Bodies are amazing for their universality and diversity all at once: we're all the same but also different. Bodies communicate what we're thinking and feeling, often without us even realizing that they are transmitting information to others. Light plays differently off of the colors of our skin and the shapes of our curves and lines, creating hills and valleys, shape and form. This combination of shape and form, light and dark, posture and mood creates compelling artwork. Art is experience: for the creators who make it and the viewers who receive it. These are the themes that compel me about nude art: the form and beauty, and our complex relationship with the nude form.
Firstly, the body makes a compelling subject. Bodies are amazing and beautiful and dynamic: a moving form that can be sculpted and shaped, shifting with each moment, allowing for infinite possibilities. With each movement, the light and shadows and shapes change. I've worked as director, stylist and model for photography shoots and have loved my involvement on every level. It's a compelling challenge to work with lighting and live, moving form all at once.
Secondly, I believe deeply in the need for nude art. Because we live in a world where bodies are shamed and kept secret. Where bodies are owned and exist for the pleasure of the viewer. Where bodies are made sterile with medical talk and procedure. Women are told that they are gross, that they must be "modest and appropriate" and also that they exist to be fantastical objects of desire. Nude art, guided and directed in collaboration with the photographer and stylist, is a powerful way to empower a woman to own her own body and to be comfortable moving in her skin. Women have a right to exist as embodied creatures, period. Just to exist. Not to be shamed. Not to be sexualized by another. Using the body as art can be wonderfully empowering for the participants.
Thirdly, sharing and displaying the finished products challenges cultural assumptions about bodies. Art exists to elicit responses from the viewer. Some will be bored with it because they've seen plenty like it before. Others (I hope) will be delighted or moved by it and it will make them step in closer and interact and reflect. But there will be many who are bothered by it because of their own feelings and beliefs about bodies, especially women's bodies. Not everyone will choose to dance with their discomfort and look within to see where it comes from, but if even a few take the time to do so, then I am honored and grateful. Because a reshaping of the thoughts and dialogue around bodies, women's in particular, is so desperately needed.
Each nude shoot that I've been a part of, whether as director, stylist or model, is an act of protest that declares that I will no longer be shamed or sexualized. I will no longer exist on the continuum of extremes in which women in our culture are relegated to: from virgin to whore. Instead, I will be a woman, with a body, who exists in that body, and who insists on the right to do so. I am so much more than my gender, but I can use it to hold others accountable for what they would have me believe about myself because of it. My body is a tool that I use to communicate my right to exist. It's a tool to create art that is beautiful and thought-provoking, whether I’m in front of or behind the camera. It’s a tool to create dialogue, to redefine what it means to be a woman, and to empower men and women alike to consider that women are more than what they’ve been told.
