Coinciding with the first edition of Curiosa—a new thematic section of international art fair Paris Photo, which focuses on the body, gender politics, and the question of eroticism—this new film from London-based director Stroma Cairns takes a sultry glance at the works on display, while getting the low-down from curator Martha Kirszenbaum.

Rather than offering a straight-forward display of arousing snaps, the exhibition seeks to challenge our gaze around the fantasized and fetishicized body, tackling relations of power, domination, and gender. Archival and vernacular photographs share the walls with self-portraits, photomontage, and mise-en-scèneare from a truly historical sweep of image-makers, including the work of avant-garde feminist artists Natalia LL and Renate Bertimann.

“Some male artists disclose a fragmented masculinity and a weakened male body”

Cairns’ film suggests that while photography has the capacity to empower—as with the homo-erotic portraits of Robert Mapplethorpe—it is also an inherently voyeuristic medium, where the lens and dark-room present naturally erotic metaphors for the making of images, which can also be easily disrupted. In this way, photography is about exposure. But then, so is sex itself.