This Photo Exhibition Of Nudes Is From A Woman’s Perspective

It doesn’t matter if it’s on Instagram or in real life, spring in the air has people ready to show some bare skin, bask in the sun, and start swimsuit shopping for summer. For some of us, our relationship to our bodies and the bodies of people around us changes as the weather gets warmer and we revel in the joy of being back outside.

For this reason and more, we can’t wait to see Nude at Fotografiska, the Swedish photography museum in New York. If you have been to any art museum before, you know that nudes in art, from all eras and contorted into all kinds of positions, are a staple of any collection and are mostly images of women made by men. In museums, a lot of the judgment of the naked body in daily life is stripped away. Who looks at Botticelli’s “Venus” and criticizes her body?

Nude at Fotografiska addresses the “centuries-long fascination with the naked body, and explores the balance between ‘the nude’ as an idealized form versus an honest, natural, and personal artistic expression,” according to the exhibition summary. The show explores not only nudity and nakedness in photography, but takes the perspective of 30 female-identifying artists and asks them to frame the naked body in their own gaze in over 200 images.

We spoke to three photographers — the Los Angeles–based Swedish artist Julia SH, the Caribbean-born, Barcelona-based photographer Denisse Ariana Pérez, and the Brooklyn-based visual artist Ina Jang — about their work in relation to the body, their process, and the impact of their photos on the viewers.