Mise à nu

This is kinda cool:

“Mise à nu” by Reynauld Drouhin 

(click the link & hover your mouse over the picture)

However, I wish there were more variety. All these women at least seem approximately the same height and basic size. I think it would be a much more interesting “work” if it had men and women of various shapes and sizes and colors.

It reminds me of a book I used to have: XXX: 30 PornStar Portraits by Timothy Greenfield.

I found a page on tumblr—clothed-nude.tumblr.com—that has a lot of similar type pics, with mostly men—some women and a few couples. But they’re not necessarily the same pose. And, like most collections of male nudes, a fair number of the pictures are a bit porn-ish. I’ve seen other such clothed/nude pictures that were clearly porn, which is kind of interesting too, for much the same reason.

What I find most interesting is that some of the subjects look more comfortable in one or the other picture. Of course, some look almost the same—you know, their face, their expression. And that, to me, is not so interesting.

In this “work” (Mise à nu) it seems the artist has purposely chosen poses which are perhaps supposed to be neutral, and in which the expression is the same in both the clothed and nude pictures. But to me the subjects mostly seem stiff and uncomfortable.

I’ve seen other nudes that seem to take this neutral approach. It’s as if the artist is trying to not present an emotional expression, but rather just present the body. But I think that expressionless faces are almost impossible. I think we tend to either look for emotional content in faces or impose emotional content onto face.

I tend to find that unsatisfying in much the same way I find it unsatisfying to hear someone read a poem with a neutral sort of presentation. (I had a college professor who did that. I hated it. It all tended to be monotone except the end of each line would go up just a little in inflection.)

I do realize that in many of my pictures in this blog I have a similar, arguably neutral expression. So, maybe I’m not the best model. If I could ever find anyone else to actually pose for me (I’ve had a few people who’ve said they might be willing to, but it’s not happened yet), I’d be interested in trying this kind of thing.

Any takers?