By John H. Lawrence, The New Orleans Art Review - Nov/Dec 1995
In Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" one of the characters takes great pride in a certain possession: a copy of a photograph showing a naked woman and a Shetland pony. It is reported to be the earliest pornographic photograph. Though Vonnegut's construct is fiction, it makes a point about photographs of naked human beings: a fascination with that subject has existed since photography's beginnings and that fascination remains continuous and unbroken. Examples of it, from this century and last, are displayed in "Naked: a Body of Work" on view at A Gallery For Fine Photography.
Obviously, not all (probably not even most) pictures showing human nakedness are pornography. The unclothed body has been among the most enduring examples of artistic classicism, but as a subject, it still pushes a lot of people's buttons. The subject of nakedness is a charged one, and when addressed in a photograph, the voltage oven is turned up. Though never totally "truthful," photography at its optical root is an unidealizing medium. Perhaps the description, the literalness of the product is just too much to take in some instances, and people turn away in revulsion or become riveted in fascination. An overriding trait of the pictures in this show is that their description almost always remains in the realm of the physical and tactile. The substance beneath the skin - what the people portrayed without their clothes are really like - is rarely explored. It is almost as if their nakedness is more of a masking presence than clothing is.
The show's most controversial item may well be the one that was never intended to be included in the first place: a copy of the exhibition's announcement (featuring Franco Salmoiraghi's image of a female nude being cradled by a disembodied male hand) that was returned to the gallery. Penned across the offending image were the recipient-turned sender's instructions that his or her name be removed from the gallery's mailing list. The creases on the folded invitation add an element of violence (no doubt an unintended one) to the figure portrayed. When all is said and done, though, the selection of pictures is both instructive and pretty tame. Robert Mapplethorpe is represented not by an infamous outtake from The X Portfolio, but by an elegant composition of of a trio of nudes, shown full length from the neck down, that recalls nothing so much as the three graces. The headless figures lose any individuality - the focus ison their perfect bodies that recall 19th century photographic studies of classical sculpture. Curiously, Mapplethorpe in the latter part of his career photographed reproductions of such sculpture.
Wendi Schneider's lush odalisque owes more to French photographer Eugene Durieu and his contemporary and compatriot Eugene Delacroix's 19th century romanticism than to the 1990s. A more classical treatment of the female nude is hard to imagine. Schneider's image is further softened by restrained hand-coloring.
The array of photographs (some hundred in all) run the gamut of styles, photographic intent, history and process. There are early paper prints, alluringly beautiful autochromes, colltypes from Eadward Muybridge's "Animal Locomotion" series, tri-color carbon prints, various species of gelatin silver processes and others. The approaches range from Jerry Uelsmann's seamlessly constructed impossibilities to Eikoh Hosoe's humorous "Sunflower Children", a row of nudes standing like sentries along a roadway, their faces hidden behind enormous sunflower blossoms held in front of their heads; from Helmut Newton's gritty, angular and amazonian life-size photographs of women (who in separate images using the same models and poses appear clothed and unclothed) to Joyce Tenneson's waiflike apparition in the softest of pastel colors; and from Brett Weston's stylized artistry to the naivete of belle epoque "French postcards."
"Naked: A Body of Work" begs the question if anything new can be said about nakedness or the nude in photography. That is probably not the point of this show. Its point seems, rather, the presentation of a lush cross section of the subject, by some of its more celebrated practitioners. A lot of recent controversy surrounding the nude in photography is absent from the exhibition; though Jock Sturges is represented, there is no Andres Serrano, no Joel Peter Witkin, no Sally Mann. But the absence of their photographs hardly makes an impact on what is a thoughtful and strong exhibition. There is probably little that has not been done with, to, or about the human form in the realm of photography. To try to include all of it would hardly be possible or advised. As a subject, the nude may be a hackneyed one, but this effort on Royal St. shows, it does not have to banal.