I wanted to take a second to discuss a rather "touchy" topic. Keep in mind that the opinions express here in this post are just that, opinions. In no way, shape or form do I believe that my opinion on this or any other subject are the end all, be all. The reason I'm choosing to discuss this is because of the increased frequency in which I see nudity on my social media feeds.
Being a photographer myself, most of the pages I choose to follow on Instagram are those of models and other photographers. Because of this, at any given moment when I choose to scroll down my feed in public I find myself hiding my phone as to not offend anyone or seem like a pervert. I find it important to say that I have no issue with nudity, in fact I've taken my share of nude photos. When shooting for the purpose of fine art, the truth is that clothing can sometimes be a distraction. However, in my experience, I've come to learn that there is a fine line between fine art and pornography. (And that, in the eyes of Instagram censors, it's all porn.)
What I find to personally be important when a model approaches me about a nude shoot is "Why? Are we trying to convey a message through these images or are we just being nude for nudity's sake?" "Are we celebrating body positivity or are we looking for likes on InstaGram?" Because, for all intents and purposes, that dictates how we approach this shoot. After all, there's nothing wrong with being "in the buff"; nudity is beautiful and I love to show off the product of, what poet Phenix Hall refers to as, "Yahweh's Paintbrush". Because as human beings, we are all art. No two of us are the same and we all deserve to be celebrated to a degree. That is my personal goal. To celebrate and uplift, not to sexualize. In my observation over the years as I've spoken to many of my peers is that many models have decided to get away from accepting nude gigs, especially with male photographers. Because many of them feel as though their passion to use their bodies to create art has become minimized to satisfy someone's fetish. You see, there's a difference between a model celebrating sexuality and being sexualized. The former is rarely ever their choice. And frankly a disgusting fact of the matter is that many men run out and buy a camera and call themselves photographers just for the sake of getting women naked. This has made being a male photographer increasingly difficult over the years. However I do not fault female models at all for being extremely cautious when working with someone new because they should be. In a perfect world there would be more respect for the craft that such a large community of us loves to be a part of but, much like everything else, there are many "bad apples" that get into this business for the wrong reasons.
I say all that to say that there's nothing wrong with nudity but I wish more photographers would shoot it with purpose. I've been on the set of many shoots where you could tell the model wasn't 100% comfortable but they did it because they thought it was what they had to do to "make it". While it's not my job to determine what is and isn't to be considered as "art", I do feel that more of us photographers should do our part to protect our craft and the muses that we depend on.