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The Power and the Glory


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<blockquote>

<p>"[T]he same analysis applied to a cockroach simply would not be of interest--and the reason is very simple: there is precious little beauty in the cockroach, and that is putting it mildly. Is that simply because I am hard-wired to be attracted to the woman, or is it because of some objective criterion (or criteria) of beauty in the one case but not the other? I do not know."</p>

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<p>Well, my own words implicitly raise the question as to whether or not [straight] women are driven by the same considerations as [straight] men in viewing the female form. After all, if it is only about lust and sensuality, then men's attitudes toward the artistic nude (and not just nudes in general) ought to be very different from those of women, but are they?</p>

<p>The following thread on this same forum almost two years ago attempted to address that question:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00LH88</p>

<p>I think that the question remains open. No decisive answer was obvious (to me, at least) from that thread.</p>

<p>Applying the same question to the issue of the <em>public</em> nude might yield differing results, but I am not sure. Until women weigh in on this thread, I am not sure how we can know whether women respond differently from men to the public nude.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

 

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<p>As it stands now on this planet every human being, male and female, has been born from a female one. There are variations in perseptions but the hard wired is hard wired. The memories of comforts and terrors of the first home are deep imbeded and probably impossible to get rid of.</p>
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<blockquote>

<p>"I am hard-wired to be attracted to the woman"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I left for a day or two and the photographic examples haven't substantially changed. Though you are analyzing some differences between the two Peri nudes you've most recently posted, you are operating within a very narrow and limited range of both the nude and the public nude. That, to me, is evident in your writing and in your very homogeneous choice of examples. To me, this is much less about what you're hard-wired for and much more about your taste.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"whether or not [straight] women are driven by the same considerations as [straight] men in viewing the female form."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>[straight] Men are no more monolithic in their reactions than are [straight] women. Just look at the variety of reactions by men on this thread. Again, it will be more about taste and personal reaction than about Ideas, Universals, and Hard-wired mechanisms.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Femininity"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>. . . is a title Pnina has stuck onto her photo of a drawing of a nude female. There is a distinction between femininity and femaleness. Femininity is a much wider concept, including qualities and behaviors judged by a particular culture to be ideally associated with women. To photographically explore femininity, one would have to visually show something about cultural conceptions of womanhood, etc., not simply show a nude woman and then call it "femininity." The honest title here would be "nude woman." "Femininity" deceptively conflates what we're seeing, a nude woman, with a different concept which has not been illustrated. Were Pnina to show, as one of many possible examples, women in various so-called feminine poses, exhibiting perhaps exaggerated "womanly" traits, or were Pnina to include men who might be considered to exhibit feminine traits, she could legitimately claim her title. But, as it stands, the title is simply an easy way to get us to think there is a certain significance to her drawing that there is not, other than in her own mind. (Which is not to say her drawing isn't a nice one. She has actually detracted from it by making it seem that it is what it is not.) It is a "meaningful" title, not something she is showing in the photo itself.</p>

<p>Similar points were made by others regarding the supposed "freedom" in the examples you've posted and also regarding "power" and "glory." These concepts are being superimposed onto the photos from without. Obviously, we will all read into a photo or work of art many things personal to ourselves. Art is there not just to show but to stimulate. Nevertheless, I've always appreciated how much projection we're doing when it comes to viewing photos and artworks and I think there is usually a difference between what we can derive when we stick to what the image itself is giving us vs. when we add to that image our own stuff. Especially from the perspective of the photographer (rather than viewer), it is good to keep in mind what we are actually expressing, visually, in our photographs and not confuse that with what we would like to say or with concepts and emotions we can add to our photographs with artistic statements and words. I am much more inclined to respond to a photograph that speaks to me itself rather than one that hits me over the head with a "significant" title or summary. When the "Idea" dwarfs the visualization before me, I usually move on. With your posts and examples, I keep getting the feeling that the Idea is more important than the photo before you. I don't think even a philosophical approach to photographs has to be that way.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>So, Fred, your position is that my aesthetic preference for the female form over that of the cockroach is simply a "matter of taste". . . .</p>

<p>Surely we are talking past each other here. This sometimes happens when persons quote each other out of context. (See post I made at 12:28 a.m.)</p>

