Friday, February 04, 2011

Guest Blog: Alexandra C.M.Norris
Posing Nude- My Experience

Preface: On October 1st, 2010 I was hit by a car on my bicycle. I then contracted flesh eating bacteria from the hospital, being stitched up from the ensuing injuries. I spent the whole month in and out of hospital, on pain killers, antibiotics and I was truly concerned for my life. I was called by Focal Point, a week after I was declared healed and healthy. I accepted the offer to pose nude for a class. I looked at it as an ode to my body. Its beauty, resilience and strength, a thing I love, and couldn’t possibly live without.

We are born naked, and in the end we also die naked. I have always been curious about the space between those two monumental life events, how nudity takes on different shapes throughout our lives. I am in my later twenties, and appreciate my skin with a balance of contented confidence. My skin, the wrapping to my bones, structure and spirit is my connection to others. It is for them it exists and I thought, it would be surreal and interesting to actually see myself through someone else’s eyes, or rather lens.

Growing up in Vancouver, I remember my first time at Wreck Beach with my friends. Naked people everywhere, if you weren’t naked you were the odd one out.

Entering the Focal Point studio the scenario was reversed, I was the only one who was naked. A flurry of snaps, flashes and movement. Alex Waterhouse-Hayward (the gracious instructor) eased me into the ultimate clothes-less state I was to be in, there were a few portrait shots fully clothed. We had a break and I came back with my blanket and skin.

Nudity is holding nothing back. No braces, tensors, spandex, slimming lines or black can shield or camouflage bare flesh. Nude is human in its animal state, and such, I believe it’s most powerful. As the class progressed, so did my comfort with being the only naked person in the room, all attention on my form, most people’s most feared nightmare. After seeing the results from ‘the night I first posed nude’ I was amazed. They were wonderful, but I could barely recognize the person staring back at me, I realized that we never look at the same thing the same way. We are all constantly changing, every moment. The photographer catches flickers of beauty in each of these moments.

A Felicitous Occasion