Photographer: Rachell Smith. Model: myself
I was really stunned to read the following on the FB page of an organisation that purports to be fighting for diversity in the modelling industry:"What's your price'? In our industry we get offered things that we wouldn't normally consider but these jobs come with a higher price? Your morals as well as the extra cash? I have been asked countless times to do nude 'artist' photographs and so far have turned them down...Guys would you do nudity for a few thousand? " (sic).
Here we go. Nudity is being associated with morality.
I have just spent six weeks "dying" every night in a gas chamber, totally naked, on the Hampstead Theatre stage in Hysteria by Terry Johnson, together with Angela and Bernie, my two stage sisters. We were Freud's older sisters who died in a concentration camp, appearing to him in a dream, in his last hours. I suppose that, by the logic of the statement I have just quoted, for six weeks I engaged in a job that made me do something immoral i.e. appear naked, for extra cash. Presumably, this would make me cheap.
As I was reflecting on this, I read model Ella Rose's comments on being in Vietnam, where she is holidaying. What a wonderful experience. Vietnam must be absolutely gorgeous, I have never been there but have had the good fortune to visit Cambodia - and was completely bowled over. I know that in Vietnam there is a fantastic photographer, Thai Phien, who specialises in art nude and who has had to face censorship of his work because art nude was being equated with porn by the authorities.
Photographer: Thai Phien
I have come to realise that such pruderie is quite widespread, as the incident I have just related demonstrates. In Britain people are not yet being prosecuted for shooting art nude, but only just. For some people nudity is cheap and dirty.
Nudity is not cheap, no more than being clothed. It all depends on the context.
I distance myself from such narrow minded views, needless to say.
As someone has said, "No" and "Goodbye" are good friends to have.
In connection with the topic of nudity and art modelling, I would like to mention that The Guardian carried a piece about me as an art model written by Hannah Booth and published on 6/09/13 as part of the series Experience
In connection with the topic of nudity and art modelling, I would like to mention that The Guardian carried a piece about me as an art model written by Hannah Booth and published on 6/09/13 as part of the series Experience
It does indeed take a very strange state of mind to think that there is anything wrong with nudity - strange, but sadly widespread. Even if the mind of the censor slides quickly from nudity to sex, a slide which would be understandable, the idea that there is something wrong with nudity is still strange.
ReplyDeleteMy theory, which is pure speculation - I have no anthropological evidence for it - goes like this. Some people like social control. A great way to control people is to find something that gives them pleasure, tell them it is forbidden for reasons that are mysterious, and then tell them it is allowed under certain conditions. Get this right, and people will be grateful for the permission, instead of resenting the initial prohibition, and will accept you as having authority. This trick can be pulled with sex: sex is bad, it is forbidden, but as a generous concession, you can do it with your spouse. Then nudity, with anyone apart from your spouse, had better be forbidden, because it so easily leads to thoughts of sex.
Of course, there is such a thing as non-sexual nudity, but the connection between nudity and sex is always going to be there, in any society in which nudity is unusual. (It wouldn't be nearly so strong a connection if people were routinely nude in social settings.) So I think that if we want to tackle the anti-nudity line of thought, we also have to think about the line of thought that is against everyone being a free sexual agent, deciding for themselves what sex to have or not to have.
*sigh* Here we go again. You'd think the human race would learn someday that nudity is just a human body! But for every step enlightened humans take, "the Madding Crowd" forces humankind back. I keep praying that reason will prevail--hope against hope...
ReplyDeleteExcellent post, Alex. I am slightly surprised at this because I was under the impression that Europe was a bit more socially and culturally advanced in this area. Europe was where I first learned to separate nudity from sex. Germany was my first example of non-stigmatized nudity. Is G.B. then much more like America? And less like the rest of Europe? Or are my impressions of Western Europe limited to my small experience of it?
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