<p>I cannot quite figure out what ax you are trying to grind in your last post. I am not saying that you are obscure, simply that I do not follow you.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>I don't care much about cockroaches. The examples you're choosing in discussing the nude and the way you've talked about the nude are matters of taste. They express a very limited and personal aspect of a much wider subject.</p>

<p>As for preferring photos of nude women to cockroaches or beautiful sunsets, are you suggesting that Ian's hard-wiring is misfiring, since he's a heterosexual male as well? If you want to make the case that all taste is hard-wired it would be an interesting but different discussion. But using "taste" in the way it is normally used, I think all of what you're talking about in this thread is your taste and personal perspective and nothing more.</p>

<p>We must make sure not to confuse a predilection for nude women with a predilection for photos of nude women!</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<blockquote>

<p>The examples you're choosing in discussing the nude and the way you've talked about the nude are matters of taste. --Fred Goldsmith</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The examples I have chosen have been determined primarily by what I have been able to find. There is precious little that comes up on Google for "public nude"--except porn, and I have no intention of going down that road.</p>

<p>I posted the last two Peri pictures not because they are the best possible exemplars, but because I stumbled across them just minutes before writing that post. ( Peri's best pictures have been made in private, in my opinion.)</p>

<p>The best examples I have found so far on this site (for the issue in question: public nudes) are those by Brian Grossman and Yuri Bonder. If someone has others that are better examples, I would like to see them before commenting.</p>

<p>There just are not many street shots of nudes that are worthy of comment, in my opinion.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Sorry, Lannie, just saw the rest of your post from 11:44. At first I only saw the first line.</p>

<p>What I'm getting at is that there is a narrow and religious focus, as I perceive it, to both your words and your examples on this subject. Yet you seem often to universalize those and I continually get the feeling that you see qualities of power, glory, worshipfulness, and sacredness as inherent in nudes. If you are just, in fact, questioning and not giving your own opinions you keep limiting your questions and examples to those specific qualities, which is odd. I am responding by saying that what you seem to be doing is simply stating your tastes (though you are couching those tastes in more universal terms for some reason) and choosing examples that very narrowly define the subject. You are also projecting universal ideas onto nudes and public nudes much as Pnina has projected the concept of femininity onto the nude woman she drew.</p>

<p>One of the definitions of "glory" in my on line dictionary is <em>worshipful praise; adoring thanksgiving</em>.</p>

<p>I tend to react argumentatively when I sense worshipful tendencies or motivations. "Glory" deifies the nude in my mind. For me, the body's uniqueness as a subject for art is because we are our bodies. Bodies are not something we have. That dichotomy no longer works. The intimacy of body to our identities as well as the history of separating mind and body, of tending to elevate the spiritual above the physical, all make "body" a fascinating study. Certainly, cultural considerations of vulnerability, of why we hide our bodies with clothes, what it says to remove your clothes in a public space where it would be unanticipated are all interesting aspects of the subject. But all those considerations still keep the subject at a distance and don't start approaching our intimate relationship with our bodies and the bodies of others. Bodies look and feel a certain way. We may want to remove them from clothing in order to expose grand ideas and cultural breakthroughs. And we may want to remove them from clothing to look at them and feel them. <!--EndFragment--></p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>This is boomeranging way off topic, but somehow coming back to it. I'm throwing this out as an example of the range of ideas of sexiness/common beauty and what happens when men have to do the attracting. In this famous example, in the Woodabe tribe, gender roles are reversed, and male beauty is emphasized by the whiteness of the teeth and the eyes (among many other parameters). The male hopefuls line up before hundreds of interested women at a festival, and perform a sexy dance that reveals their beauty, dancing ability, etc., hoping their 'togu', (personal magnetism), will attract the ladies.</p>

<p>It is curious how "feminine" they look through the lens of our culture while doing this. Although these two pictures do not show it, they are dressed in finery, and engage in an alluring set of facial expressions, rolling their eyes and manically smiling (to to show off the whites of their eyes and pearlies). In this culture, which is Islamic, men can have up to four wives, but any woman is entitled to have an affair if she can hook up with a "prettier" man, in order to have more beautiful children.</p>

