Voyeurism in Photography

I was reading this post over at 40 watt about sex in photography and was struck by this question "photography that deals with sex without being voyeuristic? Is that even possible?" When i read it my first reaction was not to answer the question but to ask if it is possible to have photography without voyeurism or rather "Is voyeurism inherent in photography and if so, in what way does it function?"

They word Voyeur comes from the French work voir, "to see," and from the Latin word Videre, also "to see." Here it becomes interesting because apparently there is a semantic debate about whether to see means to wait and see something or to actually take part in the action of sight. Semantics is Semantics however in this situation i believe it becomes important to grasp because if one is lying in wait to see something that is very different from the simple act of sight. Both instances are relevant in photography - one could say that the photographer often lies in wait to see and then capture, we are all familiar with the philosophical musings of the photographer as hunter - and then we have the photographer who "sees" the image and makes it permanent on film (or cv cards).

But what i am really interested in here is not what the photographers relation is as voyeur - without going into detail I will just say its my personal belief that photographers or the act of photographing is not inherently voyeuristic - I am interested in Photography in general but more specifically how the image functions in society. I am therefore led to the question "Is the viewer of a photograph inherently a voyeur?" The answer to this question has interesting implications about photography in general.

I don't have a solid answer, nor do i wish to come up with one... however i feel instinctively that the viewer is a voyeur and for now i will just share some thoughts...

You never know who is looking at photographs... so the viewer of photography is engaging in an act of viewing in which the subject portrayed does not/will not know who is viewing the image of them. yes, it is an inanimate object that the viewer views in reality, but it is of a person whom they have most likely never met and even if they have, most likely were not at the scene in which the photograph was taken and therefore they are a voyeur of the scene portrayed - due to their absence in the consciousness of the person portrayed and their meditation and pleasure (in whatever sense) of the scene/person portrayed.

Desire V. sexuality. so much is wound up with sex in voyeurism but doesn't it just have to do with some sort of desire... from the roots of the word, there is no relation to sex, but maybe we have an inherent desire to see?

Identify or objectify. to objectify is to be a voyeur as to be an object is necessarily a perception of one or nore of the senses and to identify is to view in a way that one understand what is happening in the imagery due to personal experience which is objectification plus.... and that plus makes it non voyeuristic (unless the identification is identifying with a certain voyeurism)

OK and lastly, i will leave with a quote from Thomas Pynchon's book V.

“V. needed her fetish, Melanie a mirror, temporary peace, another to watch her have pleasure… An adolescent girl whose existence is so visual observes in a mirror her double; the double becomes a voyeur…. But such was her rapture at Melanie’s having sought and found her own identity in her and in the mirrors soulless gleam…”

any thoughts? lemme know what you think about the matter...