An Afterword for Women

In another time and under different circumstances I would not have attempted to write an afterword: it is too tiresome a task for me, and it probably would have been redundant anyway. But in view of the times and the cultural climate we live in, I thought it might be relevant. See Pictures

Well-known photographer Prabuddha Das Gupta's Women is considered path-breaking in many ways. Explaining his study of nudes, Das Gupta wrote an afterword to his book. Here's what he had to say:

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In another time and under different circumstances I would not have attempted to write an afterword to this book: it is too tiresome a task for me, and it probably would have been redundant anyway. But in view of the times and the cultural climate we live in, I thought it might be relevant to try and put the content of this book in perspective. The reason being, that this is the first photographic book dealing with the subject of women as nudes, being published in the country: and therefore represents not just an artistic attitude, but in a larger sense, an attitude that directs itself at issues concerning our bodies and our sexuality and the complexities of our individual and collective social response to the same.

These issues obviously are too vast and too complex to be dealt with here, and I have no pretensions to being an authority on the subject. My intention here is simply to examine the issue of nudity and sexuality in the context of our own artistic tradition and our unique cultural history and to try and establish the relationship that this body of photographic work has with that very tradition and history.

The human body has always been considered to be the most beautiful of nature's creations, and has been acclaimed as such in all the arts, universally. Its plastic and sculptural qualities on the one hand and its enigmatic erotic quality on the other; have inspired poets, painters, writers and sculptors throughout the centuries. But although the nude, and themes related to it have been a vital part of any artistic tradition, they have always been sensitive subjects-dogged by controversy-the scale and intensity of the controversy being largely dependent on the period and the socio-cultural environment in which they are produced.

In England for instance, in the rigid and repressive Victorian age, even the sight of a bare ankle could cause raised eyebrows. Today after the sexual revolution of the 1960's, nudity in England is as commonplace as fish and chips. In India curiously enough, it has been the other way around. From Kalidasa in the 4th century to Khajuraho and Konarak in the 13th and 14th, all the way to the Rajput miniaturists of the 18th and early 19th centuries, Indian artistic history has incorporated such explicit sexual themes in literature and art, that it probably has no parallel in the world. And yet today, an advertisement showing a nude couple in innocent embrace can cause a nationwide controversy culminating in police action and arrests.

In connection with the role of nudity and sexual themes in our cultural background, I read recently an introduction to a book of nude photographs by a French photographer, written by the Director of the Museum of Arts, Oregon, USA. He says 'Hindus place religious sanction on the overmastering urge for sex. They regard the attraction which one of the opposite sex exerts over them as a religious inspiration. They hold the art of love to be a sacred ritual, the union of the sexes, a religious obligation. Every art enhancing the appeal of one sex for the other, becomes to them therefore a handmaid of religion. If we were all Hindus, we would need no introduction to this album of studies of the female figure by a master photographer. We would go directly and uninhibitedly to the photographs themselves...' It is ironical that a western writer should seek the support of Hindu theology for a body of work dealing with the nude, produced by a western photographer; while in India our moral brigade points its finger at the west for its association with nudity and sexual freedom.