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Nudes First Takes ... a project continues
Send me your nude photos has become a common term among online users
Nudity in photography exists since the invention of photography. And that makes absolute sense, considering human nature. Around 1900 nude photographs became mass produced. The time around 1900 is today considered an era of tension, prudery and hostility towards the body. But it was also the epoch in which modernity began. People freed themselves from conventions and developed a new relationship to their bodies. Return to nature! was the slogan of the life reform movement. Which also meant: Take your clothes off!
The nude became public and thus entered a new phase of cultural perception. Photographs of all kinds of nudities developed into a mass commodity that was distributed by the millions.
In the early days of the new industry, there were seemingly harmless pictures that could be purchased by mail order or under the counter and that circulated at stag parties. They were traded under euphemisms such as "studies", "subjects artistiques" and "Études d'après nature" and showed women in strenuous mythological poses, as Leda, Fortuna, Venus, mermaid or Potiphar's wife.
It was about business, but also about education and emancipation. Nudity, which had been considered disreputable a moment ago, was now celebrated as an expression of a new, "natural" existence.
The reformers of life wanted to lead people to "health, strength, beauty, performance and resistance". Their impetus turned against uptight ancestors and "against the elements, diseases and the harmfulness of culture".
The artistic staging of naked bodies is one of the supreme disciplines in photography. In 1855, the first nude model posed in front of the camera. The enthusiasm for erotic motifs goes back thousands of years.
Since the invention of the camera, photographs of naked people have been irrevocably anchored in the art scene.
There are no limits to the art of nude photography. Aesthetics and sensuality enter a symbiosis without taboo
"Female nudity must be given to men with a teaspoon, not with a scoop". Coco Chanel.
The world is naked, nudity in any form is available without limits. This is a loss of false prudery and beautiful charm at the same time. It is probably also a loss for the serious nude photography, which lost part of its speciality through its filthy sister, pornography.
The objection that artistic nude photography can concentrate on its essence, on art, is only partially correct. Because art or pornography to the nude is always, in this way or the other, inscribed with sex. And be it through the emphasis on its negation.
Not only in writings, but also in pictures, it becomes clear how much the (beauty) ideals have changed in only 100 years.
Many photographers took nude pictures mainly to sell them as samples to painters. One of the most famous early nudes is the spinal nude of Eugène Durieu (photographer) and Eugène Delacroix (painter). The two Frenchmen worked together for a series of nudes. Whether Delacroix arranged the poses while Durieu exclusively used the technique is unknown, but likely.
"I gaze with passion and without tiring at these photographs of naked people, this wonderful poem, the human body. - Eugène Delacroix
Under the mantle of iconographical references that ranged from the art of Greco-Roman antiquity through the Renaissance and Classicism, photography has slowly conquered nudity.
The avant-gardes of the 1920s and 1930s marked a turning point. Politically, it was a time of upheaval, for example, the Russian Revolution or the Weimar Republic.
Fashion finally freed women from their corsets. An enlightened approach to the human body, to eroticism and sexuality was the result.
Send me your nude photos has become a common term among online users. Many terms in net culture are derived from the English language, including the word "nudes".
Especially in social media, however, the term is increasingly used in many languages like a common word. If you regularly use social media apps , you may have been asked to send a few "nudes" of yourself.
The photo gallery on this page is now almost 20 years old. All pictures were taken with an analog camera on film. In the meantime I lived in London, Paris, Costa da Caparica and Ibiza. I became an expert in fine art photography and the art market, I was rich and then poor and then rich again, I learned to play guitar, and I now plan to come back to nude photography when the pandemic dies (literally) down.
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