
My post on re-evaluating my photography direction had some interesting and pretty spot on comments. More planning and more thought are definitely needed. There were a couple of comments that said I shouldn’t be hiding the penis and “what makes him a man” or that the penis in art shouldn’t be taboo.
I have never thought that the penis was taboo in art at all. When it’s done well, full frontal nudity in art can be both beautiful or intentionally confronting in the way that art should be, as demonstrated by the beautiful images above.
For me personally, I prefer not to include full frontal and there are a couple of reasons why. Firstly unless it’s done well it can be very distracting. As a gay man whose primary audience is probably gay men, the audience is inclined when presented with a photo of a nude full frontal male, to immediately focus on the cock and forget about the art in the rest of the photo. Is it a big one? Is it a little one? For me I find it easier and more satisfying, sometimes even sexier, to leave a little to the imagination.
Secondly, I have found that it’s very hard to find models in Sydney or generally that are willing to pose full frontal even for art photos. I’ve written about this before in my attempts to find models to shoot for The Male Form. Thankfully I have photographed two different guys full frontal to submit to The Male Form in the past two weeks which was quite different to my usual shooting style. Because of the nature of The Male Form, the cock had to be clearly visible in most of the shots, not subtly shown or slightly hidden. The shots look great and the first set will be on the site in August.
Thirdly, I just haven’t got my head around doing it well. I don’t want to show a cock just for the sake of it. I also find that if I can’t hide the cock in a way that doesn’t look too awkward or contrived then I won’t hide it, if the model is ok with that.
I know some people, from comments made on yesterday’s post and a previous video of a guy kite surfing nude, don’t consider it truly nude unless full frontal is display but I disagree. We don’t really have to see every detail of something to know it to be true, so do we really need graphic display of genitals to know someone is nude? Not in my opinion.