Neutral nude?

           Working behind a camera brings an awareness of one’s observations. Even with the mechanical nature of a camera, the human aspect of perception and curiosity leaks through it. Why do you take photos of the things that you do? How do you determine the placement and focus? As an active photographer, you start to ask these questions a lot more often than the average hobbyist or person who owns a camera does. The role of aesthetics becomes secondary to the role of communication and perception of what is in the photograph.

           The Nude in fine art photography is a subject I have always had mixed feelings about. The idea of photographing a nude body that is not my own has always felt terrifying and ethically conflicting as I am not the body that is in front of the camera. Historically, the nude in paintings and photography has always been of women in certain ways I could never understand. My relationship with my own body has always been conflicting, only recently I have started to form my own views on it, despite the ever-growing pressure of the society to mould it in a conventional and exploitative way. My recent work is heavily influenced by the naked body and my growing relationship with it. The male gaze upon a female body is something that is over-represented in the arts; my work exposes the neutral gaze within the subject matter. My work Cement Bodiesis The Nude that I want more people to see.

           The naked female form in art has always held a significant value. Often deemed beautiful, rash, controversial or judgemental, the female nude has always been a tool and object of many works. John Berger claims that

“A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.” (Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972)

This view in turn makes it want to be used as an object. This view of the nude has the presumed male spectator. This is the main view that people have employed in the society, including females about their own bodies. Although the male is seen as the active and female as the passive gaze (Jacobsson, 1999), with my project I try to encourage the female gaze to become more active; combining both gazes into a neutral one.This view of appeal to his sexuality (Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972) is restricting and degrading. It has no corelation with her, the one who is being looked at. This is being said as an observation that has impacted my life before the observation was made.

“Male look is the gaze on women in a position from the camera, the spectator comes to identify with this male gaze and objectifies the women on the screen,”  (Jacobsson, 1999)

as written by Eva-Maria Jacobsson where she describes the male gaze withing the film industry. Similar to photography, the film industry operates with a powerful tool- camera. A camera which reflects on the view of what is behind it- the photographer. Using the seemingly ‘true’ and ‘factual’ qualities of the medium, a dangerous perspective can be created.

“The scopophilic cinematic pleasure is taking the woman as an object and subjecting her to a controlling and curious gaze, the male gaze. Scopophilia arises from the pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight.”  (Jacobsson, 1999)

With my work I want to minimise or completely erase these notions, especially after gaining a critique from a tutor about the intimate and sexual nature of the nudes I had already sketched and photographed. This became an urgent driving force as I did not see the need for this after having explained my beginning process for this idea. The project was not about the pleasure or desire of looking.

Traditionally nude is described as

“a naked human figure as the subject of a painting, sculpture, or photograph”  (Press, 2022)

when you place it near art. It has also evolved to be variations of colour tones, explicit photographs, and generally nakedness. Berger’s claims are from 1972 but I think they are still relevant to the discussion in the present day. As a young female myself, I have started this project to resolve issues surrounding the view of the nude. My personal reasons are linked with the obsessive sexuality of the female figure and the lack of other subject matter that comes with it. With some toxic body positivity trends, and general fixation on the appearance, I have created my work to reflect on the nude as a neutral piece of building or machinery. My focus lies on the function of the body and how the aesthetics of it has seemingly swapped places of importance with it. The function of the body goes beyond the yet another obsession with reproduction in female bodies. I want to emphasize the strength and fragility of the human body and what it is capable of. My work expresses the need to change (add to it) the perspective of the female nude and to invite other bodies to see this strength within themselves. To stare back at ourselves with our own gaze instead of the male.

In order to create my work, I was inspired and guided by 5 artists.

When I think of fine art photography, Edward Weston is one of the first photographers that comes to mind. Edward Weston saw landscape as the nude. Using abstract forms and visual play at hand, in his series of Dunes it appears as if he played with the male gaze in a complete opposite way. Playing with associations and abstraction, he lets the viewer draw the parallels between what they want to see and what they actually see.

Using a similar approach on perspective and abstraction, I seek the same late recognition of the subject matter, and emphasis on texture and form.

“Edward Weston’s striking, semi-abstract black-and-white photographs expanded the medium’s aesthetic and conceptual boundaries.”  (Press A. , 2022)

These were the boundaries I was looking to expand on within my work as well.

