The History of the 'Nude'

So, still thinking about what was said in my feedback e-mail, I need to focus on my main point of interest for this project.  The whole general idea for my major practical project and mixed media is about the body and body movement.  I have looked into this as a topic many times but want to over-run things so that it is all fresh in my head for ideas for my final work.  I have produced nude images before and it's a genre that I think can be quite fascinating, looking into the nude and the body itself is my aim.

Looking into the History of the Nude can really benefit me to find out how many images of the body positions and compositions actually came about.  History dates back quite far when it comes to the 'Nude' image, and it has changed one hell of a lot through the years up to today.  There are thousands upon thousands  of nude images today but all separated into different genre's,  there tends to be a fine line when it comes to the debate of it being art, or not art.

Images of sexuality and nudes date back through history, but there are people today that do not think nudes art art at all.  Some people class nude imagery as porn, while some people think an image of the naked body is un-nessecery.  I personally love the human body and think it is a fascinating thing.  Our physical form can produce so many unusual shapes and movements that I think (with a healthy body) can look amazing.  The way we function and move and do different things in our lives can be beautiful in photography.  

Photography is a subject I have studied for many years now, and have learnt all about how the form was started, the deguerrotype was created in 1839, and this is thought to be when photography was born.  The earliest and oldest 'photograph' was technically by Niepce in 1826, the deguerrotype was the first practical widespread process.   As far as nude photography is involved, the first nude photographer is not really known, but N.P. Lerebours (1808-1873) photographed artist's models in 1840, a year after photography was initially created, so is the first nude photographer.  In 1841 Voitlander was producing faster lenses that reduced the exposure to 1.5-2 minutes and later in the year new emulsions were developed that allowed exposures of only seconds, this is how the field of portrait photography started, and also the right technical side for nude.

Eugene Durieu was one of the first photographer's is actually try out nude photography, he was commissioned to shoot nudes for Delacroix (a painter in 1850).  Durieu was a french man and lived right through the beginning of photography from 1800-1874.  Many painters thought photography was a threat to their art works, which is understandable and photography was the new thing, but Delacroix recognised that there was a big difference between the camera vision and the human eye vision.  Photography was soon to be a great benefit to art and to artists and lots of artists found it easier to paint from the photo than from life.

Nadar was a French photographer who was well known for photojournalism, began taking pictures in 1853, he did quite a few nude images for different artists.  Other photographers in the nude photography field were  Baigneuse-Auguste Belloc,  Bruno Braquehais - Reclining female nude -1850s and Julien Vallon de Villeneuve.  The links all show at least one of their nude images, they look so good for 1850's nudes, because nude photography today seems like it has a completely different vibe to them whereas the work from these photographers show a sense of calm and peace. Here below is a selection of these artists nude photographs.

After these established photographers has created nude photographs for some years, the era of 'the naughty "French Postcards" was around.  The naughty postcards was from 1900-1920.  The golden age of picture postcards from Paris, this came some of the naughtier of nude's.  I would love to get my hands on one of these old vintage books that show all the old postcards and who made them and how they were produced, it would be so interesting to see how nude photography was in the 1920's.  Photographers from this period uncover the relationship between postcard eroticism and magazine illustrations, decorative art, and primitive cinema.  Attention is paid to the use of sexual symbolism that many of the cards show, valuable sights into the mores and fashion of Europe at the beginning of the century.  Some images show popular themes and styles, dis-robing for their baths which brings in seduction (which is a whole other side to nude photography).  I think they look fantastic, and was a great idea into the way nude photography was changing. Here below are just some of the naughty french postcards.


