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02-02-2005 |
What's wrong with this picture ? Nothing important, if you ask me, but other people might think otherwise : this is not an "artistic" nude, strictly speaking. It's just a woman, nude.
 There seems to me no compositional effort to use her body as an achitectural and graphic element. There is no erotic undertone, no explicit or implicit sensuality beyond what you see on the image. It's in color, so the usual excuse of black and white being more artistic cannot be used.
It's just a nude woman. And furthermore she's looking straigt at the camera, and she's smiling. People are not allowed to smile in artistic nudes, people smile in erotic images...
It's just a nude portrait. It's a genre that is not widely used, unfortunately, because of the usual stigmatas of sex associated with nudity. Eye contact in a nude photograph is usually done with sexual intent. Many figure photos don't show the model's face, and some don't even show her head. I've always had a tough time cutting the head off a model, sometimes it works for the image, but sometimes the need to preserve the model's anonymity restricts the images that can be made.
When we shoot I don't know, a tree, or a house, or a city, or a mountain, we don't usually hide or have to hide where it is or what it is. How come we have to hide the identity of a person ? Why is it so hiddeous to pose nude that some people's carrer are in jeopardy if nude images of them are publicized ? Why is it so important for paparazzi to get that one shot of this of that celebrity topless on the beach ? Do I really have to mention the "nipplegate" ?
I know I ask many questions and i don't answer them, because the answer to all those questions is burried into our cultural codes. It's piece of software than contains our religious and cultural beleifs into the fact that nudity is wrong, and therefore should remain anonymous.
Look at this model in the eye, and tell me what's wrong with this picture...
This image is "olympia", a famous painting by Manet. It was really badly received in his day, because of that look the model has in the direction of the viewer, the fact that she seems to be in control, that she's "real"...
The more things change, the more they stay the same... Photography is facing the same issues as painting, as any art form in fact. A painting of a nude is fine as long as it's not too real, people can always imagine that the painter made up someone in their heads and painted using only the images in their heads. An image like this one by Manet, or a photograph, puts you in front of the reality of things : someone was nude in front of the artist for him to produce this image. Someone got naked. And that's the thing that troubles a lot of people... |
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Dernière mise à jour : ( 09-11-2005 )
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