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What makes the nude into a work of art?


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<p>I just realized that I have yet to post a question about nude photography this year. Perhaps I am slipping. Perhaps I am just getting old. Perhaps I have wanted most of all to avoid the sometimes contentious marathon postings that attended my questions about nude photography on this forum in 2009 and 2010. In any case, for the third summer in a row, here goes:</p>

<p>I recently saw this photo while browsing Owen O'Meara's portfolio again after many months:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/13197832</p>

<p>It is hardly a dramatic or spectacular photo. Indeed, some may find it a bit boring, but I found it compelling in a way that I cannot fully describe, much less explain. I would like to be able to explain its appeal for me on this particular July afternoon, but I cannot quite do so.</p>

<p>After analyzing the photo and then writing a few comments on the photo discussion forum, I found myself returning to an ancient question which I then decided to bring to this forum: what is the essential difference between the nude as a piece of trash and the nude as a work of art? I know that one brings one's own interpretation to a photo, and in some cases one brings above all a sense of imagination that sometimes impels one to want to construct a narrative--that which some may even wish to call a fantasy, although I prefer not to think of the artistic imagination as being precisely that.</p>

<p>I chose this unlikely photo not for its brilliance nor for its spectacle, but for its quiet, unpretentious beauty. It has something special, I think, compared to many nudes--even though in some way it seems so perfectly ordinary. Yes, there are many better, even in Owen's own portfolio, but it has for me that certain something, that <em>je ne sais quoi</em> that is so elusive and often very powerful. Perhaps I am simply in the mood for something visually restful and soothing after a long day of writing on politics and ethics. It is hot outside, whereas the setting of the photo is cool. I am harried by deadlines. The "person" represented in the photo seems unharried, at rest. There is much else that I might say about myself in contradistinction to the photo. In other words, I brought and still bring many facts about myself to the viewing and appreciation of this photo. The specifics of the appeal (or lack thereof) of this particular nude for different persons is not the point, however. Regardless of which nude(s) one may trot out to make one's point, the enduring question of a general nature remains: what makes the nude into a work of art? What, that is, makes this or that nude worth viewing among the many thousands of nudes that really are not worth viewing at all?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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The most obvious thing about the photo to me is that, unlike conventional nudes, which seems to be saying "look at this nude", this one tells a story, or at least opens up a mystery. The viewer asks, "What is she doing? Why is she here? What is she looking at? Where are her clothes?"

 

All interesting questions. Four more questions than the typical nude photo asks.

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<p>"Where are her clothes?"</p>

<p>Marc, I had my own little narrative for this one. I imagined her relaxing after a stressful day, or else simply being in full retreat from the world. (The nudity seems almost irrelevant for that narrative, except that the lack of clothing perhaps symbolizes the laying aside of the burdens of so-called "civil society" and all of its hectic rat races.)</p>

<p>I have to confess that the whereabouts of her clothes did not worry me too much. If I were to write my confessions or her biography, however, perhaps the title would have to be <em>Don't Panic: Your Panties Are in My Pocket!</em></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>We like nudes because we respond sexually, duh. The question "what is art" is basically what you are asking. Yah, there are a zillion responses to that one. I find the photo you are referring to is a very boring picture of a lovely young lady. </p>
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<p>Trust.</p>

<p>I don't believe that, but it's the answer this thread is looking for.</p>

<p>Where you're dealing with a viewer who is uneasy about nudity (and sex) and a photographer who is uneasy about nudity (and sex) and a model who is uneasy about nudity (and sex), the mere fact that a pretty picture gets made is a miracle of the beginnings of trust. All parties are so astonished that such trust has happened that they declare the result to be, it <em>must</em> be ... "Art!"</p>

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<p>"We like nudes because we respond sexually, duh."</p>

<p>The problem with this simplistic formulation, Steve, is that we do <em>not</em> always have an overtly sexual response to the nude image. Nor do we typically evaluate a given nude aesthetically by asking, "Is this shot a real turn-on?" (This is not to deny that we may be affected subliminally in our aesthetic judgment by the potential erotic content of a given photographic work, but that is a psychological question that goes beyond my immediate interest in our aesthetic evaluations of the nude. I have no doubt, however, but that this issue may have to resurface if we thrash through these and related questions in sufficient depth. It is not my immediate concern.)</p>

