One confusing aspect of American culture is our generally prudish reaction to nudity and other people's sex lives while we simultaneously allow endless sexual fantasy to be displayed in advertisements and entertainment. As a result, it's rare to see photos or movie sex scenes that carry any truth in them at all. In our collective consciousness we have effectively removed hair from torsos, body "flaws" that distinguish one person from another, and the reality of post-sex clean-up.
Bat For Lashes recently released an album with a cover photograph by Ryan McGinley featuring Natasha Khan posing nude and holding a man over her shoulders. This inevitablly created controversy and Khan has given interviews expressing her disappointment that anyone would want to censor such an "unsexy" (her words) photo considering she has not been retouched and is not wearing makeup and her pose is not provocative. She told one interviewer, "A sexualized female body [e.g., Beyonce] has become a banality that doesn't even cause a blip. But a completely natural, make-up free woman literally supporting a man leads to endless speculation."
We have to take this with a grain of salt considering it exists in the PR-drenched world of music journalism, but I'm disappointed that Khan doesn't take the stance that her au natural depiction is in fact the opposite of unsexy precisely because she isn't hiding behind a manufactured, sexualized presentation. The photo is far more erotic than any typical Beyonce shot because McGinley allows Khan's self-image to come though the photograph -- we are spared the typically constructed identity presented in most musician photos by the fashion-influenced photographers that rule today.
In the same interview, Khan references inspirations for her photo made in the past by heroes PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, and I'm struck by how those photos seem dramatically more real and raw than Khan's.
Has our idea of what is "super-raw and wild" (as Khan describes her photo) become less raw and wild? Obviously rock star images have always been manufactured, but today's marriage of music with the fashion industry has made it a particularly bleak time for finding the real in music and the musicmakers. There's nothing wrong with fiction and fantasy, even in music -- but there's danger when manufactured ideas are presented as authentic.
All of this is really just a long lead up to a truly raw and authentic and daring depiction of bodies, love, life, and a real consequence of sex: Lourdes Jeannette's stunning recent portrait of a mother breastfeeding her child.
I wish this were an album cover!
Bat For Lashes recently released an album with a cover photograph by Ryan McGinley featuring Natasha Khan posing nude and holding a man over her shoulders. This inevitablly created controversy and Khan has given interviews expressing her disappointment that anyone would want to censor such an "unsexy" (her words) photo considering she has not been retouched and is not wearing makeup and her pose is not provocative. She told one interviewer, "A sexualized female body [e.g., Beyonce] has become a banality that doesn't even cause a blip. But a completely natural, make-up free woman literally supporting a man leads to endless speculation."
We have to take this with a grain of salt considering it exists in the PR-drenched world of music journalism, but I'm disappointed that Khan doesn't take the stance that her au natural depiction is in fact the opposite of unsexy precisely because she isn't hiding behind a manufactured, sexualized presentation. The photo is far more erotic than any typical Beyonce shot because McGinley allows Khan's self-image to come though the photograph -- we are spared the typically constructed identity presented in most musician photos by the fashion-influenced photographers that rule today.
In the same interview, Khan references inspirations for her photo made in the past by heroes PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, and I'm struck by how those photos seem dramatically more real and raw than Khan's.
Has our idea of what is "super-raw and wild" (as Khan describes her photo) become less raw and wild? Obviously rock star images have always been manufactured, but today's marriage of music with the fashion industry has made it a particularly bleak time for finding the real in music and the musicmakers. There's nothing wrong with fiction and fantasy, even in music -- but there's danger when manufactured ideas are presented as authentic.
All of this is really just a long lead up to a truly raw and authentic and daring depiction of bodies, love, life, and a real consequence of sex: Lourdes Jeannette's stunning recent portrait of a mother breastfeeding her child.
I wish this were an album cover!