naturist photography, art and pornography

Felicity, a blogger from Young Naturists and Nudists America, has recently raised a question whether it is possible to draw an objective line between naturist photography, nudes in art and pornography in her blog. I am sure there are photos with naked people that no one would call art or porn, there are pieces of art with nudes that do not refer to naturist lifestyle and are not sexually stimulating, and pornography that is neither artistic nor naturist. But some imagery is much more difficult to classify. Felicity referred to the case of Modigliani paintings that at the time of their production were banned from display as pornography.

I think this painting might depict a naturist woman, perhaps stretching after a nap. It is a painting, a pretty one, so it must be art 🙂 But some people might find her pose somewhat too inviting and arousing, there is certainly a focus on the crotch, so I can imagine they would see it as porn…

To be honest, I don’t really like trying to define such obviously subjective matters, but as they come up quite often with naturist topics, I’ve decided to add my 2 cents. Felicity has to deal with that, because sponsors at their website are worried whether the graphic contents posted by some members is purely naturist… Last week my blog was flagged by someone, so now you get this annoying content warning. Hope it won’t go further than that.

Well, as expected, Felicity came to a conclusion that “porn is just in the eye of the beholder”. I really liked the comments to that post. In the response to a statement that a photo should be considered porn when there is a focus on genitals, one reader noted that there are also foot fetishists. And I think it is in the core of naturist philosophy that genitals are not more immoral than say a hand; then there shouldn’t be an issue with imagery specifically showing the former. But in any case, a web site depicting only genitals would not be able to show naturist lifestyle, not more than the one with only photos of arms or ears, so as long as the holistic aspect of naturism is shown, why bother that some members of the network show their particular body parts? And actually there are also underwear, leather, rubber, jeans, nurse, flight-attendent – you name it – fetishes, so being clothed in a particular form may be more sexually arousing for some people than being naked… Should it be censored?

Probably there is more consensus on the imagery with hard penises, but are those two below porn?

This guy might just sneak out his house to breathe some fresh morning air; he has an erection but it does not seem to be directed at anyone, there is no sign of any sexual behavior and the whole setting looks perfectly naturist.

And on this photo, the erect penis only adds artistic aspect to it, as it points in the direction where the archer is shooting. Otherwise, the image would be classified as almost casual naturist, so to say, as some naturist resorts, including the famous village de La Sablière, offer archery courses.

So while I understand that many naturist networks and forums are reluctant to let anything remotely erotic and even more so pornographic be posted, because they don’t want to sexualize their websites, in the end this does not sound any better than strict rules of Facebook forbidding any kind of frontal nudity, and the criteria are even more difficult to set objectively.