The Power of Nudity??

[Bob F.]

Ummm ... We're red blooded straight guys. Ever since we clubbed the gal over the head and dragged her into the cave, we've been fascinated with the naked/nude female form. Surely you all can't be naiive to think this wasn't going to happen? We guys keep thinking our big head does the thinking - it thinks of excuses for the little head!

Regards, Art

Really Art? You find the images of the transsexual sex workers only operate on your "little head"?

Interesting...


Yes, of course millions of years of evolution means that many nude images operate on that level - and the less interesting ones operate on that level only - but these big brains that also came along with that evolution allow us to step outside our instincts and view things from a different perspective, using our capacity for empathy for example.

 

[haris]

...Yes, of course millions of years of evolution means that many nude images operate on that level - and the less interesting ones operate on that level only - but these big brains that also came along with that evolution allow us to step outside our instincts and view things from a different perspective, using our capacity for empathy for example.

That is why there is no such things like sex maniacs or offenders, psychopats, psychiatris desises, mass murderers, Hitlers, genocides, and many other simillar things in animal world. They don't use brain like us humans, thus don't have same problems cused by intellect(ual thinking) like we have

It is very shovinistic to tell that because we humans use our brain on higher level, we are doing better thing. Maybe it would be better if we humans only follow instincts and urges, like animals do. Maybe will would be better people (better living species) than we are now.

Animals never try to extinct other complete species, let alone any complete society of its own specie. Something we, humans, regullary do for economic, nationalistic or religious reasons.

Oh, if you look at some of vampire bats and some other animals, there is empathy too. It is not exclusive human's characteristic. We, animals and humans, are much more alike than we humans would like to admit, only we humans have curse of higher evoluted brain.

 

[Dinesh]

...Maybe it would be better if we humans only follow instincts and urges, like animals do. ...

Keep in mind that if seals had thumbs, they would be clubbing us!

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Ummm ... We're red blooded straight guys. Regards, Art

Again, speak for yourself . I'm a red blooded homo.

To try and separate out the various reasons why we are drawn to nudes into logical categories, as if we could somehow quantify and logically analyze it is a fool's task. There is an instinctual component, a sexual component, an emotional component and an aesthetic component. All of them swirl together in an ever-changing stew that has a different recipe for each person. That stew is what makes sure that the qualitative response in you is different than that in me than that in Heather.

 

[MikeSeb]

Five million years of evolution is a tough thing to ignore...

Ken

This I think is really the answer. It's hardwired, and no amount of social veneering can change it.

 

[wfe]

To try and separate out the various reasons why we are drawn to nudes into logical categories, as if we could somehow quantify and logically analyze it is a fool's task. There is an instinctual component, a sexual component, an emotional component and an aesthetic component. All of them swirl together in an ever-changing stew that has a different recipe for each person. That stew is what makes sure that the qualitative response in you is different than that in me than that in Heather.

I have to agree with Scott on this one. I shoot pretty much nothing but female nudes these days and don't try to explain why other than it's a serious passion for me.

 

[eddym]

Animals never try to extinct other complete species...

Actually, they do, though it may not be intentional. To them, it's just lunch, and the hawk has no way of knowing if the passenger pigeon it just devoured was the last one or not.

 

[RobC]

I'd like to know how it is that as soon as a woman gets her tits out, photographic voyeurism is somehow coverted into art. Is it not true that the word art is used as a metaphor for voyeurism or erotic. So what exactly is "Fine Art" about photographing nudes? If this offends you, then console yourself in the knowledge that I'm too stupid to understand. Did I say console? Perhaps I meant delude.

 

[Bob F.]

I'd like to know how it is that as soon as a woman gets her tits out, photographic voyeurism is somehow coverted into art. Is it not true that the word art is used as a metaphor for voyeurism or erotic. So what exactly is "Fine Art" about photographing nudes? If this offends you, then console yourself in the knowledge that I'm too stupid to understand. Did I say console? Perhaps I meant delude.

Just because you have one view does not make it the right one and everyone else must be deluded and needs to be told so in such an aggressive manner.

To answer your question: no, it is not true that "the word art is used as a metaphor for voyeurism or erotic". Thousands of years of artistic endeavour from the fertility figures of pre-history to today's paintings, sculptures and photographs argue against that proposition.

I was pulling Art's leg above but the point is valid: there are a multitude of reasons, as others have also said, for a particular image and indeed voyeurism can be one of them, but it is not the only one.

Honi soit qui mal y pense...

Bob.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I'd like to know how it is that as soon as a woman gets her tits out, photographic voyeurism is somehow coverted into art. Is it not true that the word art is used as a metaphor for voyeurism or erotic. So what exactly is "Fine Art" about photographing nudes? If this offends you, then console yourself in the knowledge that I'm too stupid to understand. Did I say console? Perhaps I meant delude.

