Is there--could there ever be--anything new in nude photography?

<p>Everyone seems to say in or about all genres, "[This or that] has been done to death." That is a particularly common remark about the sunset as well as the photographic nude.</p>

<p>Yet, yet, once in a while one does see a photo that does seem to be breaking new ground--again, not just in nude photography. Even so, (warning - NSFW) <a href="/photo/18246738"><em>this one</em></a> inspired me to wonder just what might be just around the corner. And so I ask again, "Is there--could there ever be--anything new in nude photography?"</p>

<p>(Yes, yes, I know that I shall be accused of playing the "nude card" for this posting, but things have been rather slow the last few days.)</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I absolutely believe there can! I don't remember how long ago it was, but a certain photographer shot nudes of models literally drenched head to toe in honey, which quite honestly was something I never would of though in if I has sat in a monastery for a hundred years. It does seem like in order to be original photographers will have to go farther and farther from what is the 'norm' for such photos</p>

<p>Your linked <em>this one</em> looks like she's at the gynecologist waiting for her pap smear. Maybe her face is supposed to be a smirk and not a grimace.</p>

<p>John Coplans tried doing something new, but found no followers that I know of.</p>

<p>Wolfgang Tillmans tries everything. I wish I could find an online version of a guy simply putting his face right up under the standing female nude and staring curiously up into her vagina from two inches away. A nice, honest depiction.</p>

<p>That's new??? Only if someone has been living in a cave (w/ no internet connection).</p>

<p>Yes, there can be.</p>

<p>"New" isn't necessarily going farther from the norm, IMO. When someone stakes out a <em>personal</em> vision of something, the symbiosis between the subject and how the photographer sees and feels about it, especially if genuine, may create something new. Some "new" things look the same as old things on the surface, but when I look beneath the surface, I may discover what's actually new about them. Likewise, plenty of new things that don't have that personal or authentic stake, are new but merely gimmicks. A lot of things that merely go further than the norm do so transparently and self consciously and often fail.</p>

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<p>a certain photographer shot nudes of models literally drenched head to toe in honey, which quite honestly was something I never would of though in if I has sat in a monastery for a hundred years.</p>

 

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<p>I don't know, Spencer. A hundred years is a long time, in or out of a monastery.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Maybe her face is supposed to be a smirk and not a grimace.</p>

 

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<p>Julie, what is striking to me, in looking through the folder, is how she nearly freezes her face throughout nearly the entire sequence. I would actually interpret the look as more detached and impassive than being either a smirk or a grimace. Perhaps it is a self-protective mask, or perhaps her deliberate communication of displeasure. I would not yet call it a smirk, but perhaps that is close enough as a characterization.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>That's new??? Only if someone has been living in a cave (w/ no internet connection). --Steve Mareno</p>

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<p>There are actually some serious considerations relevant to painting and photography here, and I daresay that the issues involved are not as obvious as many persons might think. This video (below) addresses only the orientation of the standing pelvis, but apparently there is a continuum of possible pelvic angles from the standing orientation to the supine orientation. The sitting orientation? The [deliberately slumped] orientation shown in the linked photo? I am not sure, but this is a pretty serious anatomical issue. I am not posting in order to titillate, and I do not think that anything is as obvious about any of this as many persons seem to think.</p>

<p><a href="

[LINK]</a></p>

<p>It was for good reason that Michelangelo studied anatomy.</p>

<p>We can learn something about the "good nude" from analyzing a bad one.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I agree with Fred: of course there could be something new, but what it is I don't know. This question is not really unlike asking whether it is possible to make any new (creatively-speaking) photograph: to which the answer, surely, has be "yes".</p>

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<p>Some "new" things look the same as old things on the surface, but when I look beneath the surface, I may discover what's actually new about them. Likewise, plenty of new things that don't have that personal or authentic stake, are new but merely gimmicks.</p>

 

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<p>Fred, it is that "beneath the surface" aspect which intrigues me in all things. I shoot rather ordinary things day in and day out, but sometimes I feel that I see something new in something that I have shot many times before. Sometimes it is about the light, sometimes the angle, sometimes the weather or season, etc. I don't know that the nude is inherently any different in this regard. </p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>I agree with Fred: of course there could be something new, but what it is I don't know. This question is not really unlike asking whether it is possible to make any new (creatively-speaking) photograph: to which the answer, surely, has be "yes".</p>

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<p>It occurs to me, Robin, that until we see it we often do not know it--imagination being limited (and limiting) on many things. It reminds me of the saying "You don't know what you don't know." One doesn't conceive of the visually new most of the time until it hits one in the face. When I do catch something in one of my own pictures that strikes me as new, it is as often the result of an accident. Other persons with better artistic imaginations can surely do better than that.<br /> <br /> --Lannie</p>