<p>http://pulseplanet.nationalgeographic.com/ax/features/0900/1_01.html</p>

<p> It says something about the rules of attraction, and seems obliquely germane to this thread.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>There are a lot of issues in that post, Fred. We could go off on many possible tangents here.</p>

<p>In order to avoid that, let me simply say that matters of taste are certainly involved if I say that I prefer Brian Grossman's or Yuri Bonder's work to documentaries of the "Bay to Breakers" event or the biker rally or streakers on university campuses--all interesting in their own way, but not what I had in mind when I started this thread.</p>

<p>Yes, all of those are about life, but I prefer the ones that are not so much documentaries as art, or at least attempts at art, especially as art can be used to convey an idea (or an ideal, utopian or otherwise). Perhaps I do indeed wish to distance myself a bit from "the figure in the photo." After all, the image is not the person, and I do not know the person in any case, so that "[removing] them from clothing to look at them and feel them" (your last line above) is not on my agenda when I post on the issues at hand.</p>

<p>So, yes, my tastes <em>qua </em> preferences have been manifested in the distance that the artistic nude allows. Perhaps I feel safer there, that is, with the artistic nude, idealized though it may be. Perhaps I am insulated from the rawest manifestation of sexuality in my preferences. Although nudity and sexuality are difficult to factor out both in reality and in photographs of reality, I think that we do well to try to factor them out for analytical purposes, no matter how many persons will insist that those who view or comment on nudes are simply out for an excuse to peruse porn.</p>

<p>There are a lot of facets to the issues we have raised over the last ten days. We shall never exhaust them, and certainly not on this thread.</p>

<p>I still think that the attempt was worthy.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>There are lots of art nudes that are very different from the style, expression, and message of the ones you've posted. I've tried to provide McGinley as only one of many alternative visions. Goldin is another. There's a lot of other examples of art nudes before we get to the Bay to Breakers run. Talk of why you've picked Peri over biker sex parties is not a matter of taste, it's a matter of completely different dimensions, apples and oranges. Taste, to me, is why you continue to pick Peri over McGinley or many other artists who tell such different nude stories.</p>
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<p>While Googling something else, I came upon this passage from the extremely controversial "Gospel According to Thomas," which some believe to have some historical accuracy. (I am certainly not claiming that.)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Here, in words but not photos or drawings, we have a <em>representation</em> of a societal ideal couched in religious language. Although orthodox Christians tend to consider such teachings to be heretical and even "blasphemous," it is interesting nonetheless that there should be documents of this sort linked to (but excluded from) the official Christian tradition. "Authorized" versions of the Bible exclude the gospel according to Thomas, of course, but the challenge is "out there" in whatever sense "out there" may mean.</p>

<p>The challenge in this particular case is there not in a photo nor in a street demonstration, but in a kind of claim that one must become innocent and unselfconscious "like a child" in yet another sense of "like a child" than the one attributed to Jesus in the New Testament of traditional Christianity.</p>

<p>This "artistic challenge" (assuming it to be a fabrication in some sense) comes not from painters or photographers or sculptors--but from a wordsmith, a writer.</p>

<p>I suspect that many nudists are making the same challenge to the established order, as are the nude participants in the Bay to Breakers event.</p>

<p>Luis, thank you for the information and the link.</p>

<p>Keep them coming, guys. At this rate I can collect enough material to build a book out of this idea. Whatever might or might not be its merits, it would surely sell better than the last one I published.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Fred, I am not picking Peri over McGinley. I see Goldin and McGinley as artists who are working with or from documentaries--of a sort.</p>

<p>If you find in them a way to convey an idea, then more power to you. The fact that I do not make reference to them does not mean that I am denigrating them. They, too, are "apples and oranges" when compared to other types of artistic approaches.</p>

<p>Let us not forget Jim Phelps in all of these discussions. Phelps' "method" is somewhere between that of Peri and Grossman. Gosh, this is complicated territory, Fred. Please rest assured that I am grateful to you for having introduced the links that you have.</p>

