Naked and unashamed

I really want to take more nude photos. Every time I tell people that, I always get a funny look as if I'm some apervert. We are all perverts in one sense or another. It's our horny nature that allows us to populate the species. Think about the most conservative grandmother. She wasn't always like that. At some time in her life, she decided to get her funky groove on. That's how she became a mom. Still, wanting to take nude photos has nothing to do with sexuality. Of course, there is a sexual nature about nude photography.

Sigmund Freud would agree with me that sexuality is part of the human experience. Art seeks to express and reflect human emotions and experience, so to have art without sexuality is to have an incomplete picture of the human condition. But again, my desire to take nude photos is not because I want to become a porn King or because I want to do something vulgar. I believe the human body, especially the female human body, is one of nature's greatest forms.

Nude art is one of the longest-lived traditions, yet people still get a bit uncomfortable about the idea of actually creating it. A friend of mine let me borrow his photo studio but silently freaked out when I told him that I wanted to get a nude model. If I ask friends to model for me naked, which I've done once or twice, I always get a kind of suspicious gaze. Since I am naturally a bit shy, I don't really try to push the issue. Maybe I just need to be more persuasive without becoming creepy. That's really hard to do.

If you've been following these posts, you know that it is not my policy to keep an air of pretense. Most people would gasp at the idea of exposing such imperfection. We've all been taught that we should be bold, decisive, and unrelenting in our pursuit of whatever it is that we are after. We're taught only to show perfection. I think it's all a bunch of rubbish. 90% or more of life is spent in pursuit of perfection. It's like when I used to appear on some TV shows with a Japanese pop band. We spent weeks rehearsing for the performance of just one song. On the day of the show, we sat in the dressing room for hours and hours waiting. When it was time to perform, our moment was over in roughly 3.5 minutes. It's cool that people could enjoy that short performance, but there's a whole big story behind how we got to that 3.5 minutes, and it's not always pretty.

I once got lost on the way to a rehearsal for a globally televised event. The rehearsal grounds were huge, and there was no staff working outside to guide me to where I needed to be. I was lost in a circle of hell for more than an hour, trying to find out where I had to go. There was no cell phone signal, so I couldn't call anyone. By the time I finally figured out where I had to be, rehearsal was finished. I was in a panic. We did a great job despite the rough spots on the way. I love the rough spots in between. Those are the real stories. Sorry for getting sidetracked. I thought about all the people who would be making fun of me because I was too shy to assert myself and ask people to pose nude for me.

Once, a dear and beautiful friend of mine, Traci, was invited to do a photo shoot for a magazine. The shoot was to be done nude. She asked me if I wanted to come along because she knew I was interested in taking photos and also in new photography. She is also a painter and artist so she understands the mindset. Of course, I agreed and tagged along. It was magnificent. Traci, of course, was stunning in form and presence. Seeing my interest in learning, the main photographer never complained about me being there, and I did my best to stay out of his way. The photo you see here is one of the pictures from that session. I had to blur out parts because social media would block my post if I didn't. I always thought it was strange that you could show all of the flesh but none of the nipple. What's the difference?

When I look at this picture, I don't see eroticism. Instead, I see a kind of bold expressionism. It's like Traci is a wild spirit sunbathing on concrete and enjoying a moment of pure freedom.