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<p>I don't know that the nude is inherently any different in this regard.</p>

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<p>One difference may be this . . .</p>

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<p>I am not posting in order to titillate</p>

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<p>Making this qualification probably wouldn't have come if you'd posted a picture of a barn. ;-)<br>

<br>

Seriously, though, there are certain subjects that will often come with various qualifications or tinges of something at play. One example is photographers who talk about pix of homeless people, qualifying them with statements of non-exploitation. <br>

<br>

Lannie, yes, I understand what you're saying about seeing something new in things you've shot. Getting the viewer to see it as new is another matter. I remember a POTW of Jack McRitchie's, <a href="/photo-of-the-week-discussion-forum/00RE7f">HERE</a>, that garnered a whole lot of discussion, many finding nothing new in it, many finding a lot to recommend it. <br>

<br>

Knowing Jack's work as I do, whatever new is to be found is revealed more when seeing each photo in the context of his portfolio than looking at each as an individual. I think that's true with a lot of "new" creative stuff. It's usually not a one-off. One Jackson Pollock would not be as "new" as his body of work. One Picasso might just seem grotesque. The body of work built around his vision makes it harder to ignore, more coherent, and more evident as a way of looking at the world rather than just a way to paint a painting.<br>

<br>

When I look through Jack's work, Pollock's, Picasso's (no, Jack, I'm not putting you up there with the great artists of our time and I know you wouldn't want to be put up there), I see coherence and a degree of consistency. When I look through the folder of the nude you linked to, Lannie, I see repetitiveness more than those other qualities.</p>

<p>I agree with Fred, but the point raised by him applies to any form of art, not just the nudes genre. I am asking myself, what makes nude photography so vulnerable to being boring or unoriginal? Is it because nude photography is associated by many (e.g. here at PN) with achieving easy popularity via the erotic or the sexual card. Is it this prejudice that prevents many of us from properly judging nudes and stereotyping them into one category? May be what Fred said applies here. the textures and forms of human genitalia and exposed body (and the associated prejudices?) are so bold, that one may remain fixated at the surface without getting deeper to glean any message that the photographer meant.</p>

<p>I think there is no doubt that the erotic imagination may or may not be engaged in nude or partly nude photography and this adds a powerful factor in our consideration (positive or negative). There is nothing really wrong with appealing to the erotic, but many are suspicious of this reaction as being unsophisticated or "easy". This factor will be absent for photos of most other things.</p>

<p><strong>THE TECHNOLOGY/MECHANICS OF THE NUDE (OR OF EROTICA?)</strong></p>

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<p>I am not posting in order to titillate --LK</p>

<p>Making this qualification probably wouldn't have come if you'd posted a picture of a barn. ;-) --Fred</p>

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<p>I know that this is going to sound fairly ridiculous, but I am indeed intrigued by what makes a photo more revealing (or at least to appear to be revealing), at the same time that I have always been more than a bit both intrigued and puzzled by pelvic angle in the display of--and accessibility of--female genitalia. (How's that for laying one's cards on the table?) In and of itself, that issue has little to do with photography. It is <em>ipso facto</em> about sexuality pure and simple. Matters of basic mechanics lie behind the whole question as to why <a href="/photo/6873633"><em>sex in this position</em></a> is even possible, or why lifting a woman's knee (when standing) makes possible what is almost impossible if one does not do so. I have said that it is about pelvic angle. (I said that in my comment on the linked photo before I started this thread. I was writing about the same topic half a day earlier to another photographer on Photo.net.) Pelvic angle is perhaps really tied to the angle of the legs after all--in which case my analysis in that comment was dead wrong, since I said on that linked photo that it was about the angle of the body pure and simple. But maybe that is all about two sides of the same coin: the angle of the legs to the body, or the angle of the body to the legs (knees to the chest being one limiting extreme). Other "technological" issues present themselves: what happens, for example, when a standing woman bends over? What can be said about the angle of the vaginal canal during all these positional variations? Can a photographer exploit the dynamics of what happens to make a better picture, whether better as erotica or better as beauty or inspiration? At stake in either case is something about the dynamics of the pelvis, which (with the associated muscles) is after all a type of machine. How that is linked to either the angle of the torso or the angle of the legs is my quandary. I won't belabor the technical point any more than I already have, except to say that one sees the results of that machinery in photography even if one has never stopped to analyze it. (I guess that this means that I am not a man of action. Most men would be taking advantage of the situation while I would still be back there analyzing it. Others might yet be fixated on breasts. Others might be gay, etc.)</p>

