Completely irrational, but this picture looks scary to me. Like something that Mads Mikkelsen does to human bodies, when playing dr. Lecter.
2 Likes
Here is the picture that Elle and I are discussing. Photo by me:
Yes! Thanks for posting this. After reading this as well as your links, I can say that I sometimes like making abstract photography and not be self-conscious about the use of the term “abstract.” So you’ve freed me from the trauma that my grade school teacher inflicted. Thanks!
Before you brought it up, I was unaware of the pictorialist style. I read the wikipedia article, and recognize the pictorialist look from seeing it in old photographs. So I guess you can say the leg picture is pictorial, and the softness is coming from the lighting setup versus the glass on the camera, or the chemical tricks that the pictorialists used back in the day.
As for the picture “being slightly abstract.” Would you have known those were legs if I had referred to the picture as “orange and red” instead of “abstract legs?” Maybe if you looked at it long enough. Or maybe it would be immediately obvious to most. It’s hard to tell because my reality is tainted by the fact that I was there when the picture was taken, and I know how it was made. (hint: it was made with a camera and legs).
The why’s, wherefores and inspiration, I talked about briefly on my blog. What’s next is that I’m soliciting more models to further develop the concept. I really like the idea of mixing realism with not-so-real-ism. One gal I contacted had posted a portfolio on model mayhem. I reached out to her to ask her about modelling because she has a nice figure and the overall shape of her body was attractive to me. She would take good silhouette photos.
And in our correspondence, she came clean, and said that she had a lot of scars on her body that were covered up in the airbrushed pictures I saw in her portfolio, and would that be a problem? And to me, that idea was so cool…that she has these scars, which she normally goes through some trouble to hide from public view, but what if I took a picture that left her scars right out in the open, but her attractive figure (somewhat) obscured behind the scrim? How do we choose what to reveal to the world, and in what degree do we reveal it, and what happen when we start messing with the normal way of making those decisions? I dig the juxtaposition.
The scrim is nice because the closer the subject is to the scrim, the more detail you can make out. Otherwise, you have to infer by the shadows.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BnPdD6xgNg6/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet
@Elle, you’ve given me a lot to think about and I will take better photos because of it. Thanks for starting this thread!
I hesitated to make a post at all about photographs of naked/nude people. Having done so anyway, responses have varied quite a lot, some responses are very interesting to me personally, and some a lot less so. I’m going to start by responding to some of what @beachbum had to say. He covered a lot of ground, so this will take more than one post:
As @Reptorian said, America is a rather diverse place with a wide spectrum of views on sexuality, nudity, guns, and just about everything else you can think of.
Regarding Nazi/racist/etc tendencies in the US, sadly it doesn’t seem that France or Europe as a whole is doing any better on this front:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/07/13/frances-dangerous-move-to-remove-race-from-its-constitution/
Regarding “allowed to publish Nazi propaganda”, American policy of free speech is deeply grounded in John Stuart Mill’s thoughts on freedom of speech. This is why America allows the publishing of documents that espouse Nazi and other beliefs grounded in the odd notion that ancestry/race/religion/etc somehow justify some groups of people going out and harming/killing/ostracizing/ other groups of people.
Personally I’m inclined to think that the only thing worse than allowing the public to read this sort of garbage, is to forbid the reading of same, because where do you draw the lines between what is allowable to read and what isn’t, and who exactly gets to draw these lines?
Mills himself drew lines between acceptable and not acceptable free speech. Shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre when in fact there is no fire, is the standard example of something that with a high degree of certainty will lead to harm that overrides the individual’s right to shout fire.
But the situation is more complicated today than it was in Mills’ time. Mills was writing in a time when communcation was slow and reaching/recruiting/inciting large numbers of like-minded individuals was a time-consuming task requiring a great deal of dedication. There are a lot more people on the planet today and communication via the internet is instantaneous, which means reaching/recruiting/inciting like-minded individuals is hugely easier than it ever was before.
Regarding the amount of violence on American television, studies going back several decades have shown how powerfully television and violence on television influences actual behavior. But people still keep watching violent shows anyways. I greatly admire Mandy Patinkin’s decision to leave the popular TV show “Criminal Minds” because he was deeply disturbed by the content of the series during Season 3. In my household we stopped watching that show for the same reason, and then we stopped watching television altogether. I wish more actors, producers, writers, and (most of all) television viewers would respond similarly.
Is French television is less violent than American television? If yes, is this from censorship? If yes, who does the censoring? Do French viewers watch violent American movies and TV shows?