<p>In any case, you have not attempted to answer the question which I have asked. I have not asked, "Why do we <em>like</em> nudes?" I have asked this question: what makes the artistic nude essentially different from the trashy nude?</p>

<p>I have not even, for that matter, asked what makes the artistic nude different from the "non-artistic" nude, which presupposes yet a third category: "failed art" in the sense of "bad art" (badly done work, that is) that just happens to have a nude subject. If I were asking this last question, we would be back, I think, to matters of photographic technique as the primary explanation of what can elevate the nude from the gutter, but that is not at all what I am talking about here. </p>

<p>Trashy nudes can be done with excellent technique and may even meet the common criteria of being well-composed, well-lit, correctly exposed, etc. Trash is still trash. "Failed art" is a separate category of work, whether the subject be nude or not. Cataloging the varieties of trash does not interest me here, either. Those who want to study porn <em>qua</em> porn will have to look elsewhere besides this thread.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>"Trust. I don't believe that, but it's the answer this thread is looking for."</p>

<p>Julie, behind this paradox (of offering an opinion that you immediately deny as being your own) may lie a very profound observation. I won't try to resolve the paradox now, however. Let me go on to your substantive claim:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>All parties are so astonished that such trust has happened that they declare the result to be, it <em>must</em> be ... 'Art!'</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I presume that you are getting into the realm of motives here, for every model who is being photographed nude surely must have in the back of her mind at some point, "Well, he says that it is about art, but, heh, heh, who is he kidding?" Whether models who sat for hours for Michelangelo felt the same way I do not know, but I would not be surprised--in spite of the obvious effort being exercised by the artist in carrying out the artistic project.</p>

<p>It is certain that questions of persons' motives always come to the fore when nude art is concerned. If it were not obviously the case that some truly great paintings are nudes, trying to establish the legitimacy of nude photography as other than rationalized pornography would be even more difficult. Every time that I have raised a question about nude photography (and this makes the third time in my ten long years on Photo.net), some persons (not you) have managed to impugn my motives for even asking the questions. They cannot believe that anything having to do with philosophy, whether about ethics or about (a)esthetics, could possibly delve into the realm of sexuality without being overtly sexually motivated.</p>

<p>When Thomas Nagel of the Princeton University Philosophy Department first addressed philosophical issues about sexuality some decades back, there were those who were quite astonished that philosophical discussion should "stoop so low"--even though such philosophical questions go at least as far back as Socrates. Even the philosophical greats have their motives questioned. Why should such an obscure scholar as myself escape suspicion?</p>

<p>I say "suspicion" because "trust" and "suspicion" seem to go together--as related concepts. They do appear to be opposing concepts, although whether or not they are pure antonyms is a question that I shall sidestep. (The obvious antonym of trust that comes to mind is "distrust.") Thus it has been that my own motives, no less than those of the aspiring photographer of nudes, have perennially been challenged on this forum. Trust is always in short supply whenever anything related to sexuality is at stake. All that I can say from the eminence of sixty-six years on this planet is that there must be easier ways to get a buzz than either shooting nudes or talking about them.</p>

<p>I guess that all of that is my rather back-handed (and long-winded) way of saying that I am not at all sure that issues of trust are at the core, as you seem to be saying. Yet, yet it is quite astonishing, as you suggest, that persons overcome their suspicions and insecurities and manage to go through with a shoot and come out with something that can be so astonishing in its beauty. The analogy of the photographer of nudes with a gynecologist who is simply doing his job comes to mind, given that a certain degree of professional detachment is apparently necessary to do either job. The two types of activity are not really comparable, of course, in spite of the common need for detachment. The artist (whether photographer or painter) cannot totally divorce himself or herself from the erotic potential of the situation, if only because aesthetics and sexuality are surely closely related. Thus the photographer must walk the more perilous tightrope, I think, and the peril that I am speaking of is not potential sexual involvement with the model, but the peril of having the work spoiled somehow by the intrusion of overt sexual motivation into the creative process. (The perils for models who traipse into the wilds for the sake of shots of "the nude in nature" are even more frightening to contemplate--but the same perils are, I presume, always there for undraped women in whatever setting.)</p>

