"For a more poetic take on smut, look at the small selection of photos by New Orleans-based Nicholas Syracuse, who shares the walls at Barrister's. Syracuse's technique is cunningly simple: He photographs the highly distorted images of the electronically scrambled, adult cable channel on his television, the grainy stuff you see when you don't pay for the service. No, you can't make out any unmentionable body parts or unspeakable acts; all you see are snowy, wavy close-ups of the actors kissing. Brilliant. Unlike Nitke's dully explicit photos, Syracuse has restored for us the adolescent allure of naughty pictures. Magically, he lets us see what's not there; he lets us experience the magnetism of forbidden sex, without having to witness the embarrassing grunt and grime of it.

What is a purer, more accurate, more penetrating view of contemporary America in general than that which comes through the television screen? When has there ever been a more unified, shared, homogenized American world-view than in the era of Oprah, Jerry and Ricki? Part of Syracuse's theme is the visceral pull of porn, but part of it is also a commentary on the pervasiveness of electronic images in contemporary culture - even when they're not supposed to be there, when the cable company scrambles the signal, they're still there"