Saturday, January 13, 2018

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors



I like the irony present in this image: usually, you'd expect the one peeking over the fence to be trying to catch a glimpse of the nudist(s), and not the other way around! This is also the sort of image that tends to blur the line between voyeurism and exhibitionism - the subject is engaging in voyeurism, while appearing nude on camera renders him an exhibitionist. So it's a depiction of voyeurism, that becomes exhibitionism when it's viewed! (Quantum physics, anyone?). In my mind, they're just two sides of the same coin.

It also demonstrates my controversial point about the perfect symbiosis between voyeurism/exhibitionism and nudism: I don't see how any visual document of nudism could be produced that would be immune to the potential for an exhibitionist interpretation. Photography itself is inextricably linked to these practices. Once you're creating images of nudity for other people to view...

Of course, whether or not you interpret the nudity as sexual is a critical point. But no matter how innocent the nudity may be, there will always be someone interpreting it sexually. It's inevitable. And it's also human nature. But that doesn't bother me, because I don't actually think there's anything wrong with it. As I've said before, seeing a nude and thinking sex does not create sex in the nude. It does, however, increase the net total pleasure being experienced in the world, and that can only be a good thing.

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