<p>Perhaps those who actually either shoot or model for nude photography can better address your remarks, Julie. I have no experience in either capacity, but I am in awe of the degree of trust that does seem to lie behind all such work. It seems that you have once again cut through the issues as stated to what the real issues just might be after all.</p>

<p>Now let me go back to your paradoxical opening: "I don't believe that, but it's the answer this thread is looking for." Whether it is the answer or not, perhaps it is at the very least the question behind the question.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>There are some people (and the preveiling view in some cultures) that <strong>any</strong> nudity in art is pornographic and evil. This is an extremist view (that I do not share) but it illustrates that the concept of "artisitic nude" is purely <strong>subjective</strong> (on a personal and cultural level.)</p>
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<p>Frank, my own father believed that pornography began with nude sculpture and paintings. I have had acquaintances who believe that all viewing of the body outside of a loving, married relationship or a medical emergency is a sacrilege. What all of these persons have had in common is belief that the body is too sacred to be viewed naked in an artistic context.</p>

<p>In our culture, the persons whom I have known who held to this view have been believers in the literal truth of the Bible. They go back to the book of Genesis and cite the shame of Adam and Eve as recounted in Genesis 3, or the account of Noah being seen naked by his son in Genesis 9:20-29. I respected my father very much, but I could not accept the literal truth of such accounts. I have had no success in any attempt at a rational discussion with biblical inerrantists on certain matters, and the issue of nudity in art is one of those matters.</p>

<p>I was once teaching an introductory course on philosophy when the issue of the Bible's conflict with evolutionary theory came up. One young woman whom I had previously thought of as one of the more progressive students said, "So, you don't believe in the Genesis account of creation?" I rather off-handedly said that I was not sure if a single word from the book of Genesis was historically accurate. The next thing I knew I was summoned to the upper reaches of the academic bureaucracy to explain myself. (This could only happen in the South, I told myself.) No harm came to me as a result of this incident, but it was a reminder that there are those who are so resistant to any other way of seeing things besides appealing to some external source of authority that all attempts to reason with them seem doomed to failure. One can only hope that one can perhaps plant some seed of a dissenting view that might encourage them to reconsider their world views at some point in the future.</p>

<p>When ethical judgments are so visceral and absolute, they seem to trump all attempts to analyze the esthetics of nude photography (or painting or sculpture), whether in the making or in the viewing. The display of the body is thus taboo in nearly all circumstances for such persons, and against the taboo there is apparently no rational argument.</p>

<p>Needless to say, this thread is directed to those who do not share such absolutist judgments. I yet have some grudging respect for those who view the body as too sacred to be viewed in an artistic context, but only because I cannot refute them. I still think that they are wrong, even though in many cases their personal lives have been exemplary and thus worthy of emulation. Therefore I can only say in response to their views, "Well, you just might be right." In fact, of course, the entire issue is extremely complicated. I am equally frightened by those who have libertine views and who seem to be either incapable or unwilling to consider that they, too, might be wrong. What I typically fear, that is, is not the particular opinion being expressed, but the degree of closed-mindedness that goes with it, be it liberal or conservative.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Forgive me for being blunt. The picture is just plain silly and begs for a cute title. I've got a few but I'll try and stay serious. Anyone who wants to remove sexuality from nudity has to understand that the viewer will most likely put it back. The human form as a topic for study is no different than studying geometry. It is just easier to keep the students and instructor interested. The notion of doing a "study" of the classical photographic nude is strongly compelling no doubt. What young artist hasn't talked their sweetheart into posing for a study? <br>

Artists must learn anatomy somehow. Photographers have less of a reason to examine the un-draped figure because virtually anything else (peppers?) offers itself to the light and close inspection with a camera. The naked people photo genre is no better than any other popular art that lacks depth. It may be worse in that the subjects are most often idealized in some absurd way not typical of most humans. There are other reasons besides. <br>

I don't particularly look forward to viewing more thoughtful pictures of most of us in the buff. Irving Penn's <em>Earthly Bodies</em> is the best example of that I have seen. His prints were very satisfying to me in unexpected ways and I was fortunate to see them. </p>

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<p>IMO: Art appreciation, of any type, is subjective. What is good to one person, can be poor to another. On a personal experiential level, there is no right or wrong, no absolute good or bad art, no artistic or trashy. Only from academic, anthropological, and historical perspectives can valid (but still debateable) value judgements be made about works of art, including nudes.</p>

