Beyond the negatives.

"Flesh does have positive meanings in Christian thought, notably as the temple of God. Indeed, the Incarnation of Jesus only makes theological sense if human embodiment is seen as worthy and meaningful".  Ruth Barcan - Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy.

"God couldn't be God-with-us if he weren't flesh. The flesh of the baby is father to the flesh of the man. In his (Christ's) flesh, the spit of God mixed with the dirt of Galilee to make a healing paste. The naked baby must be flesh so that God can be stripped and seen again, trading his 'dusty garments' of distance for the immediacy of the splinters of the cross".  Mary Ellen Ashcroft - Gift-wrapping God.

As we approach Christmas, I thought I'd pen a few thoughts on what we. perhaps, need to consider as we think about life, the body, and God's immediate 'connection' to it all....


It's tellingly easy to ill-define ourselves. No where do we see this more than we when we come to the nude. 
Definition, of course, plays a key part. One popular theological concordance defines 'nude' as almost entirely negative - to be uncovered, devoid of grace, heinously sinful, destitute, and so on.

There are clear reasons, in relation to the human condition, why these statements are made,
but the concordance also speaks of another truth as well regarding being nude - "a state in which things are discovered, known and truly revealed". It's this aspect of nudity that faith, and in a smaller fashion, art allows us to encounter and embrace for some essential reasons regarding both the nature of God and ourselves.
So, let's consider our own definitions for a moment.

C S Lewis, in his study 'The Four Loves', provided some useful pegging points on various views of the body. 

These might be titled:

·The ascetic pagan or christian who deprecates the body to a mere tomb (used and discarded at death).

·The ‘neo pagan/nudist’ who view the (present) body as presently glorious (but, again, of no eternal purpose or value).

·Those who view the current state as both a virtue and a vice (“pathetically and absurdly beautiful”).

It's pretty clear that our own culture has a fairly splintered and often unproductive approach to the body - it's either idolized or hated, with very little tolerance for anything in-between. That's because, like the Greeks, we tend to 'deify' the immediate (what pleases or satisfies us now) and discard any thoughts of transcendence within the material, dislocating the spiritual and placing it in an entirely different orbit to the here and now. The trouble is we know there's a problem here, because it's actually amidst the material world that we all encounter startling moments of truth, wonder and astonishment that make us tellingly aware of the spiritual within  the material. Whether we are talking about finding out something deeper about ourselves or the nature of reality, it's these moments that truly impact upon us and transform us, so there clearly is something more going on here than merely a satisfying of the immediate - we yearn for something more, and the world, through numerous means, but often by faith and art, 'speaks' to that deep need. 

The futility which often marks our lives steers us to look at beauty in general and the body in particular as ultimately,  an uncomfortable irrelevance to our prevailing pain and strife - it's all pointless or temporary, so we eschew any notion of permanence and wallow in the ugly despair so tellingly present, or just enjoy the moment whilst we can, for there isn't anything, at least in the material sense, to really look forward to. The problem, of course, is reality is deeper than this.

Whilst we cannot deny the reality of the ugly side of life, there's clearly more going on here, and looking through the 'window' of an acknowledgment of this allows us to begin to engage with a far wider and more challenging understanding of both ourselves and the nature of our world.

As I've already noted, it's easy for religion to be deemed negative about the matter of nudity. Like the Greeks of old (which is actually where a lot of the trouble started), Christianity has often taught a 'general uptake of Aristotelian biology and ideas', thereby deeming the body to be inherently 'bad' in an of itself and the nude, especially the female nude, to be something which quickly 'communicates sin, sex and evil' (Barcan, page 108), but again, reality is far more troubling and enriching.

During the recovery of the Biblical world-view in the 1500's, artists transformed by this, such as Lucas Cranach, were free once again to genuinely paint and convey the beauty of the female form. This was because the very nature of God's validation of the material, both in it's creation and in it's recovery through the Incarnation, become restored as an essential aspect of Christianity and then culture, showing us that there was a right 'uncovering' of both truth and ourselves that had to take place, and that is still true today. It's so very easy to let our thinking and approach to life to be eschewed by the temporary and immediate, but it is often when we look closer and deeper into the very nature of these things that we will be struck with what we might term an impinging grace that can change and transform, even amidst the mundane. Art, beauty and the enticing richness of seeing God in Christ lead us to this better realm - where life can properly be uncovered.


Images: Magenta in Cornwall by Howard Nowlan.

Eyes that see

"Why do you think the great nude art of the Western World derived from its religious belief systems?  Why do you think our online art has become so empty and vacuuous today?  Because just a picture of a gorgeous nude man or woman is just not enough".  From the 'What We Saw Today" Blog, by Carla Johnson.