<p>Now tell us what they mean to you besides being "affirmations of life," and I will get even more interested in them.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Landrum, here's <a href="http://www.thespencertunickexperience.org/">a link</a> which seems to be story's from the people involved in Spencer Tunick mass public nude photographs. I and several others have mentioned him before, as an obvious example other then the examples in photo.net which you showed, but you didn't responded to the mentioning of Spencer Tunick. What do you think of his work ?</p>

<p>If you're really interested in this public nude thing, you might want to explore Tunick's work, and all the positive / negative what's been said about it, further. Spencer Tunick also did single public nude shoots. I remember a documentary where he approached people ( strangers ) on the street, asking them to pose for him nude, right there on the spot. That's bold.</p>

<p>But as I've said, I favor the Brandt, Weston, or Ralph Gibson,....etc, approach to the female nude. Those photographs seem to be more philosophical, less sociological...</p>

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<p>Lannie--</p>

<p>Perhaps you missed this post of mine above (May 17, 10:39 a.m.). I've copied it here. I hope this is not what you're reducing to "affirmations of life":</p>

<p>Sometimes, but regarding the nudes I posted, not really. The appeal of the photos I posted is that they are physical and sensual (sensual, meaning senses, not erotic). Early on in the thread, you talked about the photos you posted as conveying Ideas. McGinley's photos, I think, are full of pleasure and personality (the photographer's and the subject's), not ideas or ideals and not Being but rather living and experiencing. A simple difference is that most of McGinley's people are on the move (and not just walking for the camera but really active and in play / at play), exuberant and in the moment. There is an immediacy in McGinley's work that is compelling. These are not nudes on pedestals! To me, the nude on the pedestal (or Victorian carpeted staircase), no matter if there's some practical risk of getting caught in your apartment building by a neighbor or out on a Park Avenue Street, makes it safe. You see the public nudes you posted as addressing risks. It's not the risk of getting caught photographing a nude in public that interests me terribly much. There are much more personal risks than that. This is my take on the distinction the poem you posted is trying to make. I might say that the great thing about McGinley's photos is that they are of people who are naked, rather than being "nudes." When a nude is about an Idea, to me, it makes it more safe and more removed. The "nude" is trying too hard and self consciously to be "bold" (the word used in the poem). When a naked person in a photo simply feels like him or herself, I can <em >connect with</em> the moment instead of <em >looking at</em> or just <em >thinking about</em>. There is a youthful innocence in McGinley's naked people. They are not universal, but are more contemporary and express more about individuals than larger concepts. So I can visually touch them. That, more than some Idea, is boldness.</p>

<p>"visually touch" in the penultimate sentence above is a key for me. It's about body; senses; physical. It's photographs. It's VISUAL.</p>

<p>I hope to have some further links later today or tonight.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I may have given the impression in the above post that the combination of nude and Idea doesn't work for me, and I'd like to make sure not to give that impression. There are many Ideas that can be conveyed through nude photographs, public and private, not all having to do with power and glory.</p>

<p>We should clarify a little about "power." There is a sense in which we would want to talk about the "power" of any photograph, even ones that aren't about someone powerful or someone dominating or someone of strength. Subtlety can have power. The unpowerful can be powerfully represented or expressed. So, my feeling is that public nudes don't have to be about power, don't have to be about the power of being nude when nudity is not expected, don't have to be about the power gained by the model who is nude. Yet even if not about such power, they can be powerful photographs. There is, I think, something powerful about the naked body and especially about our reactions to them, even when they are not about powerful concepts such as Freedom, Power, Glory.</p>

<p>I just saw an exhibit at the Met here in NY (where I am for a vacation) of the paintings of Francis Bacon. The word "transgressive" comes up with respect to Bacon. Public nudes can be transgressive without being terribly glorious and without conveying a sense of power. I found some of Bacon's nudes conveying to me a real sense of powerlessness (and loss). Yet they are quite powerful pieces. I hope my uses of "power" are making some sense. </p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><a href="http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=4480">http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=4480</a><br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.artdaily.com/imagenes/2008/02/07/FrancisBaconTript.jpg">http://www.artdaily.com/imagenes/2008/02/07/FrancisBaconTript.jpg</a></p>