<p>Interesting debate though. One learns more about the debators themselves than the issue debated.</p>

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<p>The same thing that makes a portrait, landscape, street view, architectural, etc. into art. The nude is not exclusive in this sense. Most nudes aspiring to the condition of art are incredibly lame/weak/generic/disconnected/etc.</p>
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<blockquote>

<p>Most nudes aspiring to the condition of art are incredibly lame/weak/generic/disconnected/etc.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Luis is right, and the reason is that they ARE (merely) aspiring to art, which is usually painfully obvious, instead of aspiring to some kind of honesty, which can include that sexual component which most faux artists doing nudes would prefer to deny (as would many viewers viewing them) and which helps make their renderings so false.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p><strong>Landrum Kelly</strong></p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>what is the essential difference between the nude as a piece of trash and the nude as a work of art?</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>In principle the same difference between any other type of photo, which can be a piece of trash or, much more seldom, a work of art.<br>

Your example of Owen O'Meara's work is extremely biased, because Owen is - in my opinion - one of the few original nude artists here.<br>

All the others produce boring photos or just repeat themselves most of the time.</p>

<p><strong>Landrum Kelly</strong></p>

<blockquote><em>Steve, is that we do not always have an overtly sexual response to the nude image</em></blockquote>

<p>Can we define the boundary between the cases where the response is mainly sexual and where not?</p>

<p><strong>Landrum Kelly</strong></p>

<blockquote><em>what makes the artistic nude essentially different from the trashy nude</em>?</blockquote>

<p>The question needs to be qualified better. What is art and what is trash, where is the border? Once we have this qualification we will know, when we look at a nude, if it is art or trash.</p>

<p>Another option could be asking whether the author is considered an artist (or states to be an artist). If this is true, and if the author produces nude photographs, these photographs can be considered art.</p>

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<p>This is what I was getting at earlier: "can you really detach the nude from the sexual response?" and the separate issue of: "what is art anyway, nude or not?" I have seen "trashy" nudes that I thought were quite artful, which complicates the issue further! I personally cannot look at a nude woman in any form of art or trash and not have some level of sexual response. It doesn't take much research even here on photo.net to see that virtually any photo that has some part of a naked woman will have a huge number of views, whether it is any good or not as a photograph, especially compared to even a very well done landscape by the same photographer. <br>

So, I do believe there are photographs with nudes that are"art" and, yes, they do generate some sexual reaction nevertheless. <br>

Are you suggesting that an artfully done nude photograph by definition NOT have any sexual implications? That I think is impossible. So like I said before and what you are asking now is "what is art" which I think is a really gray area to define.</p>

 

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<blockquote>

<p><em>we do not always have an overtly sexual response to the nude image --</em>Landrum Kelly<em><br /></em><br>

Can we define the boundary between the cases where the response is mainly sexual and where not? --Luca A.R.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Luca, I included the word "overtly" deliberately. I suppose that we can define it any way that we please, but I was assuming in saying "overtly sexual response" either some degree of physical arousal or at least intense sexual interest. I was responding to this response to my original question as to what distinguished the artistic nude from other nudes:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>We like nudes because we respond sexually, duh. --Steve Murray.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>As simple as that, eh? I responded that "we do not always have an overtly sexual response to the nude image<em>." </em>In other words, not everyone looks at nudes in order to be sexually stimulated by them. Take the case of a heterosexual woman enjoying looking at a nude photograph of another woman. Take the case of a heterosexual male viewing a female nude for purposes other than overt sexual titillation. The sexual component might always be there. It does not have to dominate the process of aesthetic appreciation, in my opinion. If it does, then either the photo is pornographic or one is using it as <em>de facto</em> pornography.</p>

<p>I will grant that one never knows for sure whether perception of the nude form is operating sexually on the psyche--but (if one is a heterosexual male) the same can be true when viewing photos of women who are clothed as well. Though we certainly do not always know our own motives, I was trying to counter the view that men <em>always</em> look at female nudes simply for the sake of sexual stimulation, which seemed to be Steve's view. To me such statements are annoying reductions that fail to acknowledge that the appreciation of the nude is probably part of a very complex psychological process that I do not fully understand.</p>

