n°12 — A Magazine: Poster of a Girl, Magazine Emmanuelle. Authors: Catherine Guiral & Sarah Vadé

In the first half of the 17th century, French doctor Théophraste Renaudot launched a periodical, La Gazette. In it appeared the first “advertisements.” The initial meaning given to this term was that of rendering something public, and Renaudot, a man of multiple pursuits, endeavored then to apply his adage: “For just as ignorance dares desire, since it is impossible to desire what one does not know, even the knowledge of things makes us envious.”

These syllogistic and paradoxical relationships between the stimulation of desire, masked ignorance, and longing lead to the exploration of the tensions that exist between audience, advertising, and eroticism. Leaning on the appearance of so-called “porno” magazines, and in particular the magazine Emmanuelle (launched by éditions Opta—Office de Publicité Technique et Artistique—in 1974), Poster of a Girl undresses “heroic masculinity,” to use the expression of philosopher Paul B. Preciado, all while exploring what could be a “magazine of pleasure” (the subtitle of Emmanuelle) in the stark light of contemporary techniques of dressing.*

To open up Emmanuelle is, then, to open up a set of vanishing lines, from a print revolution to a cultural revolution, unveiling forms that are skilled, mercantile, or critical, the very forms in which Eros drapes himself.