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Of course, now that the Backside Photographer is in the public imagination, we have to ask: could he (or she) simply be misunderstood? Is Backside Photography acceptable for either fun or profit?

Let's see if we can learn anything from recent cultural news coverage:

The Strokes' 'Is This It' cover model revealed

'The model whose backside adorns the British cover of The Strokes’ 2001 debut album, ‘Is This It’, had revealed how the famous image came about.

In a new video posted online by influential blog Goldenfiddle, the model explains that the photoshoot was spontaneous, and happened after she came out of the shower of photographer Colin Lane, her then boyfriend, naked.

"I walked out of the shower and I was completely naked," she recalls. "I was walking around the house – he was like, put this glove on. I walked over, boom, that was the shot."

Well, that's perhaps a bit too Spinal Tap for some. But what about serious artists of the kind you read about in The New Yorker? Are they involved in any Backside Photography these days?

REAL NAKED LADIES

Renting a studio at Chelsea Market—“I didn’t want them to have to climb up creepy stairs to some weird place”—and decorating it, like a wedding reception, with lilies and refreshments, Roth shot the women in various states of undress and girl-bonded giddiness. (Coincidentally, there was another shoot taking place at Chelsea Market, requiring an entirely different morphological profile: lingerie models.) Her own backside, distinguished by a birthmark shaped like Cuba, made a cameo in a series of shots she refers to as “the jiggly butt sequence.” But after the terrorist attacks Roth shelved the film. “It just seemed like this frivolous naked-lady project right after 9/11,” she said.

It may be then that Backside Photography is acceptable if the timing is right.

So don't be surprised when the Backside Photographer shows up with a blog, a book, and a show in Chelsea. You just know that's next.