The greatest mistakes/clichés in nude photography

[Jamie123]

... I think you are projecting your own prejudice onto his work there ... there are many of full frontal Degas nudes

I agree. And if you 'study' Gustave Courbet's "L'originie du monde" there are hardly any 'limits' to what is shown.

 

[Sparrow]

... I'd probably best not mention Tracy Emin's stuff for la Biennale di Venezia at this point

 

[Jamie123]

I think we should distinguish between the genre of 'nude photography' and photography depicting nude people. They're not really one and the same, IMO. Larry Clark's 'Tulsa' contains lots of nude people, sometimes even involved in sexual acts, yet I don't think anyone would refer to those pictures as 'nudes' in relation to the genre. These photos aren't about the nude body at all, certainly not in the sense that some photos of, say, Helmut Newton are.

Nudeness, especially if it's unflattering, often conveys a sense of trust and intimacy in a picture so it can certainly make or break a photo even though the photo isn't about the nude body per se. When it does succeed in establishing that sense of intimacy it can hardly ever be a cliché.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Well said, mabelsound.

Thank you!....

 

[filmfan]

"A woman's nudity is found in her face" -Helmut Newton (I think?)

Anyways, I have always liked the out-of-focus nudes. I believe they communicate a degree of mystery by making you use your imagination more to fill in the details... sadly, this must be a cliche to some degree or other but i can't help it

 

[Richard G]

Anyone seen the video on the making of the Pirelli calendar? All the talk and preliminary shots held some promise and then the final result was nearly always banal. There was an interesting dappled shade picture of a kneeling, rotated M Jovovich, but then the usual contortionist ridiculous one of her stretched between rocks.

The generic woman, as noted above, is almost invariably disappointing. Jeanloup Sieff, however, is interesting in his more architectural shots of usually the not fully nude: even without the model's face something of her good humor seems not far away in cooperating to adopt the posture that gives the graphic structure of the image. Photography v nude pictures.

 

[NLewis]

The whole 1980s "heroin chic" naked druggies stuff seems manipulative today. I'm talking about Nan Goldin etc. There was a time there in the 1980s when arty porn was all the rage among the gallery-peeping set. Think Nobuyoshi Araki during his bondage phase, or Mapplethorpe. This has been around forever -- look at various "Leda and the Swan" paintings from centuries ago. I guess bestiality is OK if it's a bird (???) and a Greek myth is involved. Whatever. Maybe I just like real porn rather than pretentious arty porn.

http://ungracefulanimals.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/leda.jpg

 

[ianstamatic]

I always underexpose my nudes ...

 

[hendriphile]

How about, nude with bad boots shot with 35mm lens from distortable perspective? 😱 (My bad )

Said to myself, "There's nothing bad about those!"
Then realized I'd misread the word "boots." 😀