<p>As a real alternative to the public nudes you've been posting, Lannie, google "Mapplethorpe pissing photos." I don't want to link them because they may violate PN policy. They are not for the faint of heart. But I think they serve as a good alternative to the types of photos you've focused on as examples in this thread. I am not suggesting viewing them simply to be sensationalist or provocative. I'm quite serious about wanting to present an alternative to "glorious" public nudes that should be taken quite seriously from a photographer whose work is not my favorite, though I think it significant, but who at least deserves our attention.</p>

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<blockquote>

<p>"The examples I have chosen have been determined primarily by what I have been able to find. There is precious little that comes up on Google for "public nude"--except porn, and I have no intention of going down that road."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Wow, really? There is so much public nude photography which I can recall and the vast majority of it doesn't align very well with the examples you have cited. I think a great deal of alternative public nude photography has been mentioned by other already. I'm not sure why those examples don't seem to count?</p>

<p>Particularly, I don't see how the documentary qualities of Goldin's work or the pseudo-documentary qualities of McGinley's work (the photos referenced feature a cast of hired models on a pre-planned cross-country shoot – <strong>more about this below</strong> ) make them distinct from this discussion. Are they not public nudes?</p>

<p>Why is this an apple and oranges comparison to Peri or Grossman? Why does their documentary quality make them any less a work of art or any less a reasonable example of the public nude genre? It really seems like you are holding their documentary qualities against them – sperating them from the "true" art. <em><strong>Surely this isn't your intent</strong> .</em></p>

<p>The number of documentary photographs that rise to the highest levels of artistic achievement is unfathomable. Magnum even hosted an entire fesival in 2007 devoted to: "Celebrating the Art of Documentary" (both film and photos).</p>

<p>Is Henri Cartier Bresson's work not art? How about Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother? How about Brassai, Walken Evans, Mary Ellen Mark, Steve McCurry (of the NG "Afgan Girl" fame), Salgado, Martin Parr, Atget, Winogrand – are they not/can they not be artists just as much as any other photographer is? Where would we draw the line? Is Eggleston art or documentary? How about, Stephen Shore, or Jeff Brouws – particularly his readymades series, or even Sally Mann?</p>

<p>Art and documentary have been crossed forever. Think of Goya's masterpiece: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_of_May_1808">The Third of May 1808</a> .</p>

<p>Instead, is it not the case that <strong>the very fact that they seem so different</strong> from John Peri or Jim Phelps' photographs is the proof that those Peri and Phelps images <strong>are but a small sliver of a much wider genre.</strong></p>

<p>Spencer Tunick's images offer yet another enitrely different use of the public nude. As did my mentioning of Wynn Bullock's work earlier. Fred's recent example from Mapplethorpe's work is another exellent example of a very different use of the nude in public genre.</p>

<p>***</p>

<p>As an aside, for a while in this thread my mind had turned to a number of photogrpahs that turn out to not fit the category but to come very close. First among these was Mapplethorpe's work. But, so many of the examples that seem 'public' in my mind turned out not to have that quality in them when I went to re-visit them – e.g. Helmut and Brooks '78, or Man in Polyester Suit.</p>

<p>So, I thank you Fred for finding a Mapplethorpe with a truly and unequivocally public nude quality.</p>

<p>I also recalled Kohei Yoshiyuki's work – but in all the images the subject are clothed from the camera's perspective). I then thought of Jan Saudek's recent images – many are staged <em>as if</em> they were public. But, they are not.</p>

<p>***</p>

<p>Lastly, On McGinley:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The inspirational images for the project were culled from the kinds of amateur photography that appeared in nudist magazines during the 60s and early 70s. McGinley would sit with his models and look through all of the ephemera of the period that he had collected, discussing with them the mood that he was hoping to capture that day. McGinley had chosen a very specific itinerary that would bring his troop through the incredible range of landscapes that are available across the US and carefully planned a battery of activities, sometimes orchestrating the use of special effects. He has always been quite fond of fireworks and fog machines and in this new work they play a major role.<br /> <br /> <strong>The very artificial constructedness</strong> of the project allows for situations in which the models can both perform and be caught off guard. The resultant pictures of nude young men and women playing and living in the great outdoors are innocent yet erotic, casual yet calculated.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>From: <a href="http://www.teamgal.com/artists/ryan_mc_ginley/exhibitions/131">http://www.teamgal.com/artists/ryan_mc_ginley/exhibitions/131</a></p>

