Hey Guys,
Just another quick question. One of my really good guy friends is a photographer and recently got a job with a studio that does glamour photo shoots. These glamour shots include - family portraits, kids photos, pregnancy pictures, couple photos etc etc. I was looking at the website of the company. In the individual and couple photos they seem to do a lot of nude and lingerie shoots aside from the average couple or individual shot. I am not very sure what to make of this.
I guess, my question comes down to - Is this morally correct or is this going to far? Should I say something to him?
I can relate to your predicament. I’ve actually spent some time thinking about the subject, as my father is an artist—a painter and sculptor—but I’ve run into all sorts of women in my movieworthy life. I’ve finally concluded that while I can’t qualify it as sinful, I don’t like it either. I mean, I don’t have a problem with nude photography. If it’s possible for the models, photographers and beholders to stay chaste (and avoid also the temptation of pride or contempt or objectification as applicable), then I guess I can’t say a bad word about it and, in fact, there is actually a nude Greek sculpture somewhere in my room and a renaissance painting photo-reproduction rolled up somewhere. I don’t have a problem with the idea of myself beholding the form or heck, even the beauty of the respective female, but I’d feel as if I were forming some kind of relationship with a statue and, also, the
causa would feel bleak (I guess I can’t stop thinking like a lawyer, lawyers generally need a cause for things to be done), and I would certainly think even more strongly along these lines if I were married (if I had a beautiful life, what point would it make having pictures or paintings around my place, and if I had an average or uglier wife on the point of physical appearance, then why would I risk reminding her?).
Moreover, I’ve had to realise that I just simply don’t understand it. Therefore, to an extent, I just nead to leave it alone and move on. This said, I wouldn’t exactly like to be married to an art model having a relationship inexplicable and undefined from my point of view with the photographer that were bringing out the woman in her or some such (I could actually get over a medical book kind of scenario because that’s different and the cause is noble but I don’t take art to be the same kind of noble cause). This is even though I can be pragmatic and try to look from an artistic or medical or exotic-cultural or some other point of view instead of being immovably fixed in the current Western paradigm and projecting it as if it were objective morality—I still can’t understand the artist-model relationship, nor am I a fan of it. I might not be the fan of the audience-model relationship, either, if the model were my actual or potential wife or girlfriend and I’ve once been in a similar situation, or rather I have thought so due to an inconsiderate remark on the part of a lady who knew I had feelings for her, and it wasn’t pretty.
As for the photographer, he’s got to answer those questions for himself (which means it’s mostly his job, not that he can define the moral character of those pictures), although if you notice some clearly erotic, sensual or downright sexual scenes or poses, you may and probably should give him arguments against it, especially if those are meant for sheer viewer pleasure or for the marketing of products or services.
