“To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.”
John Berger, who wrote the words that adorn this brief statement, died at his home in Antony, France in early 2017. Berger’s views on aging, death and the nude could be considered contemporaneous. As the body ages, the body is always in preparation—for death. Living is Grieving. Yet this opportunity for grief is almost thoroughly and repeatedly missed.
It seems impossible to be extemporaneous about the naked human, what with all that mix of strength, vulnerability and fragility. But as Walter Benjamin tried to help us see some eighty-three years ago, we had entered an age in which is was mostly possible to be only extemporaneous about the contemporary. As photography and color photography subsumed the role of oil paint—especially in the depiction of the female nude—it would be (nearly) impossible to depict a woman as herself, as naked, rather than as the subject of male desire. Still less would it be possible to be thoughtful about the losses occasioned by the consumptive gaze.
These nudes represent a kind of grief and depict women, without clothing, in a kind of sacred light. They are arguably more linear than painterly, some confront and some retreat, yet they all seem to allude to an earlier time, even as, perhaps, a woman’s tattoo, hairstyle or piercing pulls the viewer back into now. Some have their eyes closed, and sometimes that is what it takes to remain naked, to remain inured to the contemporary gaze.
Sometimes, time seems to move more slowly here in New Orleans, and we are often behind the times. Can a woman be herself here, in New Orleans? Many come here for just that reason.
These photographs often take a while to make because we wait for a certain light to hit a certain window in a certain place. The photograph does not require—in fact argues against—the use of strobe or continuous lighting, and the conditions were fleeting for the making of each photograph you see in this book. The photographs also take time because they are preceded by conversation and connection and a hope and a waiting for good light.
The women in these photographs do not look appear to be preparing for their deaths. Perhaps because despite the vitality of their bodies, they have already spent much time in preparation. Their deaths occur daily on Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook and on countless other digital platforms, a “work of art,” almost effortlessly reproduced in an “post-Benjaminian” age of near light-speed digital reproduction, being unclothed coterminous with nonconsensual (violent) sexual availability. “To be seen naked by others, and not yet recognized for oneself,” is the normative condition of the contemporary nude. The problem, however, is left for the viewer. The women in this little volume are naked. Can you recognize them?
—Mysa Photography, New Orleans, 2018
