It decorates toilet stall walls, and almost every woman has already had his photo in her inbox: The penis, whether erect or flaccid, whether with a message or not, whether solicited or unsolicited, is one of the most widespread image motifs in the world. The psychologist and publicist Sarah Koldehoff has dedicated herself to the Dick Pic (penis image) as a visual- aesthetic and cultural-anthropological phenomenon. Her essay, published in the series “Digital Image Cultures,” does not spare explicit illustrative material, from the Roman wall graffiti with insulting intent to Robert Mapplethorpe’s iconic “Cock.”
In reading the somewhat academically stilted text, one learns quite a bit: The pictorial representation of the penis is symbolically flexible – it can be perceived as funny, insulting, sexually stimulating or threatening. The openness of interpretation benefits the sender of the image, since he can later claim that it was only a joke, a failed flirt attempt, or a misunderstanding.
The depiction of the vulva or vagina, on the other hand, is always a serious matter. When “PussyPics” are sent with erotic intent, they are often at the request of the (mostly male) recipient; otherwise the message tends to be feminist-empowering, as in Laura Dodsworth’s photo project “Womanhood,” which shows 100 vulvas.
Sarah Koldehoff: „Dick Pics“. Digital Image Cultures. Wagenbach, Berlin 2025, 80 pages,
€9.99
The Dick Pic as an Expression of Patriarchal Power Relations
The depiction of the vulva is not a mass phenomenon, the depiction of the penis is all the more so: In blogs like “Critique My Dick Pic,” the penis image is subjected to aesthetic critique, and the Instagram account “Cocksinthecity” catalogs sightings in public spaces.
Such ironic and playful approaches, of course, cannot obscure what Koldehoff emphasizes: that the Dick Pic is above all a manifestation of patriarchal power relations and largely an imposition on the recipients of the images. Especially for the digital sphere, what Koldehoff clearly states holds: “sexualized violence through images as a method to restore one’s own long-lost masculine dominance.”
The author warns against trivializing Dick Pics – they are often misogynistic threats – or shifting the handling of them onto the (mostly female-identified) recipient. She calls for “a change in the meaning of the penis,” and a “change in the way we talk about sexuality and body parts.”
