Normalising Nudity – Powerful Photo Series
Don’t panic, I’m not about to strip off but I was intrigued by this article in the Mail Online today. A new photography project featuring naked Mormon women ‘hopes to shed light on the religion’s strict codes of modesty’. Well that’s what the blurb says and I wonder if it’s true. I think images of naked women, at least ‘natural images’ have always and will continue to be controversial in society, whatever religion has to say about it. Not that I agree, I think it’s almost a preconceived notion.
Take a look at the article and images and let me know your thoughts…
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
2 Comments
Jennifer Sharpe
Yes indeed I agree – a woman’s body unclothed and on public display will always be controversial – particularly in societies where the only women who are publicly naked are not considered “good” women.
Ironically, I am reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and there is a passage in the book where a Somali man talks about the fact that before women covered up, no one thought much of an elbow or a knee. But when they started to cover, a neck (for example)suddenly became extremely erotic. In other words, in cultures where women are clothed, and nudity outside of a private area is not normal, a state of nudity is extremely taboo and provokes the strongest primal feelings – perhaps much more than it would otherwise be in a culture where nudity is the norm. I’m referring to nudist camps here.
How does nudity work with art in clothed societies? With a lot of guts on the part of the model and artist, and an insistence to fight against charges of obscenity from people who cannot control their sexual urges very well nor separate them from what is normal, natural, and beautiful. I don’t think it’s a war that will ever be won, honestly, as we will never go back to a place where nudity for both sexes is not a big deal. We’ve had too many centuries of clothing. But that doesn’t mean that artists should give up – it’s one of the important roles of the artist to mirror back to us what we can’t see well on our own, and make us at least think about and question ourselves and our ways. Lack of clothing equalizes everyone and brings home the fact that first and foremost we are creatures of the earth like everything else (i.e. not purely spiritual beings), despite all our attempts to ignore that fact, despise it and wage war on it with every excuse in the book.
Jennifer Sharpe
*correction* – WASN’T referring to nudist camps – but ancient societies where clothing is minimal.
Sheesh editing… 🙂