Ever since we walked, naked and without shame in the garden, we have known that spirituality is vitally inherent to the totality of our bodily existence, and yet, because of the pain and division we brought upon ourselves when we fell from that amazing place, we belong to a culture which so often is striving to entirely dislocate itself from the 'weight', the honor and the ramifications of that over-arching reality. We see it so often in the escapism we crave to entertain us, which lowers not only our expectations, but our engagement with the life around us - it seeks to rule us in a vacuum of the carnal, whilst any reference to the spiritual is confined to a detached, esoteric existence, either beyond the norm or beyond death - certainly beyond the here and now.

Christianity, whilst acknowledging (and resolving) our core malady does not allow us to wallow in such dull fantasy. At the heart of this message is an emphatic affirmation that God had not only made, but reconciled the world of flesh and bone to Himself by becoming part of that very pained order, and by the means of both life and death, in His own flesh, redeemed our broken earth, our alienated lives, that we may once more see His life in the fabric and weave of all creation - to become those who share in the marvel which truly underpins all that is.

It's a view which breaks the drug-like dependancy of our world upon beliefs and ideas which seek to make us far less than we were fashioned to be - creatures who deem their 'enlightenment' is defined by looking upon the universe and our experience of it as inherently brief and meaningless.

Any artist who finds worth in their work knows that what counts here is a direct, profound and immediate sense of connection with their subject, and that is what brings to the fore the defining of that work, even if the theme or meaning of the piece is dark - we are seeking to reflect a relationship to reality which inspires us to create and to convey a meaning or a hope within that. As a fellow artists noted recently, "The nudes in the Sistine Chapel express the spiritual power that resides in the flesh. The idea is transcendence. Michaelangelo's iconic image of God giving Adam his life, heart and soul, implies an integrity of our diverse elements that includes human eroticism....(contemporary) fundamentalist branches of various belief systems have tried to deny a connection between body and soul and shamed it" (Carla Johnson).

Life is essentially about our coming back to what has been lost - the bare and unashamed communion with God and each other that defined our status and nature in the temple of Eden, and that is, no doubt why art and life which invites us to move in that direction is so often neglected or ridiculed in our culture - it means an encounter with ourselves, with our reality that is brutally honest, because a return to true life, true innocence, requires nothing less.

We can fill our world with all manner of rational and spiritual pretense - we've become masters at manufacturing those fig-leaves -  but, thankfully, enough of the 'original image' yet remains to tell us we cannot really hide, not in a way that silences what our own reflection echos to us each day - we were made with a glory that reflects the splendor of the one who formed us, to express that marvel to the whole of creation... that is what lies behind our mandate to go out and engage with life.

Since my entry last month, I've had the joy of working once again with Auerilie (pictured in this latest set) - a new model who began working earlier this year. It was a joy to create together, and I hope that more projects will be forthcoming.

The Passing Days

"For everything there is a purpose and a season, under heaven".  Solomon.

For my last entry here, I marked the completion of a decade behind the camera. It was truly a mile stone, not only because of what I've achieved in that time, but because, as always, times are changing....

In September the weather finally became more 'friendly' than it had been all summer, and I was able, through the support of another local photographer, to head back to Cornwall once again with the wonderful muses, Erin and Magenta. We headed to a superb north coast beach on Sunday, which was pretty busy when we arrived, and I found myself feeling moody - the conditions were not right, there were too many people around... Erin rightly chastised me for my mood, and we went on to produce some excellent work (thanks, Erin), but later, on reflection, I realized there had been more to my 'darkness' in that moment that just the immediate issues.

Over the last decade, I have had the great joy of working with a number of absolutely superb models, who have been as passionate and enthusiastic as myself about trudging out to the back of beyond to create something fresh and, hopefully, special. Over the last few years, Erin and Magenta have become the principal focus of such projects, and as we spent the September weekend together, a trace of melancholia was laced into our time, as we were aware that life was changing - Erin had recently married, and Magenta has done the same in the last few weeks. The time has come for these two wonderful ladies to begin to focus upon family, as had been the case with others over these past few years.

The changes that will ensue, I suspect, will quickly become palpable. Finding models of such quality and skill is a hard task, for whilst there are numerous 'general' photographic models, it takes particular skill to pose well unclothed for a camera, and to be as aware and as inter-active with another artist as Erin and Magenta have been is a treasure, to adapt Solomon, as rare as rubies and emeralds!

