Click Magazine
A photograph does not represent a nude body, but the specific body that stands in front of the photographer. This distinction is responsible for the fact that we are all more suspicious and cautious when asked to pose nude in front of a camera than to allow someone to paint us. In the first case, the subject is ourselves; in the second, we have simply lent our body for a representation.
Painters practice by depicting the nude body. They study proportions, texture, and colors. Photographers don't need to study the details. However, they have a harder time capturing the whole through the details. Nude photography helps photographers to study more deeply the function of photography and its relationship with the reality of the subject. Precisely because the nude carries the heavy legacy of painting and at the same time the equally heavy presence of the voyeuristic dimension of the photographic lens, a clear relationship of the photographer with the subject is imperative. In short, in photography, it is inherently inconsistent for a model to pose in front of a group of photographers for study, as happens in fine arts schools.
When the late Manos Hadjidakis in one of the “Cafés” of the magazine “Tetarto” gathered us, a small group of photographers, to talk about the nude, he asked a question, perhaps funny but also very pertinent: “When you photograph someone nude,” he said, “do you do it before or after?”. And he was right. Such a question would not arise in painting.
The first thing a photographer must decide is why he is photographing something. And this will partly determine how. If this is true for every photographic subject, in the case of the nude it is of paramount importance. The nude tends to “expose” the photographer, leaving him exposed, because it is in itself a charged subject that more easily occupies the space at the expense of the photographer's presence.
In life, and let’s not forget that photography has life as its raw material, the presence of the nude is not self-evident. It is linked to certain conditions and follows certain rules. Therefore, the presence of a nude body must be justified and then transcended. Again, if this is true for all subjects, in the case of the nude it is even harder to achieve. This probably explains why there are few instances of great photographers who have systematically and successfully dealt with the nude. And as much as I search, I hardly find anyone who succeeded more than the Englishman Bill Brandt, and not in all his nude photographs.
To succeed in nude photography, the photographer must acknowledge his starting point, e.g., attraction to certain bodies, repulsion to others, love for a body, compassion or tenderness for others, depiction of time on bodies, underground or apparent eroticism, curiosity about the process, fascination with the unprotected and vulnerable revealed by nudity, or anything else that made him choose to reject clothing. Then he must attempt to overturn or balance his motivations with a counterbalancing tendency. Brandt, for example, achieved this by placing female nude bodies in a space of everyday familiarity, in front of a bed or a table, for instance, but subverting their natural presence through theatrical lighting, an expressionless form, and a distorting angle of view.
In photography, no subject can be a mere pretext, but neither is any sufficient in itself. And the more charged a subject is (and the nude undoubtedly is), the greater the demands on it.
Plato Rivellis