First of all I live in France, but I also lived for four and a half years in Miami, FL. Before that I lived in Germany - and I still am German.
French TV is pretty open towards sexual content, German TV is even more of that. There are TV-Shows in Germany where people date another totally naked, and there are camera-zooms onto everything that you expect to be “pixeled”. It is not pixeled, it is clear and in full screen and it starts at about 2200 in the evening.
Yes, that is trash-TV. Nobody cares about the couples that have found another there (for one night or less). It’s all about voyeurism, but nudity is nowhere forbidden or even “problematic”. Films like “9 songs” have been broadcasted at 2015 on public free-TV. Including very explicit sexual intercourse and camera between the legs during long sequences.
This is what I mean when saying that I have a problem with showing how to kill people but not how to make them. Is that important? Not so much when you need a starter for some private handiwork - there are millions of websites where you can see it all just a click away, and you don’t have to respect the broadcasting schedule for that. But it is important in the sense of being cool and relax about a very natural thing: nudity (and maybe a bit more).
Next to that some great US TV-shows have been sold to European networks; we partly watch the same programs you do and I am a huge fan of Justified. I think i’m in my third tour, having watched it on TV in 2012 or so and then on amazon prime 18 months ago and re-started last week. Not exactly free of gun violence, I know.
Nazi propaganda and even just drawing a Swastika is forbidden in Germany and gets punished. I never felt that being a problematic shortage in free expression. If you grow up in Germany, the twelve years from 33 to 45 are a (too) big part of your history lessons and you will most likely not feel the wish or need to be identified as a nazi or just extreme right-wing supporter.
2017 was the first ever election that an extreme-right party (the AfD) made it into the German parliament, collecting 13% of the votes. Now, one year later, their star is already falling, because people start to understand that they are all talk and no game.
Yes, Germany and France are quite different from the USA.
1 Like
Well, it’s nice to know that unpixelated image of nake people can be seen on French television. Now how’s your Gypsy/Romani population doing?
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/opinion/07iht-edzaretsky.html
The question isn’t whether you feel your free expression is being restricted. The question is whether such restrictions are actually accomplishing anything:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/opinion/germanys-nazi-past-is-still-present.html
Well, we’re slightly off topic now? 
3 Likes
I honestly do not have the slightest Idea how those Roma-people made their way into this discussion (and I don’t care - I care about photography), but I agree that the success of a veto on Nazi symbols is questionable.
Why don’t we return to naked/nude/etc?
1 Like
Yes, we are. But stupid statements about “America bad” vs “French good” just need to be addressed. Some of us have our own very painful reasons for remembering Nazi Germany.
Because you yourself (meaning @beachbum) have decided to bring up the topic of how awful the US is for the fact that there is a freedom to publish stupid stuff, deplorable stuff, truly awful stuff. And then you said look at the nice results of how France and Germany are handling such things. It’s not great in the US. And racism is also alive in France and Germany.
As an american, I understand, but let’s head this off before the conversation veers too far down the rabbit hole.
Post more naked people that will artistically get me out of my slump of not shooting photos! Here, I’ll throw a Mapplethorpe into the mix:
Or this one from MoMA:
3 Likes
Roma are a nomad people (the term homeless is a bit liberal here) who settle and build camps for a few months on private properties, sometimes parking lots, sometimes farm fields, sometimes sport facilites, and trash everything around, leaving piles of garbage and destroying the land with their 4×4 and hometrailers (they really are not as homeless as you may think). They cut electric lines and install derivations for their trailers. When they settle on stores parking lots, they discourage customers to go in. When they settle on soccer fields, the training season ends there.
When they are done trashing there, they go trash somewhere else, and they certainly don’t clean after themselves. So the locals and owners hate them, and try to have them evicted. So, the Roma hate them back and don’t even bother to ask municipalities or landlords for land, they take it for granted knowing they will be turned back anyway. And then it escalates.
Municipalities of more than 2000 inhabitants, by law, have to provide them areas to settle, with running water, electricity plugs and sewers, and they do (although one could argue they do the bare minimum regarding comfort), but Roma don’t use them.
I have had them for neighbours for a while, in France, it’s not nice. And the farmer was not happy with the state of his grass field when they left. Funny enough, your papers don’t mention that. It’s not your typical xenophobia, these people have been called chicken thieves for a reason : there are mysterious disparitions of metal parts, farming equipment and cattle whenever they are around. Stuff you will find in Romania and Spain if you ever find it back. That hatred goes back a long way, for centuries, with unfortunate things done both sides.