I hope there will be further opportunities to work with both of these super artists, and I owe them a huge debt of thanks for all of their hard work (especially with regards to putting up with me!) over the years.

It will certainly be interesting to see what life brings to us in the next chapter...

Ten Years

"How we long to be revealed, knowing then we might be healed"
                                                                                   Mary Chapin Carpenter.

 Image by Howard & Kay Nowlan

Who would have thought, when I made those first, tentative steps to take images some ten years ago, that it would lead to something so special,
but it surely did.

Kay and I had been living in our new home for some nine months when I asked to seriously engage for the first time with what had always been her vocation, but much had changed that year, for not only had we re-located, but Kay had been diagnosed with cancer, which had brought us even closer in our lives and our sharing of precious days.

We'd arranged for a wonderful model named Natasha to come and work with us for that first project - a studio shoot in the morning, and an outdoor session on a nearby beach in the afternoon. I was so nervous that I completely missed the studio part of the day, but Natasha and Kay encouraged me to jump in for the afternoon, and I'm so very glad that I did - it was a critical moment which nurtured a vocation which has strengthened and blossomed over this last decade.






Images by Kay Nowlan



I was able to 'crown' and celebrate this gift this weekend. This started with my receiving my certificate of Higher Education in the Creative Arts from the new University of Buckinghamshire for my three years of study in Photography with the Open College of Arts. Kay would have been, I suspect, both perhaps surprised and delighted.
The second joy was returning again to Cornwall to work with the group of artists who have become very close in the last few years, and my Muse, Magenta. It was exactly the way to encapsulate what the last decade has meant in terms of artistic expression and the richness which working in this field (in terms of friendship and finding beauty amidst the often painful realities of life) has provided. You can view the results of the project here.

Image by Howard Nowlan

I would just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has worked with me in this field over this time. It has been a great joy and a genuine pleasure to create and share such moments with you all. Many thanks, especially to Natasha and Magenta, who have supported and encouraged me by giving of their skills, their beauty, to many of my projects.

Let's all keep enjoying the wonder.

Why?

It's certainly been a time of changes.

In the last few months, I've been seeking to do things to develop my personal and artistic connection to the world, which has included starting a new on-line opportunity for the public to work with me in creating fine art images. I've found myself thinking about my approach to this and to my work in general, and this lead me back to something I wrote some years ago, which I think helps place my work in the art nude field in context...

Beyond Immediate Pretense.

"The hunger, and the longing, everyone of us knows inside,

Could be the bridge between us".Amy Grant - Turn this world around.

As a photographer, the tools of my trade are often those elements which might be deemed 'beautiful' - light and shade, texture and tone, form and posture, but just having certain elements around you does not equate to actually making a good image - they certainly help, but you have to break some eggs to make a good omelet!

I recall listening to the photographer Jock Sturges, and how he was commissioned to work with a very famous model on a fashion shoot, which he dutifully covered, but there was no 'connection' between himself and the person in the images, and because of that, he would never use the work himself and viewed the event as meaningless.

We often work at a pretty superficial level in secular society. The goal much of the time is to fulfill immediate wants and needs without delving deeper into why or what such attitudes (living for now) really say about us - what are we actually running away from, and why this addiction to the immediate instead of deeper pursuits?

There is clearly a difference in our relationship to others and to life in general when we do not  interact with them in a merely transitory fashion, but begin to appreciate, to value them, for who or what they really are - that the beauty of a personality, of the world around us, is an astonishing, intricate and complex reality, that can consume our own selves in the wonder of a more richer and satisfying contemplation, making us truly wealthier people.

The art of photography has really brought home to me the fact that the person before me is not just an object - a 'body' to photograph and then effectively ignore. The joy of this craft is to discover the treasure of the person which embodies the physical 'frame', and to seek to bring out the far weightier beauty of who they are in what is captured in the images.
It is what is within that animates and 'clothes' the outward grace of our bodies, and if there is no one at home, then you will only capture dull photos, no matter how long you photo shop them!

In the early chapters of Genesis, there is a clear illustration of the difference between the genuinely enriching and the grotesquely, inherently contrived.

When Adam looks upon Eve for the first time, he comprehends a person who is totally unique and yet entirely compatible with his own existence. The response is one of immediate worship, for he recognizes the profound richness and significance of this woman, and the desire within him is to truly know her, in a profoundly deep and rich fashion.
Contrast this to the image not much further along, where these two same people are seeking to run from such a reality, to hide and cover themselves from each other, to act in an entirely pretentious and superficial fashion in response to the nature of their crime - the demeaning of all which God had so graciously given them.

