Empecé a fotografiar el backstage de la Haute Couture en Paris allá por el principio del milenio, antes de internet y de la obsesión por la comunicación, cuando todavía era un lugar de paz y de concentración. Solo éramos 5 fotógrafos, siempre los mismos, bailando como mariposas alrededor de las modelos vestidas de utopía, intentando ser lo más invisibles que podíamos.

El silencio previo al desfile, la lentitud de los movimientos, y de repente ese grito “line up!” (en fila). Alli empiezan las cosas serias: las modelos en fila, el último retoque, las salidas, y las carreras para cambiarse de ropa. Pero todo sin estridencias, sino con la calma que permite la extrema preparación.

La Haute Couture es el lugar de la locura disciplinada. Cientos de horas de trabajo para convertir un boceto en un sueño real, a golpe de miles de plisados, de lentejuelas, de appliqués y puntadas dadas estrictamente a mano, para crear un vestido que se puede lucir solo una vez. La fotografía de moda en esas condiciones tiene que ser una fantasía, también fruto de una disciplina impuesta por la estrechez del lugar. Hay que contar una historia. De moda, pero una historia. Que cada imagen agrande la visión del diseñador y trasmita la mirada del fotógrafo.

La pasión que se junta en ese momento es irrepetible. Disfruten.

Joséphine Douet

“MAN EXPOSED" History of Male Nude in Photography and Video (XXth and XXIth)

Curator / Ron Howell

Exhibit / 4 to 21 July 2014

“GILBERT: ‘It’s strange: a naked lady is wonderful; two naked ladies, very interesting; but two men naked …..!
GEORGE: One man naked is a male study; more than one …. well that’s quite serious - two men naked are more naked than one.’

MAN - EXPOSED (by RON HOWELL, curator)

Nakedness is exciting, fascinating - but it can also be disturbing.

Kenneth Clark, the English art historian, made the distinction between ‘nude’ and ‘naked’ - the nude is posed, confident, contrived, ‘respectably’ rooted in art history; naked is to be without clothes - exposed, vulnerable - an embarrassment!? Especially the penis.

The selection of photographs here traces the change in society’s attitude to the naked male during the 20th/21st centuries - changes which mirror and reflect the place of homoerotic and same sex relationships. The American photographer Berenice Abbott said ‘Photography helps people to see’ - and as we look at the images, so we see how society has changed; and the images have challenged society to change.The process of male ‘nude’ to ‘naked’ men is the story of the homoerotic becoming open and mainstream; of gay moving from closet to establishment.

At the end of the 19th century, photographs of the nude male fell into three main categories - of models in various poses of use to artists - replacing the use of plaster casts and live models; the recording of tribal and non-european cultures; the increasing use for medical, scientific and criminal purposes - so wounded soldiers were photographed in the American Civil war, criminals were recorded in ‘mug shots’, and the work of Huxley, Darwin and others led to the use of photography in the understanding of human/ animal evolution - Muybridge developed a camera to record human locomotion. This was the first time images of the nude male were widely available to the general public. Photography was used and valued for recording clarity of detail - things as they ‘are’.

Edward Mybridge, circa 1870