Posted on 07/22/2006 4:22:33 PM PDT by Pokey78
AMONG the tens of thousands of photographs uploaded to one of the internet’s biggest picture-sharing websites last month, two turned out to be remarkably popular. One showed a beautiful Icelandic blonde knitting herself a green scarf that was precariously wrapped around her nude torso; the other a female breast through a near-transparent blouse. Both were self-portraits taken by gifted amateur women photographers whose work has attracted hundreds of thousands of internet viewers. And each photograph ignited a furious debate about what one woman photographer has described as “the new trend for the enlightened, liberated woman of today . . . to be proudly naked on the internet”.
“Mona Lisa is finally jumping out of the frame, slapping Leonardo and painting herself,” declared Lola the Car Chick, a photographer who was among more than 11,000 viewers of the scarf shot by Rebekka Guoleifsdottir, a 28-year-old single mother from Reykjavik.
Yet accusations of narcissism, exhibitionism and feminist betrayal have dogged the emergence of a new breed of women photographers who are ignoring the supposed threats of internet stalkers and publicly posting nude self-portraits on the internet.
So combative were the comments on the breast picture published by a Dutch photographer known online as Solea that she dubbed the controversy “nipplegate”. Solea said last week: “I’ve had disturbing e-mails from a deranged person who was threatening me. But I like to use myself as a model and I will never stop.”
The new vogue for risqué female self-portraiture is in the artistic vanguard of a much broader digital phenomenon that has begun to attract the attention of America’s cultural establishment. On the photo-sharing website Flickr.com, which claims 4m users, there were more than 620,000 photographs last week filed under the label “me” (there were 12,000 more labelled “moi”).
So many amateur photographers are posting self-portraits online that one prominent New York gallery has opened a digital exhibition displaying collections of Flickr photos.
“We are interested in the world’s view of what a self- portrait is,” said Peter MacGill of the Pace/MacGill gallery. “At best these pictures represent new approaches, new dynamics, perhaps even a new aesthetic.”
Yet they are also triggering venomous exchanges between women photographers who use their bodies to make artistic or political statements, and critics who complain that the resulting pictures pander to male instincts, demean other women and are little more than ploys to gain internet attention.
“What attracted me to Flickr was the amount of high-quality photographers,” wrote John Mueller, of Los Angeles, in an online forum. “But lately it’s seemed to be overrun by people (women, mostly) taking half- naked pictures of themselves.”
Jessica, of California, warned that “unfortunately there are more and more people trying to get attention via their nipples”. And Jamie Dickerson challenged male photographers: “Post pictures of yourselves (in the nude), so some of us women can treat you like pieces of top choice, grade A meat.”
The trend towards self-exposure has already claimed one notable victim — Tamara Hoover, a Texas teacher, lost her job last month when school officials found she had appeared topless in photographs posted by her other half to Flickr.
Hoover argued that the photographs had “high artistic merit”, but was told she had violated the “moral standard” expected of Texas teachers.
The controversy is causing unresolved headaches for Flickr and other website administrators who are keen not to repel the huge numbers of family photographers increasingly storing shots of their new babies, weddings and holidays in virtual albums online.
Flickr guidelines theoretically bar the public display of “photos that include frontal nudity, genitalia and/or ‘intimate moments’.” Yet the website has grown so rapidly that policing millions of shots is impractical and partial nudity has become commonplace.
Nor does it seem likely that censorship would restrict the women who have found both artistic and personal liberation in the technologies that enable them to show their work — and their bodies — to the world. Mitxi B Navarro was an early Flickr member — known as Selkie — who made a mark with her explicit self-portraits. Badly injured in a car accident, she turned her camera on herself because “I was laid up and had only myself as a model,” she said last week. “My work is hardly pornographic, but uses nudes as a tool for a larger statement. What I portray is issues of disability as well as the sexual politics of being a woman and a single mother.”
Her work proved too raw for Flickr, which barred her pictures from public view. Yet she has since resurfaced: her most recent posting shows her topless with a garish scar painted across her stomach. The shot is called “Pretty on the inside”.
“I don’t think that artistic nude images are bad for women, as they either celebrate our beauty or explore our complexities,” said Vanita, a fortysomething Houston-based user of Flickr. “And censoring nude photographs is not going to be the silver bullet that makes the lot of womankind better.”
Yet for all the enthusiasm for nude self-portraits, Vanita may still represent a majority of women when she says she is not yet ready for greater exposure. “I would find it disconcerting for family, friends and associates in real life to see me naked, no matter how nice I looked,” she said.
“the new trend for the enlightened, liberated woman of today . . . to be proudly naked on the internet”.
Sounds like a pretty healthy trend to me!!!
I was very temped to post some fantastic photos. But I decided to stand almost mute.
Wasn't Kerry's daughter's boob on display through a sheer top a few years ago?
The nice thing about nekkid feminist pix on the Internet is that you don't have to hear them talk.
But that one, if I recall, was kind of 'bad nude' as they say on Seinfeld.
I don't get the fascination. There's been a ton of porn available on the net for a decade.
Or so I heard........
"Vanita" is the perfect name for someone who does this.
Dang it, where's the pictures??
*grin*
Here you go -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebba/171966912/
Yep.
Amazingly, they blamed the photographer and gave such a BS story, that I feel its insulting to ones intelligence to even repeat it.
Knitting anyone?
I am SHOCKED, shocked, I tell you.
I guess if you can have any dork that can put two sentences together become a "blogger", then this is the natural extension for those that want to grasp at Internet fame but have nothing intellectual to offer.
"Mona Lisa is finally jumping out of the frame, slapping Leonardo and painting herself," declared Lola the Car Chick, a photographer who was among more than 11,000 viewers of the scarf shot by Rebekka Guoleifsdottir, a 28-year-old single mother from Reykjavik.Mona Lisa was nude? Lola the Car Chick -- another triumph of public education.
Yet accusations of narcissism, exhibitionism and feminist betrayal have dogged the emergence of a new breed of women photographers who are ignoring the supposed threats of internet stalkers and publicly posting nude self-portraits on the internet."Dogged" seems appropriate when "feminist" occurs in the sentence.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.