MAisie is a slut
Fig 1. HALSALL, 2025 Maisie is a slut
I struggle with nudes! I recall a childhood school trip to the National Gallery, amongst the collection, were a series of languishing nudes. I found it profoundly interesting that these images were regarded as appropriate, when I knew there was a strong likelihood they were commissioned by wealthy gentry, to hang in 18th Century Gentlemen’s drawing rooms for titillation.
My struggle with nudity does not stem from a particularly sophisticated reason. When faced with an image of a naked form, more often than not I am reduced to 12-year-old Penny, back in biology, sex education, giggling. Although I probably didn’t learn much back then, the one thing I can be sure of is that this is not necessarily intention of the practitioner. I own this response, it is quite possibly unique to me. I simply find it challenging to look past the biology and the sex.
I was trying to explain this response recently to a group of students, I likened the placement of a nude in a photograph for me it is comparable to placing a wall or obstacle in front of a striking, sublime landscape or vista, it obscures and blocks the meaning for me. I struggle to see past it.
Nobuyoshi Araki’s controversial work, although brutal and bold in it’s delivery, feels honest. I understand exactly the purpose for the nudes. Perhaps there is a direct interaction between viewer and subject contained within the direct eye contact of the subject. It feels direct and without nuance, we are not looking at a stolen moment, there is direct interaction. Nobuyoshi Araki, Marvellous Tales of Black Ink, 1994. Warning. I have not included any images as they are explicit. Here Araki explores the objectification of women, and “blurring of the line between pornography and fine art” (Healey, 2019)
Nobuyoshi Araki: “Having a photograph taken isn't about adapting; you need to feel you're actually being violated. It's a kind of buffoonery. Perhaps you might describe it as a type of catabolism between two people. The photographer and his subject work together to come up with something that neither of them have noticed before. It isn't a question of the photographer merely taking a photograph: it's a collaboration between the photographer and the person being photographed. If you want to use words like invention and creation, they need to include these kinds of ideas. Photography is a joint enterprise. If you include the camera, there are three partners in crime. That's why I think of it as a ménage à trois! “ (cited in Artspace 2018)
I work in a secondary school. I cannot open a textbook, or walk down a corridor without seeing a cock and balls, scrawled on the wall, accusatory sexual language and crude, infantile innuendos and references. It reminds me of myself, giggling at the back of biology, looking up rude words in dictionaries, pushing boundaries of what you could get away with. As I walk down the corridors containing these crude cartoons, I am reminded of my trip to the National Gallery, and I wonder which I would rather look at, a languishing nude, or a hastily drawn pair of boobs.
Taking some images of landscapes, serious and somewhat grown up in nature, and placing crude sketches over the top, allows me to explore and perhaps illustrate my point. I like the concept that the sketches represent my childlike memories and gaze of something so serious and ‘mature’, as if two worlds had been pushed together. I find there is a militancy to the defacement, that makes me smile and feels rebellious.
REFERENCES
HEALEY, Hannah. 2019. ‘Taboo the work and legacy of Nobuyoshi’. [online]. Available at: https://cherwell.org/2019/02/24/taboo-the-work-and-legacy-of-nobuyoshi-araki/#:~:text=In%20doing%20so%2C%20Araki%20aligns,be%20immortalised%20in%20pictorial%20form. [Accessed at 20 January 2025]
Artspace. 2019. ‘Photography is a Menage a troi’. Artspace [online] Available at: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/book_report/photography-is-a-menage-a-trois-nobuyoshi-araki-55282 [Accessed at: 10 January 2025]
FIGURES
Figure 1. Halsall, Penny. 2025. Maisie is a slut
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nobuyoshi Araki https://1000wordsmag.com/nobuyoshi-araki/