<p>As for the new versus the repetitive in the photo that I linked, yes, there are two things about that photo and those photos: the photos are all alike in one regard. (They show a lot. Her face is rigid and impassive.) The first one (the linked one) is new for me (or was perceived to be new by me) because I thought that I saw something about the dynamics of the pelvis for the first time. Again, I think that I might have been wrong, but that is neither here nor there, and so I will shut up about it from here on out.</p>

<p>What is obvious is that the degree of revelation ("genital display") does not necessarily make for a more erotic photograph, much less a more beautiful or enticing one. Sometimes less is more, etc. Sometimes the appetite is whetted more by the tease, sometimes some by the blatant <em>de facto</em> statement of availability. (I could get off on a digression involving the issue of seduction, but I will try not to.) In the same way, the "aesthetic appeal" can be turned on or off by such "variables."</p>

<p>What (you ask) does this have to do with the nude as an art form? I guess that the answer to that depends on the extent to which the aesthetics of the nude is about sex. That the nude is not <em>always</em> about sex is obvious enough. (<em>That is not always about the display of genitalia is even more obvious.)</em> That the nude is <em>usually</em> about sex is equally obvious, I think--but sexual interest is hardly always about gazing at genital display. Now, if we are going to try to analyze the nude in terms of what is erotic, then we might need to understand the kind of an applied technology to be used--if we understand in the first place what makes a photo erotic and thus sexually pleasing/interesting to look at in the first place. The "gynecological exam" shot usually does not do it, even for straight guys. Even if it quickly catches one's attention, it just as quickly loses it.</p>

<p>If, on the other hand, there are nobler (than sexual?!) reasons to display the nude than appeals to the prurient interest, well, then, we have a different challenge. There exist romance and spirituality and lust, and how they are differentiated versus mixed up together I have no idea.</p>

<p>I don't know where this is going, so let me simply close this post by saying, "It's complicated."</p>

<p>The interplay of the erotic and the aesthetic in nude photography is always complicated. Sometimes I wish that I had never started these darned threads.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The body view, male or female as a piece of art -- eternal theme. A human, male or female in a lovely pose in attractive surroundings, again, timeless. Seductive poses, expressions of personality, a wicked twinkle in the eye -- yes. Even porn, though it has never been of much interest to me, of course. <br>

Not a gynecological study, not pieces of meat -- people. I just don't think full frontals add much. They haven't had much shock power for several decades at least, Ho, Hum!.<br>

As to something new, as with many things, rediscovery, fresh impression, illusion of the first time. Will know it when it emerges.<br>

Lannie, do you have a license to operate this sort of thread? ;-)</p>

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<p>Lannie, do you have a license to operate this sort of thread? ;-)</p>

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<p>Sandy, I just ask questions, even when I seem to be making assertions: they are always tentative assertions, always potential talking points. I also do a lot of "thinking out loud" in my posts on such matters until the core questions begin to crystallize.</p>

<p>The implicit talking point driving me was never stated explicitly, and I just realized what it was a few minutes ago:</p>

<p><em>Is the display of genitalia the elephant in the room where nude aesthetics is concerned?</em></p>

<p>I do not mean to suggest either that such a display generally does or does not make a photo better as nude art. I do think that what one believes about how the nether realm is hidden or displayed tells a lot about one's "nude aesthetic." My own sarcastic criticism of the nude linked to in the original post gives some indication of my own preference. (My own meanderings in my previous post can also be traced back to what I said in that criticism. My comments above are only intelligible by going back to what I wrote in response to that linked nude.)</p>

<p>I do think that American society and culture are still doing a little dance around the "problem" of full nudity. Allusions to sexuality pure and simple are derivative--but more or less explicit displays of sexuality enter into the mix as well.</p>

<p>I do not see an emerging consensus on these issues, rather more of a continuing divide. My own belief is that, if a nude photo is really good, one almost does not notice whether or not genitalia are visible.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>As stated in the original post, all genre's seem to have been "done to death." Most people picking up a camera are going to find it difficult to not be in the same territory that thousands of other photographers have explored. Nevertheless, some creative individuals do find a distinctive voice that stands out from the masses. The only really interesting nudes I have seen on pnet are Emil Schildt's, seen here: http://www.photo.net/photodb/member-photos?user_id=526277<br>

And Schildt has a whole portfolio of interesting nudes. It can be done.</p>

<p>Steve, over ten years ago Marc Gouguenhem ("Marc G.") wrote me to say that "The only genius on the site is Emil Schildt." That was (and is) to my mind overstatement, but Schildt's work is still among the best nude photography that I have been. He used to have a great biopic as well. I don't know if it is still there or not. I remember it because it reminded me how far American culture is from European culture on such matters.</p>

