From: Thom Mitchell (tjmitch@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 08/26/02-01:04:26 PM Z
I just read an article stating that the actress known for playing attractive
movie roles, Jamie Lee Curtis, age 43, is posing in a bra and panties
without any makeup, hairstyling, etc. to show what a 43 year old woman looks
like. Her contention is that we place too much emphasis trying to look
young. Of course given her genetic history it's easy for her to pose that
way, I am not sure I would. The magazine if I remember correctly is More
magazine. Just an interesting aside to the debate. Judy in all fairness I
think society is shifting to the sexualization of both sexes to the
exclusion of other roles for people. The Man in the Arrow shirt picture of
someone with a disfigurement (wearing an eye patch) as a strong male is no
more. With Calvin Klein, Polo, Guess, Tommy Hilfinger, etc. all portraying
men and women in sexually charged and ambiguous circumstances the subtext,
which is rarely subtle ,is sex, sex, sex.
Society shifts over time. Photography is unique because of it's low cost
(for the masses) throughout history. Some would even say that the easy
availability of images has helped to propel society towards a vision of
perfection and youth. Women have more power and wealth in American society
now than ever before. Witness that 13 women have legitimate chances of
winning their respective state Governor's races. Now society still has a
long way to go but look at the strides made in a few decades. My mom was a
single working mother in the secretarial pool in 1970 who worked her way
through night school to get her BA and MBA. She is now 30 years later a
consultant on HPIAA. Did she hit glass ceilings, sexism, abuse, and other
things, yes of course. But now those apocryphal stories of being the only
women in a room and being asked to get coffee (which happened to her more
than once) are a thing of the past because most meetings have multiple women
and they won't even stand for it.
Do women (and minorities can also be substituted anywhere) still
experience problems, yes. Should they, no. Just look at the broadcast TV
images from the early 1970's, All in the Family, MASH and others. Now look
at shows like Judging Amy (never watch it), Providence, Crossing Delancey.
SO many new shows have strong female protagonists carrying the show alone or
as part of an ensemble cast. Things are changing, for women at least. I am
not sure minorities would agree with such a notion of improvement. But then
again look where America was in 1972. Segregation was still being fought and
other than Room 222 there were very few shows with African Americans in
positions of power or authority. Much less Latinos, Asians, etc. Now the
best selling musical genre is Urban Hip-hop and African-American imagery is
becoming a cultural touchstone of authenticity even for white kids from the
suburbs. Things are changing.
My younger sister who is in her 20's can't imagine listening to being told
she can't do something because of her sex, age or race. (she's white and has
dated minorities) She's been told she can't or shouldn't do things, (she
lives in the south) but she does them anyway. She has her BA and works with
children at the YMCA. Now the kids she teaches will be even more removed
from sexism. Is it a seamless road? No. Are all changes, changes for the
better? No, but the problems should be the topic for anther discussion,
off-line.
So I saw some great photography and some mediocre photography at the
Whitney Museum's exhibit of America including Vera Lutter's Pepsi sign in
what appeared to be a camera obscura print negative in Black and White. Plus
lot of other stuff. Some interesting some over-rated. I won't name names.
Plus they has a small exhibit of recent acquisition, all I can say is the
recent photography they've acquired can't hold a candle to the early
acquisitions in form, content or craft. Has anyone else seen these exhibits?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 1:34 AM
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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