Guy Bourdin, Naked? or Nude?
As part of our fashion education, reading John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ is a good way to understand how the fashion industry as authorized media prescribes the gender and beauty standards. Since we have to present chapter 2 coming friday, here’s a little preview for the students of what it is about. Nakedness vs Nudeness, an ongoing discussion about the spectator and submissive role women play in this society to please the man in Western tradition.
Watch this little video of BBC. Do you agree with Berger?
Nakedness is created in the mind of the beholder.
As early as God created the world and blamed Eve to eat the apple, Adam and Eve became aware of the spectator looking at them and covered themselves with fig leaves; it was then that nakedness was born. Nudeness however, according to Berger, is to be seen naked by the spectator, whereas nakedness reveals itself.
Adam and Eva by Mabuse
This would imply that all the pictures of naked women we see are nudes, since we, as the male spectator (whether you’re female or not) look at it and it is displayed in front of our eyes. The only thing that can be naked is when we look at ourselves naked, without mirror. Without clothes and disguise we look at our own body without thinking of it as an object. As Berger puts it ‘To be naked is to be oneself’.
February Cover Vanity Fair. Naked or Nude?
Chrystal Renn by Tom Ford, Vogue Paris. Naked or nude?
Kate Moss, fashion’s biggest muse, selected 11 of her most beautiful, eccentric, special or elaborated pictures from the past 30 years, which will be published in 30 exclusive portfolio’s.
Kate Moss by Annie Leibovitz, Paris, 1999
The books are selected together with James Danzinger, designed by Ruth Ansel (Art Director of a.o. Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair) and sold at the Miami Art Fair for nothing less than 75.000 dollars each.
Being everybody’s favorite isn’t easy, even if you make up for it mistake after mistake. Although she doesn’t give much interviews, The New York Times caught her on a telephone line, asking her the clothes off her body. She admitted that her favorite picture of herself was the black & white one which ex-boyfriend Mario Sorrenti made of her.
Even though I wasn’t that naïve at the time, I really look it. I was in a relationship with him at the time and it was a very intense period of my life — it was my growing-up stage.
Kate Moss by Mario Sorrenti, NY, 1993
My favorite? The version of Kate by Mert and Marcus at the bottom of this post. Her white blonde hair looks like light against the dark background, as if she’s holy, a word that doesn’t exist on an island like Ibiza. It’s always the contrary that attracts me.
Read the whole interview here.
Kate Moss by David Sims, London, 2006
Kate Moss by Mario Testino, London, 2008
Kate Moss by Juergen Teller, London, 2000
Kate Moss by Glen Luchford, Times Square, 1994
Kate Moss by Terry Richardson, Graceland, 1997
Kate Moss by Mert & Marcus, Ibiza, 2008
