From: Steve Shapiro (sgshiya@redshift.com)
Date: 08/26/02-02:18:00 AM Z
Unwrinkle your undies, Judy dear, there are tons of male nudes in
photography books out there.
Edna Bullock did a workshop on the male nude before she died, and a book on
it, too.
The SFAI employs male nude models.
David Featherstone collected a whole bookshelf on the male nude for the
Friends' of Photography that were left behind and are in the Carmel Center
for Photographic Art in Carmel's Sunset Center.
Shapiro
----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 10:34 PM
Subject: Jack, you of all people...
>
>
> On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Jack Fulton wrote:
> > Okay. Erotica.
> > erot·ic
> > Greek erOtikos, from erOt-, erOs
> > Date: 1651
> > 1 : of, devoted to, or tending to arouse sexual love or desire <erotic
art>
> > 2 : strongly marked or affected by sexual desire
> > Hmm. I'd say, under your aegis, Edward's photographs fall into category
> > numero dos . . . markings, so to speak, regarding his sexual desire.
Maybe
> > his name should have been Frank rather than Edward for that's the way he
> > places his eye.
> > The point I was attempting to make was in regard to the sexual
revolution
> > which came about in the 1960's but primarily in the 1970's. There are
> > elements in society which need prior altruistic truths of representation
so
> > as to substantiate the new paradigm/premise. For instance, today one can
> > visit the erotic frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum w/out permission.
The
> > Italian government (and you know those Italians and their libido . . or
is
> > it Lido) has decided to become' modern' so to speak. There is no other
> > photographic work, than perhaps Emmanuel Radnitsky, which is so readily
> > available, so much on the tongue of people's mind.
>
> Oh etc. etc. etc. Jack, you of all people -- savvy, sophisticated, or so
> I have always thought -- you are resolutely REFUSING to get the point.
> Don't give me the history of Pompeii, don't talk about sexual revolution,
> I can do sexual, revolution, tongue & groove with the best or worst of
> them.
>
> THE POINT IS THAT YOU USE THE TERM "NUDE PHOTOGRAPHY" TO MEAN FEMALE NUDE
> PHOTOGRAPHY. There are whole books titled "Nudes" which turn out to have
> only -- imagine ! -- young, shapely, FEMALE nudes. Where are the male
> nudes? Sure, Mapplethorpe did them, others do them now, but that's recent
> and not the genre...
>
> When did EW do a naked man erotically posed? His torso of son was
> strategically cropped, and anyway meant to look sculptural more than
> erotical. Forget the dread aura and vocabulary of Abigail Solomon Goudeau
> and read her passage again.
>
> It is absolutely on the mark-- except she's ahead of many, including
> apparently a few on this list. You have to start at the beginning (this is
> how I get to sound like a broken record, except half the folks now alive
> don't know what a broken record is, since they play CDs) by saying,
>
> NAKED LADY IS ****NOT*** A NEUTRAL ART CONVENTION, IT'S AN EROTICIZED
> STEROTYPE, WHICH IS NOT GOOD FOR WOMEN IN THE WIDER CULTURE. Or, to quote
> myself, this "'art' showing naked women, but not naked men, is an
> eroticized sterotype, harmful to women generally and one reason it's
> harder for a woman past 40, when her boobs are beginning to sag, to make
> partner."
>
> Why harmful? For one thing, in our culture the people in power wear
> clothes -- and that includes Edward Weston taking pictures of women
> without clothes. For another, the perfect nubile YOUNG body is idealized,
> making a woman of the age when MEN start to come into their power an old
> bag.
>
> To use the analogy of race, which folks seem to get when they don't get
> the above (and I note that the dictionary had the word "racism" nearly a
> decade before it had "sexism"): If the only or main photographs of black
> people seen in the culture were bandana heads, barefoot "darkie" children
> eating watermelon or other such stereotypes from genre photography of the
> early 20th century you would understand why that would be harmful to the
> aspirations of African-Americans, that those images would come into the
> mind's eye in front of the living person, even instead of the living
> person.
>
> Now pick up any newspaper or news magazine and see how many women appear
> who aren't nearly naked and swollen eyed in the underwear ads. OK, I just
> grabbed section A, the news section of Friday's Times.... There is not
> one, NOT ONE, not a single solitary editorial photograph of a woman, not
> even Condoleeza Rice, not even Laura Bush, not even a Pakistani woman
> group raped as penalty for trumped up charges against her brother.
>
> You say some more following, Jack -- the part I understand fails to
> address what I see as the point. (I'm being nice because you're so cute.)
>
> best,
>
> Judy
>
>
>
>
> > Prior to the 1960's the only nudes one could find (I searched as a
young
> > lad) were generally nudist camp magazines. Then Playboy hit the stands.
I
> > even telephoned Marilyn Monroe one night when she was married to Joe
> > Dimaggio and told her I was her paperboy and she hadn't paid her bill
from
> > last month. Imagine that, Mrs. Dimaggio was in the phone book. Now, how
them
> > naive apples. So, the point I was loosely making is that Weston and his
> > nudes represent, in the American eye, the curator, museologist,
hedonist,
> > photogonist etc., an artist's view of the nude female. Since they were
> > rather frank images and perhaps taken with an erotic POV but posed in a
> > (don't' jump at me here) natural way . . . hey, look @ Imogen or Annie
> > Brigman or what Isador Duncan did or represented. I have a nice book of
> > nudes done in 1914 done by a Mr. Goetz here in SF and they are, polite.
> > Frank, err, Ed wasn't. He was honest to himself and that can perhaps
offend
> > others. I believe the image of the toilet, 'Excusado', which means
'water
> > closet' in Spanish, is done in a similar direct manner as is the famous
> > pepper implying some lusty peccadillo. He knew what was different about
his
> > visioning. I presume that's one of the reasons he was so excited by the
> > medium.
> > Quite honestly, I'm a bit more offended by the Surrealists and their
> > blatant innuendoes such as Man Ray's (or was it Marcel Duchamp) castings
of
> > the negative space between a woman's legs. They surely employed
photography
> > in a tricky fashion. Duchamp ripping off Marey like that.
> > Anyway I fully appreciate and understand where you come from . . what
your
> > point is. However, I feel it is overt in this case and that Weston does
mean
> > something to the post 70's person who may be more libertine. He,
somehow,
> > did something in the photographic medium that others hadn't done. He
went
> > where angels feared to tread . . and it was in his backyard where he got
off
> > on rocks most of the time.
> > I'm not saying he is the cause célèbre for Hustler and Playboy but was
the
> > forerunner of that milieu. He was, in a sense, their sanitized raison
> > d'être.
> > Jack
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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