Contextual notes:
Herb Ritts in his 1984 series Fred with Tires took a sequence of shots of a well muscled body moving tires around in an auto repair shop - here strength and independence are the messages. The image by Arthur Tress is rather more tame than some of his but the placing of naked animals together in a misty forest glade takes us back to a timeless Eden of innocence when anything is possible. Robert Mapplethorpe produced a wide variety of images from exquisite flowers to powerful portraits but it was his studies of the naked male form that shocked and provoked outrage at some of his exhibitions. The outrage was simplistic and was sometimes based on little more than the fact the images were of well formed naked black men - it would seem that naked women were acceptable but naked men, especially black, were not. There are difficult images here but they are not exploitative and they make us question our values and taboos. |