That happened in my home-town (I have a cousin who got robbed). In other places:
So, I really don’t see what your argument is here and how it is related to sexual liberation. French people don’t want trouble makers in their neighbourhood, so now they are nazis ? Wanna talk about you Mexicans ? Or Trump ordering air strikes during a diner to impress a lady ?
1 Like
Regarding Maplethorpe, I remember a great flap quite awhile ago on whether/where some of his stuff was to be displayed. I looked at some of the images and couldn’t imagine why the great flap. Other than that, I never really paid attention to any of his work. But he took one of my favorite photographs, a photograph of a musician named Patti Smith:
It seems Smith and Maplethorpe were very close friends. I’d never heard of her before I saw the photograph, and I’ve never heard her music.
Regarding getting out of one’s photographic slump by looking at other people’s photographs, does that work?
Sometimes I try to replicate one or another aspect of one or another photograph that I happen to like. But that’s an exercise to improve shooting and processing skills rather than a reason to actually take photographs.
I think actual inspiration for taking photographs comes from finding one has something to say, yes? Though maybe other people’s photographs most certainly can provide inspiration in the sense of “Oh, that’s a way to start capturing whatever it is that one wants to capture”.
Often for me it is a good solid kick-in-the-pants to see a well executed image that reminds me that I should be finding my own light and images as well. @darix is an uncommonly good motivator who keeps reminding me that we’re here to make photographs and share (both things I have been lacking lately).
Finding inspiration in others work is a long-standing tradition in artistic endeavors…
Interesting comment. Was anyone else talking about sexual liberation? Is that what you and @beachbum are trying to do? You want to get liberated?
I wasn’t talking about sexual liberation. I was talking about photographs.
Well, I was trying to talk about photographs. But @beachbum went off on a long tirade about how people want him to photograph men and he prefers to photograph women.
Then he said was married to a model that didn’t want him to keep taking her photographs so now he hires other models to photograph.
Then he started complaining about tumblr and went off on a tirade about America, Nazis, violence and television.
Then he said he didn’t kill people, which I’m glad to hear.
Then he said he “makes” his wife, which is something that’s really none of my business at all.
Then he said he was afraid of people with guns, which is very rational response.
Then he brought up Playboy and Playgirl for reasons that escape me entirely.
Then he seemed to reduce the taking and viewing of photographs of the human body - or perhaps only photographs of female bodies - to a strictly biological determination, with which idea @Stampede perhaps agrees (something about a lizard brain), and with which idea no one has chosen to take exception. Which surprises me as biological reductionism really doesn’t explain very much about anything at all.
Oh, and then @beachbum suggested that I “get used to it” which sounds a little hostile, though I don’t have any clue what “it” is that I’m supposed to be getting used to.
OK, all the above to one side, here’s the set of statements that @beachbum made that I think need some actual explication:
Anyone care to comment on the above quote from @beachbum initial post?
Yes, of course. I really like that article you linked to. But eventually one has to have an actual reason - one’s own reason - to continue taking photographs, or painting, or whatever. And that reason has to come from within, from one’s own response to something. I’ve been struggling with just that - what to photograph and why - for a long time. Comments @afre and yourself and others made over in this thread -
resulted in a long “reading and thinking” journey, focusing on photographers and artists in the immediate history surrounding Eggleston, and surprisingly enough (well, I was surprised) as a result I think I have a bit more focus on “what” to photograph, though whether I manage to actually capture that “what” remains to be seen.
1 Like
Hopefully seen here… 
I’m making it a point to bring my camera with me on vacation this year and finally fulfill some things that @darix keeps nagging me about…
That is what I call sexual liberation. Then, your answer, @Elle, is non-sequitur.
I can relate with most of what @beachbum said. US, thus all their web services/social media, are taking a turn against nudity while all kinds of violence seem tolerated. And the amount of censorship toward nudity becomes ridiculous when put in comparison with the levels of violence that are tolerated.
Nude art has a social component. Morality, ethics, religions, education, sexuality get mixed in the picture making and the picture viewing. I have been called names for taking pictures of naked women. The thing is it’s really difficult to find men willing to pose naked, and I shoot them just alike.
That part is actual gibberish to me. Indeed, biology is politely asked to stay out of sociology. We did that mistake with phrenology 2 centuries ago, let’s not start that path again.
I believe an artist that is not at least one bit political is merely a wall decorator. On the other hand, I don’t get the point of the 500 nude men project, the pictures are crappy and the whole project looks like revenge porn.
I have posted 2 articles on that a while ago, but it’s in French:
(Pictures by me).