 

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<p>Here is John Peri's latest. You can decide if this meets the criteria or not:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/9227112</p>

<p>How public is this? There is certainly at least the appearance of being in public, but, since Peri is always concerned about the welfare of his models, I doubt that there was really much chance that this was particularly visible outside of a very limited area--or for a very long period of time.</p>

<p>The same might be said for works by many of the others already mentioned, of course.</p>

<p>It appears that we are now back to issues of the definition of "public nude" with which we started the discussion eleven days ago. I am certainly open to refining (or even redefining) the categories. As has been noted, the works by Goldin and McGinley raise substantial issues about sub-genres in the larger genre of the public nude--clearly a more difficult and complex concept than I realized when I started this thread.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<blockquote>

<p>"I'm actually learning something on this thread."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What have you learned that you can express without posting yet another John Peri nude?</p>

<p>Where's the inquisitiveness I'd expect from a fellow philosopher to go out and find examples of the wide array of expressions of public nudity that have been referenced by others on this thread, either seeking out some of the many names that have been mentioned or finding some new ones of your own?</p>

<p>Glory and worship, indeed!</p>

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<p>And you offered Mapplethorpe's urination series. . . .</p>

<p>Where is the glory in <em>that</em> ? Where, for that matter, is the <em>art </em> in that?</p>

<p>I posted the one by Peri because it is the first full outdoor nude by him that I am aware of, not because I think that it is his best work. (It is also his most recent posting.)</p>

<p>Perhaps you could bring all of your philosophical powers to bear by explaining to us why the Mapplethorpe series you offered is more than simple "shock porn"--or should I say "schlock porn"?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>There IS no glory in the Mapplethorpe. That's the point. It's an example of a public nude that questions your premise, which is what many of us have been doing all along.</p>

<p>As for art, you've limited yourself to pretty bodies shot in pretty ways with all kinds of concerns about respect for models and risk of being caught by neighbors, all of which has little to do with art in my mind. My art world happily includes even guys pissing, as well as crosses in jars of urine, urinals in museums, album covers with real zippers on manufactured flies of bulging jeans crotches, and also glorious images of the Mother and Child, David, and the Crucifixion, beautiful haystacks and water lilies, sublime starry nights and views of Toledo, and horrific images of war and death.</p>

<p>If this thread ultimately comes down to the difference in public nudity between a John Peri nude shot inside a public corridor and a John Peri nude shot with a long coat on a city street and a John Peri nude shot with just high heels on a rooftop, with a splash of John Peri's relationships with his models and concern for their well being, then it's of value only as a study of the works of John Peri. There's nothing at all wrong with studying in depth a photographer. But why you would claim to be studying an entire genre or subject matter is beyond me?</p>

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<blockquote>

<p>. . . with all kinds of concerns about respect for models and risk of being caught by neighbors.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You're darn right. The point of creating art is not to create a public incident that hurts anyone.</p>

<p>Yes, I am "into" beauty. I look at much art that is not beautiful, but, when it comes to the "glory" of the human form, I see no glory in bodily secretions.</p>

<p>My premise has <em>never </em> been that the public nude is always beautiful. Indeed, I have to give some grudging respect to those who, from religious beliefs or otherwise, find the public nude patently <em>offensive</em> . I do not find it so, but I have some respect for those who do, if only because of their belief that the human body is too sacred to be displayed in public.</p>

<p>Perhaps it is!</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Mapplethorpe's work is art for the two reasons that anything is art:</p>

<ol>

<li>He intended his images to be art.</li>

<li>He found an audience for his photographs as artwork.</li>

</ol>

<p>That is all that matters. That makes it art.</p>

<p>The fact that the audience for his work is very large and includes notable public art institutions such as the Tate Modern is what helps to cement its reputation as art for all posterity. Moreover, that reputation as art has became firmly enough cemented to ward off legal attempts to define it as otherwise by prosecutors in Ohio and England.</p>

<p> </p>

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