Dancing – how we want to be – Phil Pool

I saw this post and images by Susan Höfner on Instagram and what has written stuck a chord with me. I interpret it as meaning that however someone else chooses to respond to an image should not affect the how the person in the photo behaves or responds to their own images. They said –

“@suhoyoni The other day I shared those wonderful pictures @wowow.photo took of me last week while I was dancing around nakedly. Friends called them “sexy”, strangeres reached out to tell me how hot they find it. To me, however, those pictures mean a lot more than that. They mean freedom to me. They depict me in my element, catching a moment of carefree and comfortable me, dancing, laughing, singing and being my true self while letting loose of all conventions and embracing freedom and the joy of life.

Too well I remember times when I felt the chains of society on my skin and my soul who has certain expectations of how I’m supposed to dress and an explicit idea what my body means to them. Stripping bare naked gives me a relief from that, stripping of those chains I haven’t chosen for myself.”

I think what really struck me is that clearly the images can be referred to in many ways and others have responded to say that they have found them sexy or hot. I look at them and clearly they fit with what we’d all recognise as classically beautiful images, the “life” they reveal is appealing and I completely understand why they’d invoke an idea of “sexy”. That though is not the point; the point is that is my interpretation and its not for Susan to respond on the basis of what others think. I also look at the images and, as I am fascinated by lines and shadows and movement captured in photos.

Susan has said that to them they mean freedom; not just freedom to be naked but freedom to be seen naked and not to being chained by other people’s expectations. Being free to be naked is important to them, and it’s important to me too so those words really connect.

It also strikes me that these images are only just within what Instagram will allow within it’s “community guidelines” and they are probably quite vulnerable to being reported and, if that happens we will loose more than the images, we’ll loose their words.