This is the culmination of a year of hard work and a dream come true. Ever since I envisioned the idea of capturing the grace, beauty, and power of the male nude as an art form, I have been in constant search of a means of expression and connection to other artists around the world who inspire me in my creative process.
I am fairly new to photography, having spent many years working in professional theater. I have truthfully spent thirteen years searching for light, beauty, desire and art. I have had great difficulty finding places on the internet where it actually exists. Anytime I would search for male nudes or artistic male nudes online, I was inevitably directed to a porn site, which, of course contained little to no artistic integrity whatsoever. There were a few early sites that featured gay artists such as the Leslie/Lohman Gallery site from New York City. On one visit to New York my heart raced to actually see the gallery and walk in the mere presence of such acclaimed artists. But I got there and it was closed, seeming mostly to exist in cyberspace. Not to say there aren’t great artists to be found online, but locating them can be tricky. A little over a year ago, I found a place called Man Art. It was a site developed by a group of Australian homoerotic artists: John Douglas and Stryker Meyer and a Canadian named Bruce Miller.
I put a couple of my images on the site for what I thought would become a public humiliation. Much to my surprise, the images received glowing comments and for the first time since I began this process I had found a home. Unfortunately, the server for that site found the content to be questionable and shut it down. But many of the artists connected to the Man Art site were also members of another Australian based artist’s site called Red Bubble. Here my following grew. My art appealed not only to gay men but to women and all kinds of artists of every sort of media. I became the featured artist in most groups to whom I submitted my work. Within months, the vastness of my network exploded as I communicated with artists everywhere, sharing concepts, ideas, frustrations and just pure beauty. The idea was born that I would develop a blog called The Naked Man Project, in which I could communicate with everyone and we could collectively share the process of creation, especially in the realm of nude male imagery.
