Notes

Skin Capture Exposure – A Justification

Capture

I wanted to capture a detailed image of me, all of the me that can be seen. There are other ways to know of me, I makes sounds, I can touch and be touched, I have smells and tastes.

By capture I mean to capture images of me as I am now at this point in my life. I’ve been alive 48 years, that could be nearly the end of my life, perhaps it is half way through my life but I can be pretty sure that at most, I’m only likely to have about the same number of years left. Realising that the cup is likely, and more and more certainly, to be less than half full from now on has been hard for me to bare in the last few years. I have no idea whether that continual shift from life to live, to life already lived will become any easier to bare.

Perhaps just the fact of knowing that from now on that time is shorter for me than it has been up to this point will itself become easier; but I doubt it. I hope it won’t be harder as it has been so hard, it still is too hard.

This isn’t a time-lapse image capture. There is no set of photos of me when I was in my 20’s or 30’s. In fact there are not that many photos of me as I tended to take the family photos and not be in them. It won’t be possible to look and in any objective way observe that I’m looking “older”. I remember how I have been when I was younger – my memory is subjective and it will have to do.

I see how my face shape has changed, how my neck skin and the skin on my hands is so much less elastic. I can see stretch marks from where, at times, I have been much fitter and also from where I have been much fatter. I can see scars from injuries and operations and I can see the effect of bashing my jaw very hard sideways when I was 20. I see the grey hairs on my head and in my pubes and the odd thickening hairs in my eye-brows. I can only capture images of how they are not how they were. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to take similar shots in the future to see how I am then and to look back and see how I am now.

Challenge

Most stages of this process have been a challenge to me. Writing I just do, its not a bother other than to know when to stop. Wondering why I am doing this, mainly the challenging and exposing parts, is itself a challenge and I don’t yet have a clear reason, a complete one, why. I know that putting together a set of naked photographs will be seen as very odd by some people and that very much includes some of my family and many of my friends. I’m even nervous of telling even the closest friends – there is safety in anonymity.

Much of the challenge comes from exposure, taking, looking at, choosing, publishing, pictures that are very intimate. At times, and still, the level of fear, embarrassment, shame, shyness, has made me want to stop, to moderate what I have done (which I have – compromised).

I think other people will also find some difficulty in looking at the pictures. They are often close up, not flattering, they show my genitals, body hair, scars and so on. Responses will understandably range too, I know that I have found myself somewhat revolted as I first looked at some of them – my genitals are no more attractive or otherwise than the next man’s, but they are not pretty things and some people struggle with looking at body hair, scars and so on.

My own experience was that I found it less of a challenge to look at the pictures the more I looked. Somewhat like looking at photos of an war scene, I can hardly bare to look at the horror and I am drawn in by the humanity of it all. Each time I look at them again I’m just a bit less grossed out.

Physically taking the pictures that I took of myself was hard. I don’t have the easiest camera to use turn back towards me and take a picture. There were a hell of a lot of them where the camera was pointing the wrong way, not focusing correctly or just making a shadow.

Also, there is only so much of me that I can reach or reach from a reasonable distance. I to asked my close friend Jess to take some of the shots. I felt somewhat exposed being naked in my own presence given that I was observing myself so closely. Being naked, exposed, closely photographed by someone else is harder. All the bits of me that I’m embarrassed about are so much more embarrassing. My belly sticks out more, my cock is shrivelled in fear (horror, I might be turned on), it might dribble, I might have a bit of snot up my nose. Actually though, after a few minutes of mild embarrassment I was fine; Jess’s interest in crevices and wrinkles was exactly what I wanted.

The process of choosing the pictures to include has been long but not really a challenge in the same way as taking and publishing them. Looking at them has been positive, I have gradually become less revolted, desensitised, more genuinely curious, more familiar, more aware.

An overriding fear is thinking, knowing, that many people will just think my motivation is wrong in some way. Is it a sign of vanity, exhibitionism, perversion, pretentiousness or morbid fascination. I know that people will definitely think all of those thoughts as well as finding many of the images gross. Putting them up with that knowledge is hard as is knowing that, as something I have made, something that presents the visible “me”, all rejection, revulsion and judgement could barely be more personal.

