Pornstar

In 1991, Gittler, a photographer whose work has appeared in such magazines as Vogue and Vanity Fair, set out to produce a cheery coffee-table book chronicling the lives of members of the adult-film business. ""Instead of beloved icons, I would glorify reviled (or at least only secretly admired) ones,"" Gittler writes of his initial intentions. Five years later, however, after meeting many of America's most-prominent Triple-X stars and hearing about their often sordid and depressing personal lives, Gittler changed his tune: his ""one-man crusade to vindicate American sexuality"" left him brimming with pity and moralizing disdain. Many of the stories Gittler has amassed in this episodic account of the lives, politics and everyday preoccupations of porn professionals are indeed depressing. Savannah, a porn actress, is injured in a car accident and then commits suicide. Director John Stagliano learns that he is HIV-positive. The photographs Gittler takes--in studios, apartments, hotel rooms and on the sets of porn shoots--are often highly sexually explicit, although most depict porn stars merely hamming for the camera. Still, one feels that Gittler is a little quick to infer that all sex workers are tragic, lost souls. Though this book purports to be a journalistic portrait of the porn demimonde, there is little rigor or emotional depth to it. Gittler in the end comes off as being both leering and judgmental, blurring the line he attempts to draw between pornography and journalism about pornography. (Sept.)