<p>I just checked. After all these years, it's still here:</p>

<p><a href="/shared/portrait.tcl?user_id=526277">[LINK]</a></p>

<p>For much of the world, nudity just isn't a "big deal."</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Lannie: My own belief is that, if a nude photo is really good, one almost does not notice whether or not genitalia are visible.</p>

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<p>While this may be true of some photos, it is not true for me of others. Why wouldn't it be the case that a viewer might notice genitalia (perhaps because a photographer has visually pointed the viewer in that direction) and might even be utterly titillated by a good photo? You seem to be suggesting that good photos aren't about genitalia as genitalia. Why not? </p>

<p>This sort of goes along with . . .</p>

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<p>Lannie: If, on the other hand, there are nobler (than sexual?!) reasons to display the nude than appeals to the prurient interest, well, then, we have a different challenge. There exist romance and spirituality and lust, and how they are differentiated versus mixed up together I have no idea.</p>

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<p><em>"Nobler (than sexual?!) reasons"?</em> What's less noble about sex than other human activities or reasons? </p>

<p>I don't deny that a pepper can be eaten even when I look at Weston's artistic rendition of it as more than a vegetable to be eaten. I don't deny that a nude can be titillating and/or erotic in addition to a lot of other things when I look at an artistic one.</p>

 

<p>I do notice how frequently male photographers deny the titillation factor of their photography. Just read some of the posts of PN nude photographers who claim to be "artists" who are "above" titillation. Something occurs to me about protesting too much. And denial.</p>

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<p>Lannie:<em> Is the display of genitalia the elephant in the room where nude aesthetics is concerned?</em></p>

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<p>I'd say there are so many elephants in this room that it would be hard to name them all! ;-)<br>

</p>

<p>Fred, my allusion to "nobler" activities was strictly tongue in cheek. What is better or more inspiring than "love"?</p>

<p>As for whether we should or should not be aware of the genitalia in a work of art, I have admittedly overstated the case. I do think, however, that we should reasonably expect to see more work where the fact that genitals are visible is not a factor in evaluating the picture as either indecent or even "inappropriate." I sometimes over-generalize. This is one of those instances.</p>

<p>Elephants in the room? Nudity and sexuality, genitalia, sexual acts, sexual orientation--if it involves sex, there are some who are going to feel uncomfortable. Many of their values are incommensurable with those of others.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

 

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<p>What is better or more inspiring than "love"?</p>

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<p>How'd we go from genitals to love?</p>

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<p>I do think, however, that we should reasonably expect to see more work where the fact that genitals are visible is not a factor in evaluating the picture as either indecent or even "inappropriate."</p>

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<p>I thought we were talking about doing something new with nudes. The question of indecency seems different to me. I generally resist discussions of nudity and sex that so quickly and inevitably seem to lead to discussions of indecency. It just feels off to me. So I'll just sit back for a bit and see where the discussion goes.</p>

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<p>How'd we go from genitals to love?</p>

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<p>Fred, we didn't go from genitals to love. We went from genitals to "love," which is code for "sex."</p>

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<p>I generally resist discussions of nudity and sex that so quickly and inevitably seem to lead to discussions of indecency.</p>

 

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<p>Like it or not, social attitudes about decency and indecency are probably the biggest elephants in the room where discussions of nudity and sexuality are concerned. I'm not legislating morality here. I'm looking for what is authentically human.</p>

<p>My mind is open. I have no agenda as to where the discussion should go from here.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Like it or not, social attitudes about decency and indecency are probably the biggest elephants in the room where discussions of nudity and sexuality are concerned.</p>

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<p>It may be that attitudes about decency and indecency are elephants in the room for you when discussions of nudity come up. I don't find that true for many other people with whom I discuss nude photos.<br>

<br>

I can honestly tell you that I've had gallery shows of my photos, many of which contain nudity, some of which have elements of sexuality, and among the hundreds of viewers at those shows and on PN where my portfolio has been on view for about 10 years, I can't think of too many times anyone has talked about decency and I very, very rarely got the feeling it was an elephant in the room when people have discussed my work with me. I rarely feel it when I'm discussing the work of others as well. I find the question of decency a very specific and somewhat tangential context in which to make photos that include nudity or in which to look at photos that deal with nudity. I'm not saying it's not a valid topic of discussion if and when it comes up, but I am saying it's by no means an elephant in the room for me or for many people with whom I've discussed photographic nudity.</p>

<p>Possibly, one man's elephant is another man's mole -- e.g. mountain / molehill.</p>