| Images of the human form have a long history in photographic practice, and with a few notable exceptions it has predominantly been the male gaze upon the naked female body. This pattern has been preserved up until today in the form of the classic black-and-white photographic nude. Nudity, of course, is an amazingly loaded topic in the conservative cultural and political climate of the United States. Nudity is routinely equated with sex, a fact carefully and skillfully exploited by an unusual alliance of conservative politicians and the advertizing industry. Despite agitating toward different goals, this alliance has succeeded in cementing the idea that where there are images of the nude human form, sexual activity is mostly likely not far. |
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Joerg Colberg
Richard Learoyd, Josef. Courtesy of the artist.
Images of the human form have a long history in photographic practice, and with a few notable exceptions it has predominantly been the male gaze upon the naked female body. This pattern has been preserved up until today in the form of the classic black-and-white photographic nude.
Nudity, of course, is an amazingly loaded topic in the conservative cultural and political climate of the United States. Nudity is routinely equated with sex, a fact carefully and skillfully exploited by an unusual alliance of conservative politicians and the advertizing industry. Despite agitating toward different goals, this alliance has succeeded in cementing the idea that where there are images of the nude human form, sexual activity is mostly likely not far.
Needless to say, taken together with the fact that the kinds of naked people ubiquitously seen in advertisements usually represent idealized, artificial beauty standards, unattainable for the vast majority of the population. For a large number of people, this development has resulted in an alienation from their own bodies, with eating disorders being an almost logical consequence. The rise and acceptance of pornography in the cultural mainstream has added further toxins to the subject matter.
The fact that many contemporary photographers have responded to these challenges has so far not gained much exposure. Unfortunately and maybe not surprisingly, the only work that has gained any kind of wider attention has centered on pornography. The efforts of many other photographers, female and male, to portray the naked human body in its most natural state, using subjects that do not conform to absurd beauty standards, have so far been mostly ignored.
Bare, a group show of photography, attempts to gather some of these contemporary photographers in a single exhibition space. The photographs show the human body in its many different forms, with its simple inherent beauty, a beauty we are almost surprised to find after being flooded with images of anorexic, oversexed, and overly Photoshopped models. The images in Bare all show the naked or very lightly concealed human form, with nudity not being the sole purpose of the images. Instead, what is to be gained from viewing these photographs emerges from the interaction between the photographer and his or her model(s), and from the underlying tensions, caused by the differences in genders—the latter being the only place where there is a hint of sexuality in Bare.