We do a great violence to ourselves, to our existence, when we exist at the level of the trite and the supposedly irrelevant. It stains our broken souls with a stupor to dull our deeper needs - a malady that will drown a much deeper need if unchecked.

There have been countless times in the last few years when I have seen people sit in front of a camera and gain a fresh awareness or confidence regarding some aspect of themselves.
Sadly, there have also been occasions when the person has been 'dead' - they have no desire, no hunger to do anything beyond what is immediate.

Christ holds a similar mirror before us. He wants us to see the pain of our lives when crippled by the trite and the facile, to really understand our condition, but to also see the wonder of these lives when they are set free by God's care, mercy and grace, to escape the superficial and really to become human.

There is a value to be gleaned amidst the dirt and dust...

"Just as God exists for absolutely no purpose beyond himself, so human beings are fashioned to live in this way too, to be at their best when they are as gloriously pointless as a work of art. A just social order is one which would allow men and women to be in this sense ends in themselves, not means to another’s power or profit". Terry Eagleton.

Images of Aurelie, Magenta and Andreya by Howard.

Blinded?

"Such a fatal kiss stolen from heaven's lips" Magenta - Broken

It's an argument fraught with pitfalls and betrayal, broken lives and erroneous theology... the signs are all clear, 'cliffs ahead - turn back or face deadly perils'. That's the reasoning commonly advanced when concerned people come across anything that seeks to advance any 'redemptive' message with regards to a Christian involvement in culture and especially with regards to creative nudity... don't go there, plain and simple.


There's no doubt we can suffer harm when we 'engage' with this world of ours - just getting on with the normal business of the day can be pretty distressing some days - but we can equally be scarred by an approach that withdraws from life and creates a notion of spirituality and piety that pretty well denies the value and the goodness of the material purely on the basis that it can be detrimental.


Nudity (as opposed to imposed nakedness) is beautiful, and that is why art has celebrated the human form throughout the history of our race, so is such an expression entirely wrong? That certainly does not seem to join too well with either the essential manner of our being (as defined in the creation record) or the celebration of the sensual or erotic as found within scripture itself - these gifts are good, it is purely the way we set about using them which really produces their rightness or their spoiling.

In ancient Greece, as in other cultures, nude images were fashioned to convey a manner of beauty and perfection which expressed the divine, and as such, sought to woo society into a veneration of gods (ideals) that could be achieved by the thinking and expression of that culture - a march to an ascendancy of our own doing. In the art of the Renaissance, the goal was often entirely different - to express how God, enveloped in humanity, had come to save (reconcile and redeem) mankind and the world which had been bound in futility because of our rebellion (and therefore, couldn't facilitate our own schemes of perfection). Art, then, can be used either to bind us to broken ideals or to point towards a deeper, truer understanding of ourselves and our world.

Such a consideration, of course, is fraught with troubles. If Christians can embrace a value to the unclothed body outside of the marriage chamber, then that has to mean we cannot discard the nude in art to this waste bin of 'damaged goods' beyond the reach of our engagement with life. It means we have to take on board early nude baptisms in the church, early use by Christians of the Roman baths, early Christian images that depict the naked form. It means we have to accept the illustration of the Christian life of the runner, discarding anything which would slow his advance (including clothes in the ancient world) to win the race and gain the prize, or the focus of all, Christ Himself, naked and crucified, 'placarded' before us in His death and at the heart of the Gospel, to save and rescue the world God loves.




Perhaps this is why so many in the church today wish to place any engagement with art in a 'Sunday school' imagery category... it can be used, so long as it's not too real (lots of 'meek and mild' images), and certainly nothing that points too 'graphically' at the grime and grit of life. It's not too hard, when this approach becomes key, to understand why we have so little to say to the everyday realities around us.
Christ was a man found amongst the great 'sinners' of His time, and speaking from there to the pious concerning the nature of their great blindness. Paul clearly taught the early church not to distance themselves from the immoral around them, but to hold out the word of life amidst a corrupt generation -
is that what we're about when it comes to using a medium like art? Could our church or ministry ever nurture or encourage a Michelangelo or a Bach? Where are the communities which show the vitality of a Christian spirituality that shouts God is in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself?


The genuinely spiritual has to honor and enjoy whatsoever is good and honorable, and praiseworthy, and the 'glory' of the human body is most certainly part of that, within the wonder of the union between husband and wife, yes, but also, in the redemption of our bodies for the day coming when all of creation is renewed in Christ Jesus.


Using any gift to encourage wickedness or wrongdoing is indeed contrary to what Christ has done, but burying the gifts He wishes us to use well is equally as dangerous as squandering them.