<p>There are many who dispute my position, who say that viewing the nude is always about sex pure and simple. I do not doubt that the aesthetic appreciation of the nude form is likely affected by some degree of sexual attraction, but I resist the notion that that must be the primary, much less the dominant, reason that one may enjoy the viewing of the nude. I first broached these issues in May 2009 on a thread titled "The Power and the Glory" on this same forum. In that thread, Gary Woodward (then seventy years old) wrote the following:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>I do not address nudes often. The last nude photography I was involved with, I was the nude. Nevertheless I would love to shoot nudes, both male and female because I feel that the human body is so totally beautiful in not only appearance but also in form and function. I don't for a few very simple reasons. I do not know that I have anything new or unique to say, I would only ape what has gone before or fall prey to the pull of sexuality. The world doesn’t need any more of that; it's well supplied.<br>

One poster mentioned the Weston nudes. Weston had the ability to step away from the adolescent in us all (and believe me Weston was adolescent when it came to women) and capture the image as pure beauty of form often relating the nude to other beautiful forms. After better than a half century of looking at photographs of nudes I believe that there are very, very few men, or women, that can do that.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>What intrigues me about Gary's position is that he was trying to take what I consider to be a reasonable middle ground: yes, sexuality is somehow involved in the aesthetic appreciation of the nude, but we do not have to give in to the "adolescent" impulse to simply enjoy a nude for the sake of the prurient interest and nothing more. His allusion to Weston strikes a resonant chord in me. Yes, of course Weston enjoyed the nude form. Of course the perception of beauty (filtered through his sexual nature) affected his choice of subjects. Even so, he did not succumb--in his published work, at least--to the baser tendencies. I think that I can understand that, having experienced at one time or another the full range of human emotions and motives.</p>

<blockquote>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I will end this already lengthy response by quoting Gary one more time: "I would only ape what has gone before or fall prey to the pull of sexuality. The world doesn’t need any more of that, it's well supplied." In other words, it is one thing to photograph nudes or view nudes as Weston did. It is quite another to allow the sexual drive to debase what can be a wholesome aesthetic exercise. I must say in that regard that I stay away from nude photography for the same reason: I don't have anything new to offer, and I am not sure that my artistic vision would not be driven a bit too strongly by the sexual component. </p>

<p>Perhaps when I am eighty. . . . At sixty-six I might still be too young, too much the adolescent.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

 

<br /></blockquote>

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<p>Thanks, Steve. Your posting came in right before mine (by two minutes, in fact). I hope that my lengthy post in response to Luca addressed your question. Thank you for refining your original statement as well. I have looked at your work, and it is clear that you are a very serious photographer who has no doubt thought about these issues a great deal.</p>

<p>Yes, most people view the nudes on this site (and elsewhere) for sexual enjoyment pure and simple, it seems. I do not think that it has to be so simple. The nude is a complex art form, and the motives of the painter or photographer do not always resonate with all possible viewers, who are going to tend to use the photos for the purposes of the moment. Or, as I said before, there is nothing to prevent great art from being used as simple pornography--and so perhaps the distinction lies less in the work itself than in what we bring to the viewing of it.</p>

<p>In any case, as Fred and others have noted, of course the sexual element is there in the nude--but it can also be there in the clothed form as well. Above all, it is within each of us as viewers. It is possible to view the same work for greatly varying motives. This is complex psychological terrain, and I am no psychologist.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<blockquote>

<p>[The thing that makes a nude into art is] the same thing that makes a portrait, landscape, street view, architectural, etc. into art. --Luis G.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Is it quite so simple, Luis? Of course, there are many commonalities in all great art. Is there yet perhaps something unique about the nude in this regard? I do not know myself. I only have questions at this point.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

 

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<blockquote>

<p>The human form as a topic for study is no different than studying geometry. <br>

--Alan Zinn</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Are you sure, Alan? I am not, but I confess that I know nothing. Please see my post to Luis just above. </p>

<p>As for the Owen O'Meara photo, I have to say that I like it. What is so silly about it?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Fred, admittedly most nudes are, as you say, quite lame and fail to achieve the status of true art. So saying raises the question as to what it is that elevates the nude into true art. You mention honesty as a precondition, which requires that we acknowledge that the sexual factor is surely there in our appreciation of the nude. I guess that I am simply not so sure that it has to be the obvious driving force.</p>