Bill Brandt and his distorted perspective to creative surrealist photographs using body parts underlines a drastic view on perception. Although the

“Perspectives of Nudes in 1961- a collection of photographs produced in the 1940s and 1950s- marks the point at which Brandt’s stature as an art world figure came onto assured footing”  (Droth & Messier, 2021)

you can see a distinct journey through finding these new perspectives in within the camera itself. For instance, you can compare some of these nudes with the others in terms of how they can be perceived. Brant uses heavy contrast as his signature style which makes the photographs dramatic, if you place a nude as the subject.

There is something very different in the East Sussex Coast and St. Cyprien, France photographs compared to the Campden Hill ones. On the left side, there is an attention to form making it abstract, while on the top right the body becomes a caricature of itself. Harsh, aggressive, and uneven, even when the nude itself seems to be relaxed. The bottom right Campden Hill seems like the opposite of the top one. Soft, dark but still harsh. The tittle of the photobook suggests a careful and considerate decision-making process, calling it Perspectives of Nudes. Although my work tries to shift its gaze away from the Campden hill visuals of nudes and focus on similar approaches to East Sussex Coast and St. Cyprien, France, what Bill Brandt has done is truly interesting. The shift of the perspective comes from the need to photograph large and great ceilings, which in turn made him discover the distortion.  (Bishai, 2022) The process of my work resonates with; with how you can discover interesting perspectives along the way. My focus is on the idea I want to share but my process is a form of gambling as I never know what I will find and focus on from then on.

Ana Mendieta has inspired me first-hand with the Sillueta series as a metaphor for her absence from her birthplace. The research on the series led an unconscious search for understanding. Understanding of where I belong.

“To question our culture is to question own existence, our human reality. This is turn becomes a search, a questioning of who we are and how we will realize ourselves.” (Remick, 2022)

This resonates with me as I am too an immigrant and the way she used her body to perform her emotions give it another layer of deeper understanding what it is like to live and be a body. How intimate the relationship one does or does not have with one’s body and their background. Although her work is performative, the use of camera was intriguing to me, especially in the series of bodily distress from Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints—face) (1972).

“Beyond demonstrating her bodily distress, the distortion of her face across the various images disturbs the work’s function as a portrait.” (Remick, 2022)

My work tries to lose the function as a nude which grew as an interest to visually accent after researching Mendieta. Her approach to interdisciplinary work inspired me to go beyond the medium. Although my work is not performative at all, I think it is important to mention Mendieta as someone who has influenced my work, as I would not have thought of using the body as a tool for metaphors and transformed the suffering of the female body into a piece of work that I could put out there from a personal perspective.

The urge to go beyond photography was something I was looking forward to my personal practice. My growing interest in the nude and its representations took led me to be interested in sculpture. More precisely, on how I could combine sculpture with photography, or if I could even combine them. These two practices are very different which makes it interesting and challenging to see how I could transform both. This is how I discovered Lucy McRae, the body architect.

“A thought leader who is exploring the cultural and emotional impacts science and cutting-edge technology has on the redesigning of the body.” (McRae, 2022)

She uses art as a mechanism to signal and provoke our ideologies and ethics about who we are and where we are headed.  (McRae, 2022) McRae uses installation, film, photography, artificial intelligence, edible technology to blur the boundaries of multiple disciplines. Her work is highly interdisciplinary. McRae’s Compression Cradle is a piece of work that seeks to idealize about the future of touch and the relationship humans will have with bodies and connectedness.

"WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A REVOLUTION OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN" (McRae, 2022)

is a quote of McRae’s that stuck with me at the beginning process of my work. This is an approach I tried to take on it as well. Although mainly referring to going against the male gaze, the most important aspect was to show what it means to be alive in the body that is subjected to the gaze and to show a view that would combat it. Overall, her interdisciplinary work is driven by her ideas, which is something that has been a force I tried to employ on my project.

The most sculptural nod I give to Berlinde Breukere. Her work focuses mainly of the body by the medium of wax, animal skins, hair, textiles, metal and wood.  (Hauser&Wirth, 2022) She creates haunting forms that show the helplessness of a body. What I found interesting, and uplifting was the perspective Breukere employed- the beauty of the fragility and helplessness. Breukere’s work seeks the limits between the visual representation of physical and emotional pain.

