It’s tradition. When I go to a conference, I asked friends to pose naked for my blog.
It makes perfect sense, really. Most academic conferences are held in the basement of a huge hotel, with concurrent sessions held in carpeted box-like rooms. The air is stale, the walls are beige, and the lights are fluorescent and weird. Conference attendees race about with styrofoam cups of coffee, satchels of books, and laptop computers dangling in black cases.
I escape this scene by retreating to a hotel room with a friend. I adjust the settings on my camera while she strips off her clothes. We talk about the way the natural light falls on her body. Often I snapped the photo quickly, while she’s just standing, looking out the window. We don’t have time, usually, for elaborate poses, and often the best pictures are unposed.
Sometimes the woman might be someone I’ve known for years. Sometimes it’s a woman I’ve just met.
She takes off her clothes, shows me her scars. We talk.
“I could use to feel beautiful this week,” one woman said to me as she posed. And that, of course, the secret to these photos. Every woman, once she removes her clothes, is beautiful.
I am not, actually, a photographer. I’m someone who likes to listen to stories. And it’s a privilege, an amazing honor, to listen to the stories women tell me as they pose. I’ll hear stories about their childhood and about their relationships. I’ll hear the narratives hidden beneath folds of skin, words tucked into laugh wrinkles or stretch marks, words hidden beneath swirling hair. Sometimes, we’ll be in a hurry, ready to dash off to another conference session. Sometimes we talk for hours.
I get a glimpse, in these sessions, of their complex lives, their emotions and dreams, and all that makes these women so beautiful.
Both my models are bloggers I've known for years, but I'm going to preserve their anonymity by not even revealing their pseudonyms.
(Readers who want to know the history of the naked photo tradition can check it out here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. )
