"I wonder where those messages of shame and humiliation came from," writes Reema, age 25. Reema is refering to a wealth of tensions and taboos surrounding the issues of nudity, sexuality and women.
She is one of the women whose nude protrait was featured in Frank Cordelle's "Century" exhibit Tuesday in Collis Common Ground. Through his portraits, Cordelle hopes to educate the young and to re-educate the old, to present realistic images of women and to dispell some of the myths and unrealistic expectations surrounding the female body.
Cordelle and his works were invited to Dartmouth by senior lecturer Priscilla Sears in conjunction with Women's Studies 23, "Ways of Knowing: Physics, Literature, Feminism," a class she team-teaches with professor of physics Delo Mook.
The questions this artist most often confronts arose when he addressed the class. "Why is a man doing this? Wouldn't a woman do it better?" Cordelle believes in the age-old saying that, "if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem." There is, in his eyes, a definite problem with the way we address, or repress, that which has to do with nudity in America.
Cordelle's questioning of the perceptions of nudity in this country began when he was a young boy. He tells of a time when he was asked by his mother's friend to leave the room while she changed the diaper of a six-month-old girl.
Later on in life, at a clothing-optional spa in Germany, he took note of how comfortable and open all different people were with their bodies.
He believes the uncomfortable preoccupation many Americans seem to have with the unclothed human body fosters unhealthy and sometimes violent results. The more we are told that our bodies are "dirty" and "taboo," the more anxiety is built around them. Pornography, sexual abuse and eating disorders can result from this.
Traveling the perimeter of the Common Gound, one saw real women from birth through old-age. This has been perceived as the most striking characteristic of his exhibit. Some had mastectomies, others were completely healthy. One woman posed in a wheelchair, one wrote an accompanying statement about her breast implants. There was a body builder. There were grandmothers and kindergarteners. There were females, unashamed of who they were, and what they were made of.
The project began 10 years ago and is not yet completed. On the table next to the final photo, Cordelle sets out slips of paper asking for comments, contributions and future models. He contacts the majority of his models in this manner. Women fill out the slips for different reasons.
Many of his models have found the process extremely thereputic. One woman had been bulimic for 20 years before her photo session. Cordelle was the first person she told about her disorder. Through the process of confronting, exposing and finally, accepting her body, she was able to deal successfully with her bulimia.
Cordelle believes men would probably benefit more from a private showing. In such a setting, they would be less inhibited to stare and would have more time to understand that the subjects are real people, not objects.
Cordelle is not ready to stop his work. He has done most of his work in New England and would like to travel throughout America and to various countries in order to better represent women of all races and cultures.
