The history of the reclining nude in art is long and often honored. Or, depending on the time and place, dishonored and denigrated as pornography.
In previous posts I followed a little of history and shared details surrounding one famous work.
With this post I would like to look at the reclining nude as a subject in photography in four distinctly different styles. I'll begin with the Pictorlialists.
In the early days of the 20th century USA censorship boards managed what the public could see and read. This had an important impact on how the reclining nude was treated in photography. It came down to this - if an image of a nude was clear and sharp, it would be censored. If an image looked like "art", if it was shot with a soft focus lens, then the chances were that such a photograph would remain uncensored.
Clarence White and his friends and colleagues photographed reclining nudes. The images made using a soft focus lens were shown publicly. Sharp images were privately held until surprisingly recently.
Those photographers who made sharp images often disfigured or scratched away the face. A prime example being the surviving works of E.J.Bellocq. Many of his negatives have removed the models faces. They are clearly scratched. His images were censored.
So it's unsurprising to me that even now, images of the reclining nude are difficult for critics and viewers in the US.
Sally Mann's "Venus after school" is particularly problematic for the gatekeepers of morals in the public space. In her autobiography "Hold Still" Mme Mann writes of her relief to learn the FBI wasn't going to treat her the way they had Jock Sturgess and raid her home to remove any and all "offending" materials.
For a couple decades there was a photographer who had quite an impact on nude photography around the world. He was very famous, sold lots of books, made a few movies, and photographed ad campaigns for some of the biggest luxury goods houses on the Continent. David Hamilton is said to have been inspired by the works of Lucas Cranach the Elder, which indicates his approach and style were based in part on well established art forms.
Each time I visit the Galleria Borghese in Rome I climb the stairs and head to a room that's far away from just about everything. It's there that one particular Cranach is found. Displayed next to it are paintings in a similar style by other artists. But it's the Cranach that holds my attention. Every single time. It's called "Venus and Cupid with a honeycomb."
It's now impossible for me not to see the parallels between the Cranach paintings and M. Hamilton's photographs. Art informing photography. And yet, that's not at all what the photographer is presently remembered for.
David Hamilton's choice of subject acted like a lightening rod for bad things to happen. In 2005 in the UK a man was arrested for having a collection of images that included those made by the famous photographer. In 2016 the photographer was accused of inappropriate behavior by four of his previous models. He was shortly after found dead in his apartment in the 15eme Arrondissement in Paris.
The drama continued after M.Hamilton's death. Olivier Mathieu wrote on his blog, in Defense of David Hamilton (a site that has recently been taken down) that it might have been a case of murder, not suicide. Conversations about the merits of Hamilton's work as art have stopped, to be supplanted by many public figures taking a strong moralist stance against the dead photographer.
While David Hamilton's works from the 1970's and 1980's played a strong role in the conversation of "is it art or is it pornography", there was seldom any question about which side Playboy centerfolds came down on.
And yet, if we look at these images from the perspective of history, craft, lighting, and composition, I'm not so sure some of these works shouldn't be considered full blooded honest to gawd geez this is beautiful art.
Ken Marcus, one of many now famous Playboy photographers, spoke about what it took to light, compose a scene, and expose a piece of film. He talked about the importance of 1/3rd an f-stop and getting everything exactly correct. Here is just one definitely NSFW image that illustrates how, as a photographer, Ken got everything, every detail, every nuance "correct."
Which brings me to something I hadn't fully considered before. That is that I find myself living during a time of self-censorship. I've said it before and I'll say it again; the subject of the reclining nude, while being a well-found, well-respected art form for at least 3 thousand years, it is something I could never bring myself to explore photographically.
I grew up in a time with the censorship boards were being shut down, but their influence remained strong. I grew up in a time when a photo-lab would call the police if they found nude images on a roll of film you brought in to have developed. I grew up in a time when American culture was calling into question any and all restrictions, limits, barriers, only to live to see the social pendulum swing in recent decades to the far right with the re-installation of restrictions, re-setting of hard limits, and the rebuilding of social and cultural barriers to artistic expression and appreciation.
Meanwhile, here in Europe things haven't (yet?) gone so hard right. I have the opportunity to see, appreciate, and research some of the best expressions of any art form the world has ever seen. One of the things that strikes me most these days is that history and time have a way of leeching away details that might be important at the time a work is created.
I'll give a couple examples of what I mean by that.
When we look at a work by Caravaggio, do we know, and if we do, do we care that he was a pimp and murderer? Writing this exactly the way I just did exposes the moral, ethical, and cultural conditioning that I find myself subjected to.
Do we know and care that
Fransisco Goya heard voices and was mentally ill? Was his craziness a "good" thing or a "bad" thing? Or is there "something" about his art that makes us feel as if he were actually and after all a great artist?
Much more recently, do we know or do we care that Salvador Dali supported the Spanish Fascist Franco? Well, actually, I do. It's partly due to the fact that Spanish Fascism still lays just below the cultural and political surfaces of Spain. It's impossible to ignore, actually. When Catalunya has the power to make kings (figuratively speaking) I have the opportunity to remember the role Franco played in murdering tens of thousands of people in and around Barcelona. The wounds have not healed.
Similarly, do we know or do we care about how poorly Picasso treated the women in his life? Or do we stress his "goodness" in remembering the role he played in saving the fabulous Prado art collection from certain destruction by advancing Franco Fascist and German Nazi forces in 1939? Perhaps these two examples are too recent for time to have leeched away the disturbing sub-text of two large artistic bodies of work?
All this gives me some idea of what might happen to currently controversial photographic works. I am certain that society and culture will do what society and culture has often done. It will sift through the social-cultural dramas of the present time and get to the essence of what will by then be (perhaps dramatically) different socially and culturally views.
I hope that someone, sometime, somewhere will see it good to rise the photographic reclining nude above the demeaning word of "pornography" to more fully appreciate excellence and stunningly beautiful images as an artistic expression that paintings already can be.
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