So I started right at the beginning with my first prize winning work in my last post. Let's skip ahead a few years. I think I was about sixteen when I first discovered nudism, which handily coincided with a unit of work in my school art classes about the human form. This gave me an outlet for my growing fascination with nudity; while we never had a nude life model in school, it gave me some sort of justification for "internet research" for images to base sketches on. I also used myself as a model for the first time then, taking photos to base a sculpture on. These were never artefacts in themselves to me, just studies on which to base that sculpture (which I may post about separately later; it remains one of my favourite pieces of work), and so I didn't even bother to keep them for future reference.

Once I got to uni I started to consider myself as a subject for photography, as an expression of my interest in nudity, and as an exercise in exploring myself. Until I had discovered nudism I was not confident about my body, and still continue to build upon social confidence. So photography then, and now, was a means of expressing and exploring myself, and developing that confidence. These were my first attempts at photographing my nude self:

As you can see, even having been a nudist a couple of years by then, I fell fowl of society's taboos and ideas of modesty. Not to worry though, I soon shook that off! I don't consider these significant as pieces in themselves; they are horribly cliched, and over post-produced. They do mark an event in my development as an artist though, the first step into the subject area that occupies my mind the most, and so from these ironically embryonic images, grew much more.

I occasionally enter competitions, to try and get some attention for my work, and sometimes get little perks, like publication or prizes. I have a page cataloguing my achievements to date in that field on this very site. One competition which is absent from that listing is the very first art competition I won something in. I don't recall what place I came, but for my efforts I got an Asda gift voucher, with which I brought my first ever camera, a black 35mm compact, which I expertly used to chop the heads off of all my relatives (in a purely photographic sense).

What amazing piece of art did I submit to win this kick-start funding to my artistic career? I hear you ask. Well it was a portrait of my cat, Dusty (who was in fact black, but got very dusty on his first day as my cat due to hiding behind a unit in my Nanny's kitchen). Not just any portrait mind you, this is Dusty dressed for Christmas! Complete with presents and multiple Christmas puddings!

So there you go, artistic genius even at that young age...

A couple of years ago I was asked to contribute an article, with accompanying images, to the inaugural issue of Ideas Magazine (as far as I know it only managed that one issue). The idea of Ideas was to focus on a loose concept, that could tie a variety of different articles together. This issue's subject was walls, in reference to the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. I focused my article on clothing as a wall; it was basically a manifesto against the prudish anti-nudity attitudes of western society. The accompanying images presented me in five different set of clothing, ranging through the every day, specialised clothing for weather, work or activities, and me with no clothing at all; presenting it as an equal option.

The reason I posted about this now is that I just discovered Ideas Magazine is also online, so you can read it on issuu.com. My piece spans pages 30 and 31, or here's a screencap:

Unfortunately the editor was not the best communicator, and despite my creating this piece for them, and being very specific about how it should be presented, he ignored my specification.The nude image was supposed to be at the end, where it functioned as a full stop to the visual series; but was moved to the middle - Effectively hiding it in the print edition; as rather being on the edge and easy to spot when flicking through, it was neatly tucked away near the gutter. Clearly he hadn't read the text which so clearly complained against such prudishness!

I also gave them an image of a Lego wall, which you can see on the first page of the magazine, horrifically cropped! The full image is below. Although I see now I did a great job putting black Lego-man legs against a black Lego brick, so he vanishes into the wall!

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