allio art

delta illuminazione

photographs in a delta of natural lightjefferson 1085 studio - Monticello Florida USA

This collection of images began as a collaborative dialog with Becca Said regarding the utopian concept of "overcoming objectification" of the human form in Western Culture. A studious viewer will contemplate the gender neutrality of the figure model in select images presented here. Traditionally, the triangle of light used as illumination for these images would serve as a symbolic reference for the gender of the model - point up for male and point down for female - but these images are not all intended to be binary gender specific, a concept re-enforced by the square image format. Thus, the moving sunlight from a western-facing window serves to confuse the established visual code as the changing size and shape of light and shadows encouraged obfuscation of traditional objectification cues.

"I am an artist who believes that nudity is not inherently sexual. Sometimes my nudity IS sexual. And to say that only one kind of nudity is okay is both a removal of my autonomy in the matter and a removal of the complexity of human sexual expression and discourse.

"My very existence automatically places me in a position to be objectified daily. This experience is compounded as a nude model. In a civilian/non-nude artist capacity, I already struggle with the knowledge that people are looking at me and mentally undressing me and thinking any amount of unsavory things, both because I have heard these things vocalized and because I have been implicitly taught to both expect and welcome this behavior from total strangers. To exist as a woman is to exist as a consumable good. My point is that, no matter how okay I am with the concept or not, objectification happens without my consent and outside my control."

Becca Said - artist and life model