Nude

[cowanw]

Thank you Bill, for your support. But I didn't interpret Charles' question as a kind of attack, but more as a question why - if I feel the male nude is sorely underrepresented - I am not contributing personally to the genre. I think it was an honest question and not intended to attack.



Frank, I don't think that is what Charles was implying, or at least I hope not. At face value, it was a reasonable question to ask, and so I offered an answer :-)

You are a good man,Charley Brown.

[klw]

This nudes thread has one very curious side effect: it reveals a lot about who the large format community is. I had to go back to November of 2015 to find a single photo that included a nude male figure (and I gave up looking around mid-2014 to hopefully find a second instance). Where are the Imogen Cunninghams of 2019?? (Or the Robt. Mapplethorpe's for that matter) Are there no women (or non-hetero men) in this community? I don't intend for these comments to be interpreted as negative - I simply find it very revealing and informative.

Why do you think this has to do with sexual orientation? Propably even more interesting: Why do you believe shooting nudes has to be related to sexuality in the first place?

[Charles S]

Thank you Bill, for your support. But I didn't interpret Charles' question as a kind of attack, but more as a question why - if I feel the male nude is sorely underrepresented - I am not contributing personally to the genre. I think it was an honest question and not intended to attack.

Frank, I don't think that is what Charles was implying, or at least I hope not. At face value, it was a reasonable question to ask, and so I offered an answer :-)

Thanks for not letting this erupt in a flame war. My comment was out of curiosity, not an attack or a reflection on this community.
Recently, on another gear / technical forum, a female photographer made a comment about feeling uncomfortable about how women were being portrayed. I presume this was because of the kind of images that were being posted, but I cannot say for sure. This poses a dilemma in terms of the freedom to express and explore subjects in a forum and being inclusive. I understood Paul's post in this direction.

My view is that LF format photography is done by a small and possibly shrinking community which is precious and worth protecting, though self-censorship on this forum if need be. However, my preference would be that we keep an open mind and see the variety of subjects posted on this forum primarily as a showcase of what is possible to accomplish with LF. I think it was very fitting that one of the members wanted to discuss the lens and technique used on a nude image I posted on this thread a couple of days ago. This is the value I get out of this forum and I would like to preserve. So, I regret having engaged in this discussion, which is a distraction from why I come here in the first place.

[paulbarden]

Why do you think this has to do with sexual orientation? Propably even more interesting: Why do you believe shooting nudes has to be related to sexuality in the first place?

I'll answer your questions with a question: how many of the photographs of the female body in this thread were made by women?

I regret having engaged in this discussion, which is a distraction from why I come here in the first place.

Its a shame you ended up regretting engaging in such a discussion. I would have thought that this community would welcome opportunities to discuss the philosophical aspects of why they do what they do. No?

[Tin Can]

As I already burned my bridges in this line of discussion...

Carry on

I'll answer your questions with a question: how many of the photographs of the female body in this thread were made by women?



Its a shame you ended up regretting engaging in such a discussion. I would have thought that this community would welcome opportunities to discuss the philosophical aspects of why they do what they do. No?

[Jim Jones]

This nudes thread has one very curious side effect: it reveals a lot about who the large format community is. I had to go back to November of 2015 to find a single photo that included a nude male figure (and I gave up looking around mid-2014 to hopefully find a second instance). Where are the Imogen Cunninghams of 2019?? (Or the Robt. Mapplethorpe's for that matter) Are there no women (or non-hetero men) in this community? I don't intend for these comments to be interpreted as negative - I simply find it very revealing and informative.

There need be no relation between nude photography and sexuality. Consider the nudes by Anne Brigman and Ruth Bernhard. Sexy? Perhaps, to some adolescent boys to whom everything is about sex.

[Vaughn]

There need be no relation between nude photography and sexuality....

Very true, there is no need for it, except, IMO, for purposes of commerce and maintaining the present level of society's discrimination against women through the objectification of the female body/form.

[Peter De Smidt]

Long experience shows that these types of discussions in this type of forum won't go anywhere good. There are many better venues for this type of discussion. If you don't like the pictures here, change the channel. Notions like 'objectification' are highly loaded blunderbusses, often deployed by people trying to justify subjective preferences.

If people are interested in how to empower people, including how not to do it, I recommend reading the book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff.

[Vaughn]

Unfortunately, The Coddling of the American Mind is not a great source of unbiased information/thought.

But you are correct, such discussions here usually do not end well.

[Peter De Smidt]

Unfortunately, The Coddling of the American Mind is not a great source of unbiased information/thought.

We'll have to differ about that. Jonathan Haidt has excellent academic credentials. Moreover, I just read his book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom where he talks a lot about my academic area, namely philosophy. He did a great job summarizing and explaining various philosophical points, something which isn't so easy to do, and his psychological claims didn't contradict anything I had in any of my psychology classes. So, of course it's possible for him to be mistaken about something, just as it's possible for you or I, but it's unlikely that he'd be stupidly wrong about his subject area. He doesn't just say what he believes. He explains why. Should he be dismissed because he holds opinions that you don't like? If all one has to do is to claim that someone is biased in order to dismiss everything that they say, then I'll simply point out that you are highly biased.

I've spent a number of years teaching the Philosophy of Sex, Love and Friendship at university. I've seen no inappropriate images in this thread. Do I like all of them? No. Could this thread be more encompassing? Sure, as could any collection.