Sunday 18 January 2009

"She is not naked as she is...

...she is naked as the spectator sees her."
Ways of seeing - John Berger

I've always liked photography depicting glamorous women etc. Now some may say, THAT'S 'COS YOU'VE BEEN TOLD SINCE A CHILD THAT THAT'S HOW WOMEN ARE MEANT TO LOOK, which fair enough, may be the case. However when I look at these women, they obviously aren't real. It is pretty clear in my head that I would never look like any of these women. Then again, I still have this strange urge to want to make a woman I know personally look "fantastic" like the women "in the media" and make her feel good about herself. Perhaps the distortion of the female mind? Perhaps just the distortion of idolizing fashion photographers! ;]

Of course, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But as I've said so many times, beauty is more the subject of time than the subject of the person looking. I say time, perhaps I mean more the subject of 'mood', we all look at a photo in different ways, but 5 minutes later with different information or more knowledge in something different, we may look at the subject in a different light.

So overall, we see beauty differently because of what we have been exposed to and what our personal preference in design is? I guess I can safely say it goes a lot deeper than that when my head starts buzzing at the thought of it all.

What got me thinking about this today was the fact that I was going through a website and a few nudes came up. I was thinking to myself, "I can definitely see how nudes are art", it's like the minimalist approach to portraiture. Some people call it art, some people call it pornographic. Perhaps that's what you'd call nudes in a "real" situation... an unstaged situation?

Perhaps one could call that bridge between reality (porn) and art (nudes), fetish portraiture. Then again, why couldn't you make fetish photography bridge between nudes and fashion photography. I wonder...

Nudes are almost less offensive and less provocative than most fashion/fetish photography I see these days. With nudes, it's a piece of art, nothing to suggest much. The suggestions are so much more pure, it's not necessarily sex.

When I look at images with parts of the body covered up and then suggestions of others exposed, it's more likely to send the alarm bells in me that someone might be looking over my shoulder judging me, than of say a classic nude model.

How strange our world is.

That brings me I guess to the theme I love so much in traditional paintings of the nude woman dressing, undressing, bathing etc. That unerved feeling that you're watching a woman do something private in the nude. Soft porn perhaps? By their standards I would have thought it to be the extreme, at least publically. My particular favourite is this gorgeous panting by the incredible Henri de Toulouse Lautrec.



Perhaps it's the fact that the man stares at her fixing her corset, fully clothed, even in his hat. To me she is absolutely beautiful, the way he's painted her is exquisite, it would have been so different if it had been a full painting. If I could paint/draw, that is how I would do it. Absolutely fantastic. I drew it once long ago, for a corset project. It took me an hour but it was definitely worth it, I just couldn't bring myself to paint over it.

Referring again to the fantastic book, Ways of Seeing by John Berger, "Nudity is a form of dress." I think that is absolutely true. Why else would I and many others feel at ease drawing from a nude model a couple of metre away from me but have issues with a woman looking between her legs at me on the adults section of the rack of magazines... Yes, Nudity is a dress.

Perhaps you could describe the nude as Black. Black in effect is the absence of colour, black is the darkest tone. Yet black is often described as a colour rather than a tone. So therefore that is how I would begin to describe the concept of the Nude being a dress. The Nude is the absence of clothes, yet it is a form of clothing in the way that we describe women to be "in the nude". So therefore the nude body is infact a piece of clothing, an object as you would.

The difference between being Naked and being Nude could therefore come from being naked and being in the nude. To be naked is a state of being, there is no addition necessary whether it is personality or physical accessory.

As in the "Ways of Seeing", "To be naked is to be without disguise" and "To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for onceself", well describes another difference between the two. There has never been a description of someone leaving one cold and nude, you would describe them cold and naked... Naked and exposed to the world. To be cold and nude would be a level of beauty that is almost impossible. It would have to be staged, no one would leave someone cold and nude, unless the beauty that the one being hurt would shine through the humiliation.

In Porn the object being "sold" is SEX. In Nudes the object being "sold" is BEAUTY.

Another difference between the two, I'm sure a "Nude" porn movie with grace, love and natural beauty would not sell as well as one with the raw nakedness that is sex. So for the purpose of nudes, to be put on a wall as art, I'm sure a still shot from a porn movie would not be the first thing one would put on your wall to show the beauty of the female.

This is a subject, I'm sure thousands of people discuss constantly, and I'm glad it really interests me, so many more things to read on the subject! How exciting! So yes, those are my thoughts for today. :3

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