Week 7 EOC: Photo Challenge

Throughout the ages in the art world there has been a time when the human body was accepted in its naked form and there have been times in which it has not been publicly or socially accepted. Early painters and sculptors created works of art that in their day were evil and unmoral. Some of these same art pieces are considered today to be some of the world’s greatest pieces of art ever created. Take the above painting by Sandro Botticelli titled “The Birth of Venus” (http://www.paintinghere.com/painting/The_Birth_of_Venus_871.html) this allegorical painting of the goddess Venus emerging from the ocean is one of Botticelli’s greatest works and is a beautiful piece of art. It was many of these pieces of art that also became the inspiration for other works of art. By taking pieces of these paintings people could create scandalous images that were considered the first forms of pornography. When the camera came along there were a few men who saw a way to make a profit recreating these allegorical paintings and then cutting or cropping out all but the most sensual parts of the photograph to make trading cards and magazines. In the movie “Gentleman’s Relish” the story of a painter turned photographer ends up being tricked by his young assistant into doing this very thing. I think that the movie does a good job of capturing how this form of photography came about. This form of photography is also widely spread and in many ways socially accepted in the world today. The Below image is what it might have looked like for someone to crop and take a piece of a painting like "The Birth of Venus" and turn it into a more sensual or provocative piece of art or into something like a trading card.