There are multiple paradigms going when we talk about nudity. We have sexual paradigms, aesthetic paradigms, societal paradigms and genetic paradigms among the many. All of them influence the way we perceive the naked human body - but perhaps not all of them square comfortably with each other.
My perspective on all of this is influenced by a number of factors that may or may not coincide with yours. To my way of thinking there is no right or wrong when it comes to each of our attitudes - only subjective ways of perceiving nudity through our myriad filters and paradigms. The one huge exception to that involves photography, videos or any kind of sexual activity that involves children, adolescents or minors.
For the record, I have never in my 25 years of shooting professionally or in my 54 years of living for that matter, ever photographed a child, an adolescent or a minor in a nude or even remotely suggestive situation. Nor will I ever. I abhor anything that has anything to do with child pornography. I've never laid eyes on this kind of work and I've never done any of this kind of work. I'm both a father and a grandfather and am fiercely protective of my babies. My work with nudes is strictly with adults who are over the legal age of consent. That's the ways it's always been and that's the way it'll always be.
Whether it's in my professional work or in my personal life, I have very clear morals and boundaries and they are inviolable.
That said, I've been photographing naked adult bodies for twenty-five years now. It's a creative expression for me that I enjoy, am passionate about and completely at ease with.
I grew up in Italy where naked bodies were everywhere; in the sculpture and artwork in museums and cathedrals, in the fields around my home where the prostitutes brought their johns and even in my home where there was a relaxed feeling about being naked in appropriate situations.
When my family traveled to Greece and Turkey during the summers we would often sit naked together in the baths where there were dozens of other people of all ages soaking naked in the warm mineral waters. We always stayed in campgrounds where changing in and out of swimsuits and clothing was often done together in our VW camper or in our tent.
On the beautiful white sandy beaches of Corfu and other Greek islands my siblings and I would think nothing of slipping out of our clothes and into swimsuits because there was no one standing there telling us to cover up or pull a towel around us to do it. Because no fuss was made about it by our parents, no fuss was made about it by us. We took our cue from our folks who in that environment felt comfortable letting us find our own boundaries where modesty was concerned.
I saw my dad naked and he was naked and that was that. I saw my mom naked and she was naked and that was that. In my pre-pubesecent years there was no thought as to genitals being something sexual. By the time genitals became sexual for me I was already at ease with them and the transition from one state of consciousness to the other went smoothly.
Somewhere along the way, especially after moving back to the States in the late sixties, I began to be aware that other people didn't have the same comfort with nakedness that I did. Even Michelangelo's David, which I had stood in awe in front of so many times as a child, would elicit titters and embarassed giggles from my friends. What were they laughing about? The naked David was so beautiful and so normal to me.
The cultural and religious attitudes towards nudity here were completely at odds with what I'd grown up with and it caused something of a schism in me. I found myself going out into the back forty on our farm in Idaho and getting naked - it was a feeling I knew and loved and wanted to keep feeling. I remember lying down between the rows of sugar beets so that no one could see me taking my clothes off and just lie there naked with the hot sun on my skin. Sometimes I would self-pleasure, sometimes not.
I loved being naked then and I still do now.
Most of the Italians that I've known have a wonderful freedom with their bodies that's expressed in the way they dress, the way they move and in the way they create art. In my formative years that was the influence that entered into my consciousness, free from the cultural and religious attitudes here in the States. My parents, while not exhibitionists or nudists by any stretch of the imagination, were still very comfortable with their bodies in much the same way as the Italians were.
So that's how nudity entered my consciousness and in part created the paradigm that I'm still very affected by. I see naked human bodies as beautiful; at times sexual, yes, but not always. In my work as a photographer with some of the most beautiful women and men imaginable naked in front of me, I've only on rare occasions experienced tumescence as part of the process. That's not where my thoughts go when I'm creating images of naked bodies. There's too much technical stuff to be concerned with to be getting carried too far adrift with sexual desire.
When I'm photographing naked bodies I see lines and shapes and shadows and curves and muscles and gaze and posture. And absolutely I see genitals. To me they are as beautiful and important a part of the overall as any other part of the body. It's the intentional hiding of them or covering them up that puts me at odds with my natural sensibility and artistry.
Are a woman's breasts any less a part of her than her arms? A man's scrotum any less a part of him than his calves? I experience the naked human body as a seamless, continuous whole; something that to me is most perfect at its most naked. I love our bodies unprotected, unadorned and unaffected by someone else's sense of modesty or correctness.
In my work I've always allowed the people I'm photographing to dictate their own level of comfort with being naked, neither encouraging full frontal nor discouraging it. But after so many years of doing this now I find that I'm no longer willing to invest my time and energy in trying to avoid getting genitals in the picture when they're such a beautiful, meaningful and important part of our bodies. And I make that clear right up front with the people I photograph naked now. Keeping a guy's genitals out of the picture when he's naked, for example, is way too much work and distracts from the other more important things going on with the shooting.
I don't criticize or find fault with those who have segregated their genitals from the rest of their body - that's their choice and I respect it. But for me there's always been this persistent desire to have the body integrated into a continuous landscape of flesh that isn't in any way interrupted by genital modesty.
When it came to raising my daughter there was a naturalness and ease about nudity that served us all well. I was naked around her when I would have otherwise been naked and clothed when I would have otherwise been clothed. I bathed her when she was little and as she got old enough to shower she showered with me. At about eight or nine years old she began to express a desire for privacy and I gave it to her without a hesitation or second thought.
Through the years she has expressed her own level of comfort with her body and her nakedness and I've always respected that and fallen completely in line with her wishes.
My daughter grew up in my studio in Hollywood where there were images of beautiful naked bodies on the walls, in my portfolios and in the darkrooms where she would often help out. And she always knew, though she was never present for them, that nude photo sessions were an integral part of her dad's work.
Neither her mother nor I made any issue out of the nudity that was ubiquitous in our lives during those years in the studio - and as a result neither did she. She was given the opportunity as I was, to make of nudity what she would and form her own opinions and attitudes about it.
This is a young woman who has been anything but negatively impacted by the presence of a lot of naked bodies in her life. Like me, she's modest when the situation calls for modesty and free when the circumstances allow it. Like her dad and most of the people he photographs naked, my daughter is at home and comfortable in her body.
As parents we give to our children what we're comfortable giving to them and we instill in them, mostly, our own sense of right and wrong. So someone who teaches their children to be ultra-modest and is ultra-modest themselves is doing nothing wrong. They're simply passing onto their children the paradigm that they know and are most comfortable with.
And that's why I don't hold any judgements when it comes to other people's choices where nudity is concerned. I only know what works for me - and that's what I passed onto my daughter. Will that be passed on down to her kids or will she create something different for them? I have no idea what she'll do. But as a parent that's her choice to make and I probably won't have any part in it, although my grandkids will certainly know that Grandpa Tom has lots and lots of naked bodies around him.
I love my own naked body. I'm free as a bird when it comes to matters of nudity and sexuality - and that's mostly why I've had a bird of paradise in flight tattooed onto my lower belly and groin - because I'm free, and the bird in flight expresses that feeling of freedom for me.
There's no right or wrong from where I'm standing when it comes to nudity. It's all about the paradigms we're each living in and comfortable with. Yours are as valid as mine and I honor them all. The only thing I'm ever resistant to is someone trying to lay down their paradigm over mine with the insistence that theirs is somehow better.
That can get me a little agitated.