You seem to be unable to intellectually distinguish between the sexual and the aesthetic. Actually, and perhaps more tellingly, you insist upon placing equally negative moral judgments upon both, when neither requires moral judgment. I would question the emotional honesty and/or the sexual orientation of anyone who did not have SOME erotic response to a nude of the opposite gender.

A well-executed nude that uses light, posing and composition to provoke an aesthetic response that moves beyond the sexual is Fine Art. A pornographic image uses light, posing and composition to ensure that the only response is sexual.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Honi soit qui mal y pense...

Bob.

Nice to know we have a peer of the realm amongst us. Pop over to Windsor often for tea in the Waterloo Chamber?

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Nudity and politics
make awkward
subjects online.

 

[gr82bart]

Honi soit qui mal y pense...

Bob,

I'd mistake you for a Quebecois lumberjack.

Regards, Art.

 

[gr82bart]

Nudity and politics
make dangerous
subjects online.

Great drama! Time for the APUG reality show ...

Regards, Art.

 

[arigram]

I never understood why nudity is a big deal with you people.
Its a human being.
Without clothes.
What's wrong with that?
And what's strange about a human being attracting the gaze of another?
What I find strange is to get a boner with a car or a video game, not with a nude fellow human.
...its how shrinks make easy money...

And Rob, you need to chill man.
You seem awfully aggressive and confrontational lately.
I hope life's good to you.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Nudity and politics
make awkward
subjects online.

Great drama! Time for the APUG reality show ...

I am strictly an observer for this episode.

 

[Sean]

Nudity and politics
make awkward
subjects online.

and

Nudity and politics
make baiting
and trolling
too easy

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Sean! A propos of this topic, you will
be pleased to know that I have put that
Gowlandflex of yours to work here in
New York.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandersnyc/2790541179

I leave it to others to tell me what I meant
by the photograph.

 

[Sean]

Awesome Sanders, great to see it put to use can't wait to see more! P.S. Just realized my post above may have come off like I thought you were baiting or trolling but that's not what I intended -It was directed to someone further back in the thread..

 

[JBrunner]

My mother has informed me that I was born nude! Who'da thunk it?

FWIW I think Scott hit the nail on the head a while back. To take it further, my interest and response to a print will vary as much as individual responses among persons may vary, from print to print, and even depending on my mood, mindset, or any number of cues that may or may not evoke different reactions in others, because of who I am in particular, and my life experiences, and what time of day it is.

Taken as a whole, the elevated viewing numbers involving the nude simply says we are interested, but not much more. Past that information, I believe it's an individual thing.

As an aside, I've found it interesting that many comments on the subject have seemed to reveal more about the person making the comment than the subject at hand. Maybe that's a big part of it, we are more vested in type of thing, whatever the intention, because it reveals us as what we really are, sans trappings.

 

[MattKing]

I wonder what the statistics would be if we lived in an environment where public nudity was both commonplace, and unremarkable.

Remember, I live in the country that produced the band known as the "Barenaked Ladies".

Matt

 

[gerryyaum]

As an aside, I've found it interesting that many comments on the subject have seemed to reveal more about the person making the comment than the subject at hand. Maybe that's a big part of it, we are more vested in type of thing, whatever the intention, because it reveals us as what we really are, sans trappings.

yes good point..an inner look..which is great if your trying to grow as an artist...that's why I love forums and blogs and such...it forces you to think things out and write them down.

 

[gerryyaum]

If you are interested in showing life of "others", showing vunerability, fear, rejections of society, whatever, you also can photograph life of disfigurated people for example, or people with alergies (of air, of sun, etc...) who can't live in normal circumstances. So, again, basic question as someone already asked is, why then you photograph nudes...

For me, it is combination of aestetics, beautifull forms AND 5 millions years of evolution.

Someone once told me that when you include a face in a picture it is no longer a nude, it becomes a portrait. I think what I try to do are honest portraits...Why? because the people I photograph interest me, or I have a curiosity about their lives etc...it is like feeding a need to understand and express...also I think it important to record what you see...many of the people I have photographed are gone now, the only thing that may remain of them is the photograph..it is important that these people be remembered some how. If the work becomes collected or put into a book or shown in gallery, in a way that person is not gone!....silly I know but it is something that motivates me...I see all the faces from the past that I was not able to make a good photograph of and I feel I let them down some how (hope that does not sound to egotistical)...I guess I do it for me and for them, that's why!

 

[gerryyaum]

Speak for yourself, I'm a redblooded hetero woman who likes female nudes. I'd like male nudes if they didn't mostly look like bad, cheese gay porn shots.

What do you thing of Robert Mapplethorpes work?

 

[gerryyaum]

Nudity and politics
make awkward
subjects online.

maybe so, but has led to many interesting responses...it seems not only nude photos draw hits....nude thread titles do also!