The world needs to be 'romanced' by the beauty He has given to us in our times. It's often a case that what's required is not prohibition to a realm, but seeing what's there 'with better eyes' than we have before.







Images of Magenta by Howard.

Natural Art

"Within a generation, the Greeks stopped making realistic statues. Why? The answer reveals something fundamental about us as human beings - we're driven by something else - the need to exaggerate".

How Art Changed the World (BBC).

"The entire human race is profoundly and desperately religious. From the dim beginnings of our history right up to the present, none of us have been immune to thinking that the relationship between God and humanity can be repaired from our side, by what we do". 

Robert Farrar Capon.

It's always interested me how so often what is popular is invested with various yet apparently essential exaggerations. Heros, villains, even locations where key events are played out have to be larger than life to convey a sense of special weight and occasion. It's not just in block-busting films that this is so. Popular plays, novels, operas, myths and poems often equally echo this sentiment, as does painting and sculpture - it seems that the 'real' world is often just too small scale for anything special to really be happening within, and yet, this is where you and I reside - here, in fact, is the canvas on which such grand ideas are fashioned, because it is the 'small' domain of our spinning little planet that all of the virtues and failings we write large on stage and screen are to be found and are given true meaning.

The reason for our 'necessary fictions' is because it often allows us to be a step removed from intimacy.

There are some wonderful moments in the film, Nell, where the two physicians entangled into the life of this strange, astonishing woman, realize that to truly help her, they will have to come out from behind their detached professionalism and deeply become involved in this life, this person, at great cost. Meaningful Art and genuine spirituality require us to make that same journey - to engage with the heights and depths of life, but to do so in such a fashion that we become wholly entangled in its demands, even to the point of having to give much of ourselves to become true participants of the beauty and richness it calls us, demands us to see and totally encounter.

Such inter-action will wound and heal us deeply, but it will also mean we cannot be content with peripheral, bland uses of artistic or religious means (however ornate the external trappings) - we will long for something more.

There is a beauty, a wisdom, which calls us, like falling in love, which we deny at our greatest loss. The deepest songs, words, and images will always flow from those fathomless depths - the river which still flows to us from Eden.

Images: Natural Beauty. Model: Joceline.  Serenity Model:Alena.  Tapestry Model:Peltigera.

The Deep Inclination

"The very heavens, as much as his own desire, pulled him irresistibly to art, so that he could not stop himself from drawing, whenever he could steal a moment, and from seeking the company of painters.”-Ascanio Condivi on Michaelangelo.

There are moments in human history which are as refreshing and as welcome as a cool breeze on a balmy day. 

October 31st, 1512, would prove to be just such a day.
For the first time, the world was able to see something extraordinary. Rightly declared "a lamp for our art which casts abroad lustre enough to illuminate the world" - the wonder first witnessed on that day was the finished ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
Containing some 300 figures, the work depicts the drama of the creation, fall and redemption of humanity from the pages of Genesis, providing a visual vista of some of the key moments of the book on a panoramic scale.

In the 1530's, Michaelangelo would again return to the chapel and produce another astonishing work - the staggering fresco of the last judgement. Once more, the piece would be filled with images of the human form, for it was here, both in his sculpture and his painting, that the artist truly found the core theme of his work - a mirror which truly reflects the divine.

And so, we have these masterpieces to enjoy today....

Well, that's not the whole story.

Some years after the work was finished, the Roman church decided that such an explicit display of naked glory had to be censored. It was ordered that the nudity was to be covered, and that one of Michaelangelo's students would work to cover all genitalia. Most of the nudity was covered, and stayed so for the next 400 years.

Thankfully, those of us living today are amongst the first to once more see the great work as it was originally created, due to a monumental restoration work at the chapel in the 1980's &90's.

As with our own times, it wasn't that nakedness when associated with vice wasn't in vogue (the medieval church had a huge catalogue of sexual misdemeanour's entitled the penitentials), but it was when nudity 'spoke' of something deeper that there was trouble.

Michaelangelo gave the world something momentous.  He understood that because of God's work in Christ, there was no longer any place for a dichotomy between truth and art, and that we should use our gifts and talents to convey this, particularly when it came to understanding the fallen nature and true intent of humanity. In seeking to express such essential truths, He became the target of an equally deep passion amongst some - to deride and tarnish any expression of such splendour, and rob the world of beauty which speaks all too closely to us for some to bear.

