The Body Electric Neon

This morning I was in the library researching a book of photographs by Cole Weston. The book was beautifully designed on high-quality laminate paper to showcase the succinct color quality inherant to Weston’s sensibility. When I came to a Xeroxed page of the photo “Nude in Window, Arizona, 1979,” I was momentarily confused. Then I turned past the page to reveal scratches from an exacto in the shape of the window that, in the photo, the nude woman is seen through.

Cole Weston is, in terms of subject matter, sometimes disappointingly traditional. The beauty of nature and its high degree of order is so tried-and-true as to be pastiche. So, for a convential photographer to be rejected by the most convential thinkers (Kansans) is an indication of the narrow-mindedness that proliferates, even at the university level, which should exhibit the highest level of sophistication and tolerance.

This is no singular event, either. Rachel Crane, librarian of Art and Design at the Ablah Library, has commented that photography is a specific target of vandalism in the collection. That painted nudes do not suffer equally is perhaps an indication that photography is not considered to have the same interpretive element. There is not only no understanding of photography as an art form, but there is also the indication that students cannot distinguish the body in any context besides the sexually explicit. That is undoubtedly one of the contributing reasons that the Rhatigan Student Gallery on campus does not allow nude depictions on its display wall, observable to any passer-by.

I offer this in contrast to the recent stunt of Janet Jackson, which is merely ridiculous, as any grossly inflated event like the Superbowl becomes ridiculous by sucking on its own gluttonous juices. The Weston photograph clearly has a voyeuristic quality. The truncated torso emerges from the dark interior with the same sumptuousness of the Aphrodite of Knidos, or other depictions of Aphrodite lifting the back of her robe to reveal her lauded bottom. In this respect it shares a channeling of sensuality that Jackson obviously intended. But the difference is that the extent of Jackson’s exploration of that sensuality was, “Sex is cool. I really like it lots.”