Gaudenzio Marconi (1841-1885) took over the studio of Belloc and began shooting nudes for the sculptor Rodin.  There is a lot of people that think that Manet's famous Olympia was painted from a photograph, rather than from life, this would mean that no credit would be taken for the photograph itself but for the finished painting, so viewers wouldn't even know it had been taken.
Eadweard Muybridge was producing multiple exposures of nudes by the late 1880's in his various scientific researches into motion.  This is a topic that I have looked into many times before, and am particularly interested in for my ideas.  Around 1900 Wilhelm von Gloeden and W.Pluschow rejected the Pictorialist soft focus and produced their nude works in a precise and sharp focus and erotica was born.  Von Gloeden was mostly known for his male nudes posted in Homeric themes.
So, by the early 1900's the figurative nude was well established.  Because of this, something new was bound to come along very quickly, a new technical age brought advances and new art movements were beginning to affect how the nude was presented.

Man Ray, of who's work I love, embraced surrealism which had a tremendous affect on photography and produced amazing works of art.  Andre Kertesz, Frantisek Drtikol, and many other photographers were experimenting with distortion, solarisation, and abstraction in the nude form.  Edward Weston at around the same time focused on lighting the body in his images, he works on form and light are legendary.  Here are some photographs below of the mentioned photographers.

Andre Kertesz (top), Frantisek Drtikol (middle), Edward Weston (bottom)

And finally, by the 40's nudes, pin-ups and figure photography was as varied and complex as any other art movement and most of the work in todays nude photography are established by these photographers.  Although in todays world there is a fine line between the pornographic and art, there are still many photographers that capture the nude in beautiful ways. This genre has changed dramatically through the years since it started, but all for the good, and some believe the bad, but now anyone can express a nude image in the way they want to.  All nude body imagery are the way they are today from these photographers that made the path to the way we see them, over 100 years old and you can now take almost any kind of nude and it could be acceptable.

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What I like about Nude Photography
In an earlier post I wrote a little about Klaus Kampert, who's nude work is absolutely stunning because of the simplicity of the body movements that can give such amazing shapes.  His lighting is perfect and the way the skin shines in different lights, shadows and shapes is what I like to see in nude photography.  If I was to say what I like in photography, it would probably be everything that Kampert shows in his.  I love how creative he is with his nudes and how the lighting falls on the body throughout different movements.  Movements of the body is also what I have and interest in, and it had a huge link with nude, because of showing how the body moves is easier in nude.  I also like how Kampert's work is different yet simple too.  His work has a big link into dance photography which is also what I am looking for in my research as dance nude is something I have considered.  My nude photographs that I have taken before are of a ballet dancer. I chose to keep her ballet shoes in each image and have her in a dance position, I would like to extend on these and produce more in a similar style but using some inspiration from Kampert's nudes. Overall, the shapes, movements, shadows, form, elegance that nude photography can create is what I like so much about it.

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Nude photography is a genre that I have been interested in for a long time, I had always wanted to try it and when I did, It came out with some great results. When I was studying my BTEC National Diploma in Photography in College I wanted to do nude's but thought it would be inappropriate for the assignments but in University, for Open Briefs is was the perfect opportunity.  In my first year in my 'Introduction to Photographic Studies' I produced an essay which was about Nude.  I was looking into why the human body has fascinated many photographers and how photography has explored the human form in the nude.  I enjoyed writing this essay, I explored the differences between 'a naked body' and 'nude'.

A simple documentary image of the naked form, even if very beautiful will not look like it is a piece of art on its own, it needs more to make it an art piece, where the body looks appealing, through the skill of the photographic artist.  A quote I used within my essay;

"To be 'naked' is simply to be without clothes, whereas the 'nude' is a form of art" Kenneth Clark, Ways of Seeing.  

Nude is a study that can have so many different sections to it, they way people see it, how it is art or not, nude or naked, eroticism, and more, throughout my essay, I explain all of these and studies of what defines nude and how photography has explored the genre.

This fits in well with my Mixed Media project as I am also researching about the body and the way people see the body/human form.  Both of my projects have such a wide variety of research backgrounds, but I still need to narrow this down into a theme and style for my final ideas.