. The locomotive was not required to wear lingerie.
Finding a “boudoir” photograph in a historical catalogue is therefore no reason to assume that it is an early sensual portrait. The anticipated scandal may amount to nothing more than extra cardboard.
The Images Predate the Clear-Cut Label
When did this become boudoir photography as we understand it today? The sources used here do not establish a precise birth date. The appearance of a word, similar visual subjects and a photographic service sold under that name are different things.
In her 2013 study, media scholar Michele White cites newspaper reports from 1914 and 1915 about boudoir photographs in a negligee and photographs taken in bed. For 1984, she refers to an article presenting boudoir photography as the latest fashion from California. This documents early subjects and later marketing, not a date of invention. These references come from White’s research; I have not personally examined the original newspaper pages.
Nor does our present terminology retroactively turn a woman in a negligee in an old photograph into a boudoir client. Similar subjects may serve very different purposes: a personal keepsake or a fantasy sold to the public. A nightdress alone does not explain how an image came into being.
The Woman Commissions Her Own Image
With boudoir as a personal commission, an important question comes to the fore: who is this image being made for?
In such a commission, the woman portrayed is herself the client. She is not merely modelling for an image needed by a publisher or an advertiser. She commissions her own photographs and brings her ideas about how she would like to appear in them.
That changes the task. A personal album makes different demands from a photograph intended to persuade as many strangers as possible to buy a magazine. The lighting, pose and clothing may be similar. Yet the purpose of the images and the role of the person photographed differ.
The client does not need photographic training. Understanding her wishes and developing an appropriate visual language are part of the photographer’s work. A commission is not fulfilled merely by putting a woman in lingerie in front of a camera and then sending an invoice.
No Boundary Along the Bra Line
Nude photography concerns the unclothed body. The result may be erotic, but it need not be. A body can appear as form, as movement, as a vulnerable human presence or almost as a landscape.
In boudoir, the emphasis is on a sensual portrayal with a personal quality. It can be created with clothing, lingerie or nudity. Nude and boudoir photography can therefore overlap. There may also be elements of glamour: a particularly attractive, often idealised presentation.
To understand the category, it helps to ask about the image’s intention and effect. Is it primarily about bodily form and composition? A personal, sensual portrayal? A conspicuously glamorous appearance? A single image can combine several of these purposes.
A bed does not automatically turn a portrait into boudoir any more than black and white automatically turns a photograph into art. The simple observation that “you can see something” is a rather modest contribution to photographic analysis.
For a Partner and for Herself
One seductively simple story goes like this: women used to make these photographs for men; now they make them for themselves.
Reality does not follow our stories quite so neatly. White identifies both motives as early as 1988: a gift for a partner and the pleasure of treating oneself. Her analysis of more than two thousand posts in wedding forums likewise reveals different, interconnected motivations. This is a study of particular forums, not a representative survey of all boudoir clients.
I find this coexistence more convincing than a narrative of progress with neatly separated eras. A woman can give her partner photographs and enjoy them herself. She can draw on familiar ideas of beauty and still consciously choose precisely that portrayal.
Conversely, a sensual image is not self-determined simply because someone has put the word “empowerment” into the service description. An English noun is no substitute for a sensible conversation.
I discussed the significance these images may later have for body image in the preceding article, “Seeing Yourself Through Different Eyes”. Here, the first question is what kind of photography a woman is commissioning in the first place.
What Remains of the Room
No actual room from the original boudoir needs to survive today. In my understanding, what remains above all is the idea of a personal space: a woman, her sensuality and a portrayal in which she has a say.
The impression of privacy can be staged. Respect for the person portrayed should not be a performance.
This brings us to the point where the history of the term leads into my own work. What do I mean by elegance? How does sensuality emerge without anyone having to adopt a conspicuously seductive look? And how much preparation goes into an image that appears effortless?
That is the subject of the second part: my journey from food photography into boudoir, and what light, posture and clothing contribute to a personal portrayal. A lumberjack shirt will also make an appearance.
The buttons, in any case, are not what matters.