On Reunion With Au Naturel

Not far from my neighbourhood of St. Hanshaugen in Oslo, here in Norway, there is a famous bookshop called Tronsmo. Not only do they sell books, but they have become a cultural institution for many. I buy most of my books here in a variety of genres, ranging from novels, architecture magazines, philosophy and cookery books, often with an anthropological introduction. My great love of photographic art is also one of the reasons I come here. They have an almost candy section of photography books for sale.

Occasionally I buy a piece of art from a postcard to give as a gift or for my own enjoyment. On my last visit to Tronsmo, I bought one with a photograph on the front by the great American photographer Saul Leiter, showing an undressed woman who appears to have been photographed in a studio. But with the camera pointed at a mirror and in black and white, it could just as easily have been taken in a rather messy home. I then studied later the photograph from the corner of my window and found it mysterious, natural and liberatingly composed, rather than sexualised. 

After a closer look, a Google search led me to several of Leiter's well-known intimate works. One of them, many of them, shows a woman resting and lying against a chair, sticky naked, with a landscape behind her. The photograph is characterised by a good dose of au naturel, a woman who has a natural relationship with her body. It's almost as if she's in the same position as when you're lying on the beach, sunbathing, completely undressed. 

Now, I'm not a self-proclaimed nudist, and not everyone is comfortable being one. For me, full nudity can be something that focuses on the private, for the sake of mystery or romance. Not because of religion or conservatism. Not because I'm uncomfortable with body parts. I don't mind being topless if I'm wearing a swimsuit or bikini. I'm naturally attracted to naked bodies, Whether they're feminine or masculine. Even things that are overly sexual in nature, such as big, shapely silicon breasts and big bottoms, although some of them are not tasteful to me.

We live in strange digital times where the smartphone has taken up a lot of our time and destroyed our relationship with nudity, which means we sexualise it more than we should. As an aesthete, I see beauty in details like the back or the décolleté. The beauty of a male or female body, objectively, without sexualising it. As in Renaissance sculpture or the sculptures of Camilla Claudel, their approach to the sensual is an enrichment to study for someone who observes tactility from a distance.

The challenges of our time are that lips, thighs, buttocks and breasts are almost objectified, as if they were an erogenous zone like a pornographic labia. Young girls and adult women alike can be harassed for wearing clothes that show too much skin, such as a slap on the bottom or vengeful shared nudity. The pornographic of the natural, in the form of nudity is, on closer inspection, devastating to sexual health, mental health and silhouette creation, regardless of the weight of your body. Men usually get away with it when it comes to their bodies and sexuality, but they are also victims of excessive fixation, a healthy and fit body is balanced, but excessive use of anabolic steroids can have its consequences and objectification that is not normally recommended. Women, on the other hand, are mostly put on display, a sexualised object for the outside world.

Could it be that society has become too mechanised in its approach to the body and its consumption? Are young people's views of erogenous zones being destructively corrupted by excessive pornographic representations of the body as a commodity? Religious shaming of the body, which means that people who have grown up with it do not have a natural attitude towards those who expose themselves? The lack of natural photographic nudity exposed in the media?

An hour or two in museums and galleries, not least in the naked statues section, followed by a discussion on the subject, can be something for both young and old who have forgotten not to prepare their minds for what comes out of our mother's womb. Gentle erotic films that don't mechanise sexualisation into a cheap commodity are also to be recommended.

Pornography and attitudes to the body need to be more normalised today, so that we can all have a natural relationship with what we see in front of us. The Natural as far as the eye can see.