Beyond Penetration

Beyond Penetration is a personal photographic exploration of the feminine, pleasure, and sexual freedom. Through portraits and intimate objects in urban spaces, I explore sexuality beyond expectations — as a space for instinct, play, and discovery.

I was eleven when I first discovered a source of unfamiliar sensations in my body. Sexuality was taboo in the environment where I grew up, and I had no way of understanding what I was experiencing. But I knew it existed.

I was over thirty when I first recognised sexual arousal for what it was. And I was thirty-six when I began this project.

What is the feminine? And what is pleasure? How can we, as women, discover our own pleasure when even our orgasms are classified as right or wrong, adaptive or maladaptive, mature or immature?

The clitoris is the only known human organ whose sole function is pleasure. Yet its anatomy remained poorly understood for centuries. In 1998, Australian urologist Helen O’Connell published groundbreaking research on its anatomical structure — long after humanity had developed the atomic bomb and landed on the Moon.

In Pleasure Erased: The Clitoris Unthought, philosopher Catherine Malabou examines the historical erasure of the clitoris from Western philosophical thought. She places clitoral pleasure at the centre of her understanding of the feminine.

This history of erasure resonates with my own experience: I experienced orgasm before I knew what it was, while my first encounters with penetrative sex were profoundly disappointing. I had neither the language nor the guidance to understand the gap between my own bodily experience and the sexual script I had come to accept as normal.

I photograph women from my personal circle, including somatic practitioners, sexologists, and organisers and participants of kink events. These women actively explore their sexuality and contribute to contemporary sexual culture. Without predetermined visual references, the images emerge through our interactions. The women bring their own ideas and ways of presenting themselves into the process, making each shoot a collaborative performance and a space for experimentation and discovery.

Alongside their portraits, I photograph sex toys and other intimate objects in urban spaces, deliberately choosing locations that do not evoke penetration.

Beyond Penetration moves beyond penetration not only as a sexual act, but also as a model in which the female body and its pleasure are organised around male pleasure and the male gaze. I am interested in sexuality as something to be experienced rather than performed — a space for instinct, play, and exploration, free from the pressure to appear desirable or conform to expected roles.

Through this project, I explore the contradiction between knowing and feeling, between sexual liberation and the expectations that continue to shape our intimate experiences.

Today, knowledge about sex and sexuality is more accessible than ever. Yet greater access to knowledge does not necessarily bring us closer to understanding the feminine.

The feminine remains hidden and mysterious. It resides within us, yet resists easy definition.