''Private'' is a

pornographic magazine Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult, sex or top-shelf magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is ...

published by the Swedish publisher and distributor Private Media Group. The magazine is known for its combination of high-quality photography and depiction of sex acts typical of hardcore pornography such as anal sex, an innovation at the time of its creation. The American pornographer

Al Goldstein Alvin "Al" Goldstein (January 10, 1936December 19, 2013) was an American pornographer. He is known for helping normalize hardcore pornography in the United States. Background Goldstein was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to a Jewish family. He ...

described it as " hebest porno magazine in the world". The magazine was created in 1965 by the Swedish photographer Berth Milton Sr., who initially included his pornographic photographs in erotic magazines, which he distributed in his bookshop in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

. He sold the first issues of his magazine himself to newspaper kiosks, since there was no distribution for such magazines. After the 1966

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

decision ''

Memoirs v. Massachusetts ''Memoirs v. Massachusetts'', 383 U.S. 413 (1966), was the United States Supreme Court decision that attempted to clarify a holding regarding obscenity made a decade earlier in ''Roth v. United States'' (1957). Since the ''Roth'' ruling, to ...

'', the

prohibition of pornography in the United States United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to pornography, as well as issues of freedom of speech and of the press, otherw ...

was questioned for the first time. The magazine, previously

distributed under the counter Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...

in the United States, has since been sold openly there and, from its ninth issue, is considered the United States' first legally distributed pornographic magazine. Since the mid-1980s, Private has been published in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

, Spain, which was the second largest market for pornographic products after Germany. The magazine became the best-selling pornographic magazine in the world, before losing importance in the course of the

digitalization of pornography Internet pornography is any pornography that is accessible over the internet, primarily via websites, FTP servers peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups. The availability of widespread public access to the World Wide Web in late 1990s ...

in the 1990s. Private Media Group was founded in 1991 by Berth Milton Jr. who extended the ''Private'' brand by adding web offerings to the portfolio, expanded video production and successfully took the company public. The magazine ''Private'', which forms the cornerstone of the company, continues to this day. The erotic art book publisher

Taschen Taschen is a luxury art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. As of January 2017, Taschen is co-managed by Benedikt and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen. History The company began as Taschen Comics, pu ...

has published two collections, each in five volumes, featuring photographic works published in ''Private'' in the 1970s and 1980s.Dian Hanson: ''Private 1970-1979''. Taschen, Köln 2009, ISBN 3822845086 & ''Private 1980-1989''. Taschen, Köln 2009, ISBN 3822845094.

References

{{reflist Pornographic magazines 1965 establishments in Sweden Bi-monthly magazines