George Bernard Shaw
[Writer, critic, and dramatist, b. 1856, Dublin, d. 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England.]
I’ve posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin’s Thinker, but I merely looked constipated.
Judy Dater
[Photographer, b. 1941, Hollywood, lives in San Francisco.]
I’ve done a lot of nudes and there’s always a sexual charge.
John Currin
[Artist, b. 1962, Boulder, Colorado, lives in New York.]
I’ve always found paintings of nudes depressing because they can’t compete with photographs. The grainiest photograph of some girl, a blurry Polaroid—you’d rather look at that than the Venus de Milo, because you think, “Wow, that’s really somebody... This camera really was in front of this real naked lady.”
Andy Warhol
[Artist, b. 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 1987, New York.]
During this period [1960s] I took thousands of Polaroids of genitals. Whenever somebody came up to the Factory, no matter how straight-looking he was, I’d ask him to take his pants off so I could photograph his cock and balls... Personally, I loved porno and I bought lots of it all the time—the really dirty, exciting stuff. All you had to do was figure out what turned you on, and then just buy the dirty magazines and movie prints that are right for you, the way you’d go for the right pills or right cans of food.
Bert Stern
[Photographer, b. 1929, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2013, New York.]
Women like to take their clothes off. I noticed that. Especially in front of a camera. Or a mirror.
Paul Outerbridge
[Photographer, b. 1896, New York, d. 1958, Laguna Beach, California.]
The business of the state trying to legislate modesty is relatively both an infantile and ridiculous procedure. Of course, it is true that the more things are secreted the more intriguing they become, because it is always the forbidden that has the strongest appeal. Nudity is a state of fact—lewdity a state of mind.
Bettina Rheims
[Photographer, b. 1952, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, lives in Paris.]
I still find myself having to justify being a woman taking pictures of naked women. It never occurred to me that there was something bizarre about it, it always felt very natural.
Sophie Calle
[Artist, b. 1953, Paris, lives in Paris and New York.]
I met a photographer who agreed to give me a few lessons; in exchange, I had to pose naked for him.
