What does intimacy look like for seniors? There’s no end to sex scenes and other steamy content featuring the young and unwrinkled, but past a certain age, popular culture largely draws a blank — or treats sex as a punchline.

Last year, the artist Marilyn Minter set out to change that, gathering a group of men and women aged 70 and older in her New York studio to showcase a lesser-seen side of sex and relationships. In erotic and colorful images, the seniors are stripped down to lingerie or briefs; they hug, kiss and caress each other in the heat of the moment. The photographs beckon our attention to challenge something still seen as taboo, showing playful, loving moments of pleasure.

“There’s so much contempt for elder sex. Even one of the models that I worked with said, ‘Who wants to see all these?'” Minter recalled in a video call with CNN.

“My whole thought process going into it was that we’re pioneers,” she continued of the unabashedly sexualized context. “Nobody’s ever shot elder people affectionately, and with any kind of elegance. And that was my goal — to make to make them look very desirable.”

“Elder Sex” is Marilyn Minter’s full set of images originally shot for a New York Times Magazine story on senior sex and intimacy. Credit: Courtesy Marilyn Minter & LGDR

Seeking partners

The images “give permission to people who feel shame about their sexual urges,” Minter said. Credit: Marilyn Minter/Courtesy of JBE Books & LGDR

“We wanted to (include) all races, all types of sex,” Minter explained. “We had a lot of trouble getting models. I’m 74. I asked all my friends — in mixed-race relationships, in lesbian relationships — and none of them would do it.”

In the end, Minter cast actors along with the few people who had agreed. She paired them together in her studio, photographing them behind a panel of frozen glass — a trick to achieve the steamy, wet look without battling the ephemerality of water vapor. During their shoots, Minter said all her models, who were as old as 89 years old, told her they still had regular, enjoyable sex lives. Their sentiments matched the people interviewed for the New York Times Magazine article, who described deepening intimacy with their partners later in life, as well as learning to navigate and appreciate their needs as their bodies aged.

Seniors do have regular sex lives, but it’s rarely discussed. Minter says all her models told her they still enjoy intimacy. Credit: Marilyn Minter/Courtesy of JBE Books & LGDR

Minter believes there’s a sense of freedom in sex later in life that, for many people, can take time to reach.

“When you’re young and having sex, it’s a little more performative than it is when you’re 80,” she said. As an older person, “You’re thinking, ‘This is me. Take it or leave it. I’m just going to enjoy myself. I’m not going to fake anything here.'”

Changing attitudes

Minter acknowledges that sex and self-image is fraught for women of all ages — older women are rarely seen or taken seriously as having intimate needs, while for younger women, sexual agency is often a tightrope walk — too much of it and you can be “excoriated and slut-shamed,” Minter said.

“When you’re 25, there’s just so much fear about young women owning sexual agency — it’s just terrifying to people,” she said.

But the artist sees some progress in who gets to be seen as desirable on our television screens, reflecting a burgeoning broader shift in cultural attitudes around sex. She pointed to photographs in People magazine comparing the characters of “The Golden Girls” and “Sex and the City,” who are the same age at the time of the latter’s reboot on HBO Max (which is owned by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery). “The 50s look a lot different in the 2020s!” a caption exclaimed.

Though “The Golden Girls” also delved into romance and intimacy — and was widely-viewed as remarkably sex-positive for its time — there’s a stark contrast in how women in their 50s are presented across the two shows.

“I thought, ‘Okay, here’s why it’s different,” she said. “Number one: People live a lot longer, and they’re healthier… Number two: there’s this thing called Viagra.” Minter laughed, adding: “But who retired at 54? To a home in Florida with three other ladies? What?”

Minter hopes “Elder Sex” will serve as a radical body of work and will help normalize sex at older ages. Credit: Marilyn Minter/Courtesy of JBE Books & LGDR

She hopes “Elder Sex” will not only serve as a much-needed visual reference for what intimacy can look like at older ages, but will also resonate for people who feel like their desires — and lives — are overlooked.

“It gives permission to people who feel shame about their sexual urges,” she said. “I want this to give them permission to explore that and erase the shame.”

The winner of a major photography award has turned down the prize after admitting the image he submitted was created by artificial intelligence.

German artist Boris Eldagsen’s entry, entitled Pseudomnesia: The Electrician, was awarded a Sony World Photography Award last week in the creative open category.

In a statement on his website, the artist said he applied to the competition as a “cheeky monkey, to find out, if the competitions are prepared for AI images to enter”.

“They are not,” he concluded.

He also asked readers: “How many of you knew or suspected that it was AI generated? Something about this doesn’t feel right, does it?

“AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. AI is not photography.

“Therefore I will not accept the award.”

Eldagsen said he made the organisers aware of how his image was created when they told him he won, claiming they replied telling him he could keep the award.

He has published a detailed account of the conversations he had with award organisers Creo, where he appears to repeatedly push them on why they initially failed to reveal his image had been made using AI.

Eldagsen also pointed out that the phrase “pseudomnesia” means “fake memories” in Latin.

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AI has developed rapidly in recent months, with the introduction of the likes of ChatGPT, a language model that can build code or write stories at the click of a button, and software that can drive cars, write university essays or generate images.

A spokesperson for the World Photography Organisation said Eldagsen did make the admission about how his image was made before he was announced as the winner of the contest, adding he emphasised the picture in question “relies on his ‘wealth of photographic knowledge'” and that they were satisfied he had fulfilled the entry criteria.

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However, they also said relations have now soured between two, adding: “Additionally, we were looking forward to engaging in a more in-depth discussion on this topic and welcomed Boris’ wish for dialogue by preparing questions for a dedicated Q&A with him for our website.

“As he has now decided to decline his award we have suspended our activities with him and in keeping with his wishes have removed him from the competition.

“Given his actions and subsequent statement noting his deliberate attempts at misleading us, and therefore invalidating the warranties he provided, we no longer feel we are able to engage in a meaningful and constructive dialogue with him.

“We recognise the importance of this subject and its impact on image-making today. We look forward to further exploring this topic via our various channels and programmes and welcome the conversation around it.”

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Sony World Photography Award winner Boris Eldagsen from Germany has refused to accept his trophy, revealing his prize-winning photo is an AI-generated image.

The picture, a haunting black and white portrait of two women from different generations, which looks similar to a 1940s family portrait, won the award in the open competition for single images.

During the London award ceremony, Eldagsen revealed the image had been created using artificial intelligence and he refused the prize.

“Thank you for selecting my image and making this a historic moment, as it is the first AI-generated image to win in a prestigious international photography competition,” he says.

In a statement on his website, Eldagsen explains how AI technology can be used to “co-create”.

“It is not about pressing a button — and done it is. It is about exploring the complexity of this process, starting with refining text prompts, then developing a complex workflow, and mixing various platforms and techniques.” 

Eldagsen has suggested his competition prize be donated to a photo festival in Odesa, Ukraine. 

Eldagsen said he entered the competition to provoke a debate about artificial intelligence and photography.

Eldagsen has been embracing the new opportunities that artificial intelligence brings, specialising in making AI-generated images, and calling for separate competitions to be created.

His series Pseudomnesia consists of a number of images that look like “fake memories of a past that never existed, that no-one photographed”. 

“Just as photography replaced painting in the reproduction of reality, AI will replace photography. Don’t be afraid of the future. It will just be more obvious that our mind always created the world that makes it suffer,” he says. 

The Sony World Photography Award is yet to issue a statement responding to Eldagsen’s revelation, however it has removed his image from the website and the exhibition in London.