It's extraordinary to think that many of those in authority in those times would like to have seen nothing less than these great works white-washed, but the same appears to be true regarding fine art today. Over the last several months, many fine artists have vanished from blogging forums and popular art platforms purely because of the unceasing verbal violence constantly unleashed against their work in extolling the splendour of the human form. Those who have remained are tending to 'gate' their sites so access is given to friends only. The loss is already becoming palpable, and I wonder if, as with Michaelangelo's work, we will find in our times that much of this work will become blocked to the public arena as internet censors and vandals marginalise access to such beauty.


We cannot afford to let such a cardinal need to connect to the deeper and richer - both in the creation and enjoyment of such art - to become stifled and silenced. The glory expressed in these works resonates in us, that we are indeed part of something truly profound. Let us do all we can to express and share such a glory.

Models: Allegra & Magenta. Images by Howard.
 

The Enchanted Longing

"The determinative flashes of sunlight...the moments of tenderness, the thousand impressions that have flowered into meaning - remain radically incommunicable. On the day we die, a hundred such chapters will go into the void for every one we leave on someone's desk... (We need) not simply to be lovers of beauty, but lovers of being, just because it is, for it is in seeing, knowing, 'the higher within the lower', that we find the root of beauty, goodness and truth".
Robert Farrar Capon.

There is a 'yearning', in our best moments, that we share with all of creation. Like a fragrance, winsome and teasing, igniting a treasured memory from childhood, it occasionally plays upon us and briefly beckons us to look harder and further into what is here, woven into flesh and soil, than our usual modes of reflection. Such moments, like honeysuckle caught briefly in the air, profoundly still and argue with our thoughts which make art and beauty either concepts 'too high' (beyond us) or 'too low' (measured and understood) that we entirely miss the real wonder and greatness of what is upon us - the real value of what is here. At such a moment, "We do not want merely to see beauty, we want something more which can hardly be put into words - to be united to it, to bathe in it, to become part of it"(C S Lewis - The Weight of Glory). The 'yearning' is especially acute in our recreation, because it is here we most often pause and reflect, commonly with others but also alone, through the arts and engagement with friends or family, upon the true 'fragrance' of the world and life which, though marred by pain and crippled when a means for evil, resonates with the fact that there is a beauty, a wonder, a significance woven into its rich tapestry, and all that is good conveys this to us.

The passion to work with the body - with the person who is 'known' through their physicality - is truly a part of this 'dance' (the true 'romance' of existence). In his short New Testament letter, James speaks about looking upon our reflection and noting the true 'weight' of what this tells us about ourselves. When we look well (deep enough and hard enough), we can gain a glimpse of the significance with which we have been clothed - to know, express, share and enrich each other with a love and splendour which reflects the true 'glory' of the community of the Creator who made the marvel that we are and which surrounds us. Beauty truly becomes evident when such 'light' is conveyed, but it is a revelation both astonishing and terrifying, because so much of what we are, what we do, is so far from this - we are left outside.

It takes something more than ourselves to get us beyond the pain and ugliness to allow us to once more truly engage with the beauty. It was some years ago that I first heard about the work of Eileen Fisher Turk, a New York artist who used nude photography to help women who had been sexually abused or suffered from various disorders to re-connect with themselves and especially the wonder of their own bodies through the use of images - holding a 'mirror' before them. Whilst I am not a therapist, I have certainly encountered the power of this use of nude images first hand, and personally seen the impact it had on one person in particular, totally breaking a destructive part of their life and changing their definition of themselves, allowing a much more normal, healthy course to begin.

The need we all share is that of 're-connection' to the true art, the amazing grace, that underpins our world. Glimpses of that window, reflections of that longing, often meet us in our richest, deepest moments of delight or reflection, when we stand on the edge of what truly counts. God is at work, through Jesus Christ, to reconcile all that has been tainted, says Christianity, because the love shared in the communion of Father, Son and Spirit needs to become, to permeate, everything, that we can truly know and revel in our true value and purpose. That is the goal- a world entirely motivated by, filled with and growing through the richest, deepest, affirming love. May our art play some small part in such a work.






Image by Howard: Beautiful Dreamer - Model:Kari, Longing for the Garden - Model: Nicola, Beautifully Made - Model:Loella.

Discovering the dream

"A lucky child, I was allowed to run naked through silken mud puddles, and then shower in summer rain. I learned to identify woodland flowers before I could read. I climbed to the tops of trees to feel them sway and quake in the wind. Sometimes, reclining in the uppermost branches of my favourite climbing tree with a book, I escaped into an evergreen-infused world of adventure. It might not be necessary to do such things as a child to connect to the natural world as an adult. But if you are lucky enough to be touched by the land — be it prairie, desert, old growth forest, mountain, valley, freshwater lake or salty coastline — you know the elemental need and hunger this connection feeds". Honey Blacklock - Introductory essay to A Voice Within.


