Those Stieglitz images of O’Keeffe have always been high on my list of wonderful images.
It was a revelation to me once upon a time to come to the realization that all art is a view of the world as filtered through the artists mind. It’s the view through the artist that inherently produces the art to me. How it is represented could by a myriad of ways - painting, photography, writing, or more. They all end up being a means for connecting to another human being (or representing ourselves by making our own little marks - even if they are never to be seen by someone else).
I love seeing how others see things. Sometimes they might be nude women. I try to keep my interactions and consumption to those that are providing something of value to me or my sense of aesthetics. As such, images like Stieglitz’s speak volumes to me and can wrap me up every time I study it. The commercialization of the same thing I try to avoid personally, particularly for a tone-deaf company like AA (who regularly makes it a habit to shock and get mentioned - no such thing as bad publicity I suppose).
The line gets blurry when dealing with some idiots like Terry Richardson. I don’t consume his material generally because of the exploitative nature of multiple accusations against him. It gets interesting when considering his general esthetics (that on-camera, raw, straight exposure work he’s known for). I digress…
It’s interesting to see what new ways photographers find for filtering a view of the female body, but it’s a great question about why we may not see the same from an opposite gender point of view? To be fair, I’ve seen a few interesting shoots and images from (male) gay friends of male subjects that seems to me to indicate a desire by males in general to capture what they find alluring or interesting (I could get lost for hours looking through Robert Mapplethorpe prints). Maybe it’s just a male thing to want to capture those images. Maybe it’s just over-represented because of general male-dominance in online discourse (not sure on this, but it seems like it might be the case). This sucks, because I’m 100% certain that there’s an equally alluring and awesome body of work that we might be missing from talented female photographers.
On that note, I was recently blown away by a shoot by Mario Sorrenti for V Magazine with the model Ashley Graham. The image are wonderful, and in the abstract cases well captured and gorgeous.
https://vmagazine.com/slideshow/84239/ashley-graham-tracee-ellis-ross-interview/#slide1
In particular, from that shoot, is this damn masterpiece:
You can go nuts drawing triangles and convergence lines in this image, and I have to believe that the models right leg, and shadow continuing the same line was purposeful. Wow.
I will say that the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen a woman wear is a smile.
The most gorgeous thing a woman has probably ever seen me wear is lots and lots of clothing.