My First Nudes

I think I was about sixteen when I first discovered nudism, which handily coincided with a unit of work in my school art classes about the human form. This gave me an outlet for my growing fascination with nudity; while we never had a nude life model in school, it gave me some sort of justification for "internet research" for images to base sketches on. I also used myself as a model for the first time then, taking photos to base a sculpture on. These were never artefacts in themselves to me, just studies on which to base that sculpture (which I may post about separately later; it remains one of my favourite pieces of work), and so I didn't even bother to keep them for future reference.

Once I got to uni I started to consider myself as a subject for photography, as an expression of my interest in nudity, and as an exercise in exploring myself. Until I had discovered nudism I was not confident about my body, and still continue to build upon social confidence. So photography then, and now, was a means of expressing and exploring myself, and developing that confidence. These were my first attempts at photographing my nude self:

As you can see, even having been a nudist a couple of years by then, I fell fowl of society's taboos and ideas of modesty. Not to worry though, I soon shook that off! I don't consider these significant as pieces in themselves; they are horribly cliched, and over post-produced. They do mark an event in my development as an artist though, the first step into the subject area that occupies my mind the most, and so from these ironically embryonic images, grew much more.