The Body as an Aesthetic Object

When browsing articles via Athens based on ‘The Body as an Aesthetic Object’ I found the most common occurrence was the female body, both nude and clothed, the majority of them containing elements of fashion. Thus supporting the male gaze, as women are being exploited and judged on the way their body looks, expressing a feeling of joy and pleasure.

Nikolai Bakharev.

Bakharev's main concern for this project was people - majority being women - and their intimate, everyday surroundings. Photographing women from the very heart of Russia in their own home; showing them frozen in erotic poses. Offering a strange and aesthetic vision of beauty and freedom, theses series of images are powerful in the sense we are in a way invading the woman’s privacy. There ‘average’ figure add a more casual approach in comparison to the images that appear in the modern media today. Although this is now due to photo manipulation, personally, I think this is the ‘aesthetic body’ in which we compare ourselves too today.

“Photography is for me a need, the need to express and to communicate. As long as the need will exist, I will create.”
                                - Angele Etoundi Essamba.

Whether this is dependent on race or just a common occurrence, I found that from browsing different photographers work, black woman were focused upon more for their beauty and not there body parts. For example this image allows us to look deep into the models eyes, enabling us to discover elements of her personality, showcasing and celebrating her beauty, removing it from its colonial confinement to nakedness and claiming its place in the aesthetic and artistic category of the nude.