We often ponder what it's really all about, this wonder we call life. In spite of it all too often being marred by sadness and pain, we understand there's something astonishing going on here - it's an extraordinary place we inhabit in the midst of an astounding universe which both theology and science inform us* really cannot be here by chance.
Nature's glory is truly a masterpiece, writ large, which invites us to partake in something very special. The heavens, wrote David in the Psalms declare something vital - the sheer significance of the one behind all of the splendour, and as we contemplate the magnitude and the majesty, we are invited to not only acknowledge but encounter the one in whom we live and move and have our being, as the Greeks wisely put it. Behind the stillness of a star-filled night or glorious sunrise, is one who eternally expresses such glory, who invites us through such spectacle to draw near and discover the maker of such beauty.

In my last piece here, I sought to convey something of the importance in distinguishing between the 'naturalness' of human nudity in Eden, and the poverty of the nakedness which came upon us in our fall from such grace, and how God Himself sets out to aid us in our fall to restore what we had lost. If we understand this, then whilst our engagement with art will always be made in the context of our present malady, it will also seek to look beyond that - back to the garden, and forward to a complete creation, and that's the real point in faith and life in general. We are not here to complete a virtually disassociated series of actions through childhood into becoming an adult until we die and, well, that's all there is - we're here to build relationships, with a God who is Himself a community (Father, Son and Spirit) and with each other - it is eternal communion, marked with the true significance of existence, which should mark who we are and what we do, and that is most certainly true when it comes to our endeavours in the arts.

Honey Blacklock's story resonates so deeply. When she first met a photographer who was looking for a model to work with over many years to create a collection of natural nudes, she couldn't envisage herself ever fulfilling such a role, but as she pondered the idea, 'the voice within' of days when she had innocently enjoyed being amongst the natural world began to prompt and argue with her, and shortly after that, her life was changed completely by becoming involved in the project. Christ talks about essential reality in the same fashion - we cannot afford to loose that essential ingredient we have as children - that sense of wonder as we engage with life - because only then will we have the tools to truly begin to unpack and value the charm and grace which surrounds us... we all know it's there, it's just so easy for us to spend most of our time too busy to hear it's still voice or catch the hint of its amazing fragrance - truly living means taking the plunge, and that can be an unnerving, even scary prospect much of the time.

We all would like life, perhaps even art, to be 'safe' - somewhere we know we can apply certain rules and everything will be predictable, measurable, contained, but reality is overseen by something glorious and as wild as the deepest romance - a story of unimaginable love, and we are caught in its magic. We can seek to detach from that and live in our safe, hopefully restrained worlds, or we can embrace the dream, become the romantic fool, and love deeper than we ever thought possible. It's dangerous, we're warned, it's nonsense, some chide, but what of that... what a world awaits those who carry such passion!

My days behind the camera are married to my days of embracing all of life - the one fuels and sustains the other. It is the only way to create something which, in a manner however small, seeks to convey something of the splendour of it all.

















Images: Echoes of Eden. Model: Nicola. Sea Sprite. Model: Magenta. Naturally sensuous. Model: Lisa.

You can see the superb 'A Voice Within' images by Craig and Honey Blacklock here.
And read Honey's wonderful essay on the project here.


* Sir Fred Hoyle's amazing work into the existence of Carbon in the 1950's really opens the door regarding the very nature of the existence of the Universe itself. Years later, he wrote:
"Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule." Of course you would . . . A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question". In more recent times, one of the world's most prominent atheists, Anthony Flew, reached a similar conclusion. In the last few years of his life, he wrote that the continuing unfolding of the integrated complexity within both the essential physical structure of the universe and particularly within biological systems had overwhelmingly convinced him regarding the existence of a designer and made prior philosophical arguments against this mute.

Thinking (and living) dangerously.

"We were made to reflect an unstained glory, and our longing for that state won't be silenced by force. At best it can be locked in a closet of our souls, where it can only fester and either deaden or consume us....A shame-tainted theology might argue that bodies are bad, but an incarnational theology will have none of that. In refuting the Gnostics, Irenaeus insisted that God made us of earth and spirit "so that man and woman should be like God not only in their breath but also in their shaped flesh.".To believe in Christ's incarnation is to believe it is possible for mortal flesh to carry God's image". Karen Lee Thorpe - Is Beauty Dangerous?


