For many, it was our first time being naked outdoors, even our first time being naked with someone else. Our first skinny dip may have been an act of rebellion, perhaps from parents, friends, or simply our own fears. We reassured each other and ourselves with the promise that darkness and water would conceal our naked bodies, when secretly we knew there was plenty of light to see. It was a good ex
cuse to subvert our own fears of being naked together. In skinny-dipping – the memory, the idea, and the feeling – there is much to explore. And yet as a photographic subject, skinny dipping has eluded us. We believe that this has everything to do with dynamics that have long informed the production, reproduction, and exchange of nude images. Through the 20th century, photographs of nude women were taken by men to be shared with other men. From wartime pinups to Playboy to Pirelli, the power to capture an image corresponded directly with social power. The commercialization of the nude and risqué imagery followed two distinct routes: images that were themselves sold, and images that were used to sell something else. The former was porn, the latter advertising. But today, we are witnessing the blurring of the dichotomy between photographer and subject. The Internet has democratized cultural production in all conceivable media and genres. It should come as no surprise that it has also fundamentally altered the production and exchange of nude imagery, both in practice and intent. As the camera lens ceases to subjugate as it once did, a third category of nude imagery is emerging that is neither porn nor advertising but social erotica. To be sure, there is still a transaction at play but the currency is far more social than it is monetary. From the About section of Project ISM, a leader in the genre:
What inspires women to submit their naked photos online? The short answer is - Control. The ability to show yourself on your terms, how you'd like to be seen, free from the distortion of someone else's viewpoint and the sanitizing of Photoshop. For some contributors this is an exposition of pure art. For others it's a rebellious gesture, erotic expression, a desire to be desired, or a cathartic process. And for everyone, as we're told every day, it's just hugely fun. In the 8 years since we began collecting folios we've amassed around one million raw images from over 5 thousand contributors in nearly 8000 folios (not all are online, yet). We get more visitors than the Guggenheim, we have a larger collection than the Louvre and track the zeitgeist like the Tate cannot. Our choice of a calendar as a medium for The Skinny Dipping Report was not entirely innocent. As it happens, 2012 marks the centennial anniversary of Paul Émile Chabas’ completion of his painting, Matinée de Septembre (oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art), depicting a nude woman bathing on the shore of Lake Annecy in Haute-Savoie, France. The painting became a national succès de scandale when ordered removed from a New York art dealer’s shop window by Anthony Comstock, founder of The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Millions of prints were sold, as well as reproductions on merchandise including umbrellas, suspenders, postcards, candy boxes, cane heads, and watch fobs. The controversy surrounding the painting is credited with helping break down American opposition to the display of nudity in art. The work is also known as the first subject of a nude calendar. In the century that followed Matinée de Septembre, the nude calendar has become a recognizable form with its own clichés that are ripe for subversion, now more than ever. We aim to upset the form by shifting the dynamic away from objectification and toward identification. Every image in our calendar is of a real person from a real place with a real story. Each image was captured and presented for public consumption on Flickr without any help from us. We merely collected them and worked with their creators to contextualize them. We have selected photographs that make you want to be there (and who wouldn’t?), to feel what the person in the photograph is feeling, to understand the particularity of the place and the moment through the lens of skinny dipping. We hope you enjoy The Skinny Dipping Report.