<p>I do think, however, that the mystery of the nude's appeal continues to elude me. While that appeal is related to sexuality, it is surely not reducible to sexuality pure and simple, to the exclusion of all other factors.</p>

<p>All of this brings me back to Julie's early remark about trust. If I read her correctly, the trust between artist and model might be the intriguing and mysterious component for me. Yet, I do not think that that is the only thing, since in some photos the photographer/artist is not so obviously present as when the subject is, for example, staring into the lens.</p>

<p>Here is a case in point:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/3392113</p>

<p>I submit that this image can be appreciated as art regardless of a person's gender or sexual orientation. I am not taunting you on this one, Fred, but perhaps you could give us your honest reaction to the photo.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Nudes cause a reaction because it lays something bare before us, whether we want to see it or not... just like urban grunge and fake blood. But while we can run away from grunge and blood (or at least not have to encounter it all the time), the body is something everybody (pun?) has to live with. The ensuing conflict between a person's physical representation (or transference of that representation) and it's social taboo necessarily provokes a reaction. Thus the answer to whether nude is art or not is also an answer derived from that conflict. Even though the social taboos can be discussed and are subject to debate, the personal feelings and emotions often are not (or cannot be). This makes reaching a consensus as to "whether nude is art" particularly difficult, unlike say landscapes which can be more freely discussed as they might not have as much of a personal component.</p>

<p>Probably nowhere more does the camera look both ways than in nudes, and nowhere more does it leave tell tale signs of the conflict of the personal and the social?</p>

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<p>Indraneel, those are quite profound remarks. I like your pun, too.</p>

<p>Yes, our photos reveal as much about us as photographers as they do about our subjects, regardless of how they are dressed (or not). It was just today that I was thinking of how self-revelatory writing is, even philosophical writing. How much more do our photos allow glimpses into our souls!</p>

<p>Perhaps that is what is behind the human creative instinct: the impulse to reveal something of ourselves, to communicate to others, to say, "Look at this!" In so doing we reveal what we think is worthy of contemplation. In so doing, our simple photographic acts may reveal more about our thoughts than do our many words.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<blockquote>

<p>perhaps you could give us your honest reaction to the photo</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It looks like art, so it's safe. It's consistent with the way the body has long been "artistically" portrayed . . . in a meadow with lutes playing sappy music as an accompaniment. No, it doesn't feel honest to me. It feels well-trodden.</p>

<p>.</p>

<p>_________________________</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Is there yet perhaps something unique about the nude . . . ?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes. [Not talking about the photos you linked to.] Some so-called artists and viewers are uptight about nudity (titillated yet uncomfortable yet also knowing there's something innocent) so they profess it to be "art" (which often just means a superficial beautification) which in their minds makes it acceptable and keeps them from being the pervert they seem to suspect they might be for being drawn to nudity or its sexualization. What's different about nudity? Other subjects don't give so many folks the same kind of pause (which often seems to come from their own moral dilemmas and sexual ambivalence when they see pics of naked human beings). So they subjugate their own sexual charge by reducing the human body to "beautiful" clichés rather than just accepting it for what it is, which is a nude body, with all the sexual, physical, psychological, and spiritual charges that accompany it. No, it's not reducible to sexuality. Of course not. It isn't all 'er nothin'. Neither does the dichotomy "art or trash" do it justice, IMO, because in so many interesting, compelling, and moving photos it hides behind neither.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>A person's gender and/or sexual orientation may have to do with their hormonal response as well as their gut-level response, indeed one's gender or sexual identity can have to do with a lot or a little about their response to a particular nude. Importantly, though, reacting sexually or empathizing with whatever degree of sexual charge may be present doesn't mean the viewer has to get "turned on." That I respond sexually to certain depictions of women doesn't mean I'm necessarily turned on in the same way I would be with sexualized images of men. But it does make me that much more aware of universal sexual stimulants, charges, representations, symbols, and forces.</p>

<p>In a good photo, when there is a sexual charge present, I would expect men and women who are not hung up, gay, straight, bi, and transgender to be able to recognize, accept and (each in their own way) feel it, whether they be stimulated themselves on whatever level, empathetic, turned-off, left with questions, or any other number of responses . . .</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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