Shooting the Nude

Using the nude as a subject has been around since photography was invented. The above photo is from 1839, taken by Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin, is one of the earliest examples. From the cave engravings in France about 15,000 years ago, to the current controversies in Australia over using the nudity of children, reproducing the human body in artistic ways is a grand human tradition.

So why is this photographer so nervous about his first nude subject?

On set, my heart skipped a beat when it was time to ask her to disrobe. What’s the proper etiquette for asking someone to take their clothes off in this situation? I think I just told her it was time to work.

I know some people think you’d be aroused by this, but I was just focused on getting the job done. I tried to treat her like a landscape, like a compositional element of the frame. I also tried to stare at her face or the computer monitor the whole time. I didn’t want to come off as the perverted photographer.

This is a 31 year-old man, not a 12 year-old kid who masturbates to girlie magazines. Is this the current mindset of the American male, that all representations of the nude female body are fodder for sexual pleasure? This photographer had to actually de-humanize the model in order to suppress his own desire.

This is what happens to a society which makes normal nudity a taboo.

Update: Esquire also offers the perspective of the nude model here.

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked