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Saturday, 29 January 2005 |
Ok, I'll jump on a slipery slope for a few entries, because that's a subject that concerns me directly, as an important part of my photography work is made of nude models.
 Art has been showing nude people for a while, now (i'd say roughly a little more than 20 000 years...), and from my understanding of things it was very natural to do so, nudity being associated with all kinds of fertility rituals and deities, usually. Now, at some point in history, nudity started to become a state you are in in private where nobody can see you, otherwise it's improper, shameful, disgisting, perverted, and all kinds of nasty stuff...
Now, nudity in photography, in the age of the internet, has become the most lucrative internet industry, in the form of sexualized nudity. And there is a very strong polarization of nudity towards sexuality, which makes sense up to some point, but which leaves a rather unpleasant stigmata on the models and photographers who try to make artistic use of nudity.
Now, what bugs me is that I have to do the distinction, I have to say I do "artistic" nudes, otherwise, if I say that I do nude photography, the assumption is that I am a pornographer and that I am a vile exploiter of naive young women...
 Now, does that mean that I cannot make images whith a sexual, sensual, erotic charge without being a pornographer ? Does that mean that I'm just another vile exploiter of naive young women because I made an image like this one here ? One of the things I find fascinating is the relationship models have with their images. Sometimes they are pround of them, sometimes they keep it for themselves, sometimes they don't allow me to show them, but one common thing that comes back often is that they don't want their parents to find out... I always find it odd that the people in your family, which are the ones who arguably look the most like you, give or take a few years, are the ones people don't want to shoe their images. And I don't do hardcore erotica, this image is probably the most erotic image i've made, so why are people ashamed of their bodies ?
I know : the media, the church, public pressure, what-will-the-others-think, this kind of thing... I just wish people would start thinking for themselves and realise that we're all born naked and we're all made the same way, and yes naked is beautiful, that's why I take pictures...
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 09 November 2005 )
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