Photographer and photo historian, Anja Tollan, recalls the exhibition in the following anecdote:

"In 1989 I was involved in the exhibition Erotik (Eroticism), in which 48 female photographers focused on what the erotic meant to them. It was not a feminist exhibition, as there was no particular philosophy or programme behind it. The participants included several well-known photographers, such as Kirsten Klein, Nanna Büchert and Tove Kurtzweil, as well as younger photographers like myself, and a lot of amateurs. With a range from classic portrait photographers to art activists, we came from very different circles – that’s how it was in the eighties. It was a time when everyone could be creative, and anyone who had something to say was accepted, and the exhibition reflected that. No leader was appointed, but I think Tove Kurtzweil was one of the driving forces. She was an established art photographer and knew the ropes, so she probably did a lot of legwork getting it organised.

But who exactly organised the exhibition, and who was responsible for what, I simply can’t remember. That’s probably because there was a disagreement over the funding. A few of the people in the exhibition had received some money from two brothers who ran a porn business in Amager. I was very much against accepting this money, so I called a meeting at which I said I would pull out of the exhibition unless the money was returned. As an alternative, I suggested that we took out a bank loan, which we would collectively guarantee. I had carefully worked out how much each of us would have to pay, to show that this was peanuts compared with the risks we were running of compromising ourselves as independent actors and women in our own right. I ended up winning the argument and the money was returned, but after that I lost interest in the overall project and just concentrated on my own contribution.

For the exhibition I produced a documentary photoreportage about two women and their little son, who was going to be christened. Although there were some very fine projects in the exhibition, in particular by Jo Selsing, Vibeke Herbert and Kirstine Theilgaard, I felt I wanted to protect this little family from some of the other images. I did not feel the story should be exhibited alongside photographs of enormous phalluses or series of pictures of women being taken from behind in a backyard. So I got hold of one of the small spaces which Overgaden then had, and screened it off with rice paper out of respect for the people in my pictures. At that time no photo series like this had been made in Denmark, and one day I was contacted by a freelance journalist, Peter Hartung of Venstrepressens Bureau, who had been to see the exhibition with his wife. He had noticed my little secret cathe-dral and wanted to write about it, and so the local newspapers across the country carried an almost full-page article about the exhibition, based on my photographs."