I found myself directed though a mailing this week to a particular conservative Christian website entry on whether it was right for Christians to be engaged in employing nudity in art.
The conclusion ( a clear "no"), and the route to get there was what might be termed a commonplace theological approach - I've encountered essentially the same argument for many years about any proximity to anything to do with nudity and other issues (beauty, for example). What was intriguing to my mind on this occasion was not so much what the article said as what it omitted to say, or at least, to spell out, in any valuable way to its audience. It is this lack or manner of omission, and what it says about a great deal of 'christian' thought that I'd like to seek to touch upon here, because those of us who both acknowledge 'the righteousness of God' manifest in Jesus Christ and that it is this same God who makes 'everything beautiful in its time', including the human form, do have a reason for what we do, and it is imperative that this is understood by the artist and the world in which we live.

The article in question jumps right into the creation story and talks about nudity in Eden and how this became a problem in the fall, so Adam and Eve are then given garments, and that, therefore, is the common state of play - clothing, with regards ourselves and God is to be viewed as 'appropriate and necessary' from then on, so Adam's evaluation in putting on fig leaves was, apparently sound, and we just have to live with that.
There are, however, problems here. The first, and perhaps most important, is that the 'nakedness' of humanity's shame is not the same physical 'nakedness' (known without shame) in the garden. If the problem being addressed here was merely to do with our bodies being naked, then the 'skins' (hides) God gives to them could have easily been provided as something which covers us all from birth to the grave, as with other creatures (actually, that doesn't work for other reasons, which I'll touch on shortly) - but the 'covering' given here by God is a purely practical one. Due to the collapse of what creation was meant to be, the world humanity now occupies will be bleak and harsh, marked with hardship - garments that would help protect in such circumstances were practical.


Adam's shame at his true 'uncovering' (which was much more than skin deep) in the fall was a good thing - it's how we all should feel about our wrong-doing. His seeking to mask his true condition, from God and others, by hiding and by covering-up, is the error so common to our broken race.

So is that the primary 'image', then, for where we are to derive our source approach to nudity and also towards art? Is the image of our expulsion from Eden, de-nuded of our original state and environ, the only basis for our brief engagement with the present until we sink into the dust, rid of the misery of bodies and natures plagued by sin and death? Is that really it?

The image is painfully strong and true - alienation (a profound lack of belonging) is something we all know and experience deeply - but even at the very moment this horror occurs in Eden, God is already showing that it is through the body itself that He will bring about the rescue and total renewal of all that had been lost. The 'seed of the woman' (an actual child) would totally destroy the slavery to a broken world. There, then, in the moment of our world's darkest tragedy, is given the promise, the first image, of reconciliation and recapitulation, and it is a bodily image - not some ethereal escape, dismembering and thereby departing from the physical, but a working through this world that would totally re-affirm our being made (as bodily creatures) as those bearing God's image and likeness (which brings me back to the matter I touched on in my second paragraph - it is our being 'naked and unashamed' that is part of that entire purpose).

Art in the Old Testament is all to do with this - this return to our true place of belonging, for 'religious' or cultural art is all to with the tabernacle and later, the temple, and these sacred places are essentially representations of both Eden and the new creation - that is why these are the places where God 'resides' (as types of a renewed humanity and earth - see G K Beale's 'The Temple and the Church's Mission' - a Biblical theology of the dwelling place of God). The place where these 'works of art' find their 'first' true (permanent) expression is in the Incarnation - in the fulfilment of the ancient promises in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is this naked coming of God into our world which totally verifies the promise made in Eden.

It is simply not enough to codify our faith into a system whereby something is deemed 'good' or 'bad' because a particular ethic is employed here, or a cluster of Biblical references are made there - we are not Stoics or Epicureans, or their philosophical offspring, but those who evidence the overwhelming shock of 'the lamb, slain before the foundation of the world' being the source and purpose behind all things in Heaven and Earth in the mystery of God manifest in the flesh... that is the vital truth, the essential seed which must be at the very heart of our breath and life, and it is from there we should ask what of art, of the body, and our engagement with such?

In her article on the value of female beauty, Karen Black concludes: If we are going to move beyond pride and shame to a strong humility regarding our bodies, we must stop listening to the voices that tell us beauty is either trivial or dangerous. It does matter that every girl learns to see herself as beautiful and offer her beauty to those around her in appropriate ways. If Christianity is going to engage with nudity in art in a fashion that isn't merely dualistic (and thereby, of no benefit at all), then it must cradle its understanding in the manger of Christ reconciling the world to Himself, and this surely includes the very bodies He has died to redeem and resurrect. Perhaps, if we begin there instead of after the covering of the fall of our race, we will have much more to say and to do.

Images: Joy, Contemplation and Consideration. Model:Magenta.