Thanks to a donation from Larry K and an anonymous friend from San Francisco, I have a couple of hundred sets of body typing photos of Estonian military recruits. So I was glancing through the collection looking for some common element upon which to base a set when I noticed that some of them stood out for various reasons, mostly height differences between the pairs. So that's what you get today starting with a head and shoulders one above the other for 529-530.
In the age of photography, when that invention is used for ostensibly "scientific" purposes, we derive (along with many undoubted benefits) some less comfortable novelties, among them the reappropriation of images of real people (such as those here) who revealed themselves in states and postures (as they were presumably directed to do by people in authority) by those who re-use those images for unforeseen purposes in venues having little if anything to do with science. It is not "hating" to raise this issue. Pace.
ReplyDeleteThese photos were part of a study which was deemed valuable enough to get all of those scanned. Since the scans are from fragile glass plates, this was very careful work, no just stacking a bunch of photos over a scanner and pressting" start". The Estonian museum made the decision to make those available. They are not stolen from some secret archive. These photos are anatomical in nature, not sexual. Seeing variations of anatomy in normal males provides necessary reality check against porn actors who re never totally flaccid for one thing, and chosen because not-average endownment. It is important for any/all males to see what other normal males look like (a rarity these days with younger generations never naked in locker rooms) to know that one is normal isntead of feeling inadequate compared to porn actors.
ReplyDeleteThank you for saying this far better than I could.
DeleteWho said they were stolen? Who said their preservation was a problem? Who said they should not be available? Who said this site was or was not primarily anatomically oriented, or was or was not sexually oriented? (I'm sure it's never entirely either or.) Even the extent to which this site provides the "services" you describe here have nothing to do with the individual, personal nature of each of these images, whose individual, actual, once living (and not so long ago) subjects are exposed in ways they presumably did not expect or intend. For myself I find it difficult not to think of them as human beings whose privacy is still being appropriated here, however decorative or educational we may find them. Again, no "hate" is intended by my admittedly hypothetical taking up of their cause; I'm merely suggesting that other issues are raised here that are not raised in (a majority of the) posts which comprise images of models clearly posing and collaborating in their public and/or professional displays, including of course the original models and inspiration for the many mainly anonymous works of painting and sculpture which are a great component of this site. All of those expected to be—or, at the very least, were indifferent to the fact that they would be—publicly displayed in the nude. They had a voice and collaborated with the wider dispersal of their forms, whereas the "anonymous" African men and women in the pages of a 1960's National Geographic, like these Estonian soldiers and the teenaged men of Yale and Cornell, etc., did not. It's an issue. Thank you for not censoring me.
ReplyDeleteI don't censor honest opinions that are not abusive. You make some good points, and I post some of these photos fully aware that there may be some differing ethical approaches.
DeleteErratum: "... extent to which (...) HAS nothing to do..." 😉
ReplyDelete