Breukere’s sculptures deal with the viewers emotions and mind in a way that makes you question and wonder about what you are truly looking at. The materiality itself brings out an emotional impact so strong that I cannot put it into words. Inspired by the metaphorical use of the materials and forms in Breukere’s work, I employed a form of sculpture to my work. My main focus was on building materials and what they represented in the body as a structure. Although having no experience in sculpture before, I attempted the bold shapes of a human using cement and plaster, with destruction being the leading action. Leaving the sculpture, as well as the installation outside for a week to be impacted by the world, was inspired by the materiality of Breukere. To metaphorically let it be influenced by the outside added a layer of reality and meaning to my work.

           Working with sculptural aspects in itself was different from what I normally do.  Driven by the force to operate with my hands and to mould the body to them destroy it, I did not think more of it. Sculpture and nude are aspects that immediately draw to the classic sculptural interpretation. Using building materials reflects on the architectural side of it. Sculpture transforms into an installation. Richard Dien Winfield claimed that sculpture is a proof that some arts are dead.  (Winfield, 2002) Reflecting on how sculpture is restricted to a certain area, the immobile and mute quality, and inability to

“present an isolated single moment, devoid of the progress of a living action interacting with the changing context in which it proceeds,”  (Winfield, 2002)

is a very narrow view of what role sculpture could play in the contemporary world.

“Sculpture’s restriction to the immobile, mute spatial form of the body seems especially confining.” (Winfield, 2002)

These are the exact qualities of interest for my project. The qualities that underline the inability to express views using sculptural additions to my work. Using sculptural connection as a metaphor for silence and inability to change the narrative is emphasizing materially a hard aspect of the project.

           Neutrality is something I want to achieve with Cement Bodies. Neutral in the sense of the subject matter. With this being one of the goals, it feels restrictive to limit it. An important aspect is to bring the viewer into the discussion through their own personal lens. Cement Bodies comes from a personal experience of being an objectified body. There is nothing neutral about this issue. What I tried to do different from the

“Non-neutrality plays a crucial role in explaining how speakers and their perspectives gain social visibility,” (Stanley & Beaver, 2021)

is to create a quiet and solid piece of work without the layer of performance which is present when speaking to reach the audience. With these issues being talked about and discussed, I present my work with this neutral layer that is stoic and monumental. It does not intimidate or wants to prove anyone wrong; it simply exists and asks the viewer to consider it be important. With this solid and monumental view, it is meant to encourage others to view it as the norm and everyday present- like buildings in the street or classical sculptures of the human form.

           With all the context I am putting in my work, it feels like I am only at the beginning. The project started as a need to represent a frustrated reality through the means of an artistic practice. The research process has been truly insightful. Appropriating the right terms and subject to my own piece of work has let me have a voice at the important table of discussion. I found that there are multiple aspects of the nude and male gaze, and how I am reluctant to define a female gaze. The term neutral gaze is a subjected term I have created to emphasize the way I want to liberate bodies and our perceptions of them, by focusing on the functionality of it (outside reproductive). The male gaze in itself is something I still need to wrap my head around, as I don’t want to accuse men of creating it, my interests lie in removing it as the default.

My work is a work in progress, but I did enter it in a site-specific installation that was at an open space, in a cement pit. This choice highlighted many of the structural and sculptural aspects of my research while it eliminated the most important one- it being an abstract body. I had to use the means of language to lead more to the context I wanted to. This in turn made me create a neutral descriptor. Unlike my inspirations, I took the work outside and made it work with the site. Overall, I think I have a long way to go to formulate a more formal opinion about Cement Bodies. Working with the research, the process, and in communication with tutors, fellow students, and friends, has changed the narrative and my own perspective on it multiple times. I think it is a wonderful thing that can happen but deep down I seek to understand better what it is I am trying to do and how I can elevate it to a professional level.

Noun Gaze 1.1 [in singular] (in literary theory) a particular perspective taken to embody certain aspects of the relationship between observer and observed, especially as reflected in the way in which an author or film director (unconsciously or otherwise) directs attention.https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/gaze

P.S.

- To note: the female gaze is not the same male gaze being used by a female and looking at men in the sexually aggressive way.

- Not necessarily just cis gender women.