Exposure

I wanted to expose myself as an aspect of challenge. I am quite a shy person and I have at least as many hang-ups about my body as anyone else. I was shy of parts of my body when I was younger and closer to being what we hold in our society as “good” looking. I was only average, that now seems to have been quite a blessing that I didn’t appreciate at the time.

I realised long ago that I want to be more comfortable with my body. I was very uncomfortable with it when I was younger and that way of being was painful and disabling. I don’t think I saw myself as abnormal just not what I wanted.

I didn’t have any lack of exposure to naked people, my parents were occasional visitors to a nudist “camp”. We rarely did anything much in the way of a holiday or day trip and when we did we went to The Club. This was a family filled place, large grassy areas to sit surrounded by tress and a very high and substantial fence. There was club-house and a swimming pool – I swam most of the time. I ate egg sandwiches and people played tennis – rackets, balls, tits and all.

I remember there being people of all ages, little kids, teens, right up to really wrinkled older people with bits that sagged a long way or with their colostomy bags protruding. I didn’t notice the other children much. This was the 1970’s and children, perhaps up to the age of 6 or 7, were commonly naked on public beaches. There were far fewer teens, I guess puberty and exposure put them off as it did for me too.

I have no memory of noticing other people’s bodies in the round, it was the oddities that I noticed. Old mens’ low, low, swinging balls, old womens’ low hung breasts, fatter people, bony ones – this was just noticing though, not assessing or judging.

I fed mainly on chocolate and white bread as a child and I hated sport; I was quite fat and I’ve always found it hard to be the thinner person that somehow I am in my head. I’m also quite short. I often shied away from photographs of me; too fat, awkward, my hair was never anything but way too thick and womanly when it was long (I wanted to be a hippy not have bouffant waves) and when its short its like felt.

Not looking at pictures is a way not to know myself and looking in the mirror only helps that knowledge a little. In a mirror we focus on the bits that we want to see, that is harder to avoid in a photograph, I think it is why so many people dislike to be photographed or feel that photos don’t do them justice. Mostly, photographs do just look like the parts of us that other’s know well and we just don’t see. Photographs are taken from angles we can’t see ourselves from in the mirror, we are not used to how we look from the side.

Having to look at these pictures of me exposed has pushed my feelings of unease a long way from when I started. I had a mixture of feelings of unhappiness, disappointment, embarrassment even from myself, and a horror that others would see them too…. many of the images though won’t be a surprise to people that already know me, they often see the expressions I pull but I wish I didn’t, they see the fat bits that I think I’m sucking in, they spot the bits of spinach in my teeth and kindly point it out to me.

Desensitisation and Familiarity 

Through exposure and the challenge of taking and looking at all of these pictures and the hundreds more that I didn’t include, much of my personal sense of horror and revulsion has faded. I’m just desensitised to seeing lots of pictures of a 48 year old man’s balls, belly and all. I guess this is what happens with doctors or carers, they just see so many naked people and people with all sorts of shapes of bodies and “oddities” that all and everything are what they just expect. Unusual would be unusual.

I’m more familiar too now. I’ve really started to see what I actually look like. Many of the parts in the pictures, my hands, arms, legs and feet are as I see them if I look closely. Other parts I can only usually see at an angle, my chest, stomach, a side view of my bum or the backs of my legs or my elbows. Other parts, mainly my head, I only really tend to see in the mirror or in photographs – odd to think that our face, so familiar to everyone we know, we can only see indirectly.

Some parts of me I have not seen for years, its not often I’ve tried to look at my own bum hole – I did once when I had thread worms and I didn’t want to see either my bum hole or small white string like worms. Some parts of me I have never seen or never seen clearly. I’ve never looked up from the floor at myself, up between my legs, penis and balls and belly hanging. I can just about see my lower back but I don’t know what I look like from behind and I hadn’t properly seen the back or even the sides of my head.

Now I have seen all of me. I haven’t used all of the photographs that were taken but I doubt there is an inch of my not covered. I’ve looked through them all closely, cringed at many, then not cringed, then not noticed, then noticed – I became curious.

I like bodies, the bodies of my friends and of people I see about. For my friends and family, I love them and how they look is part of that love, part of the wholeness. There is also great familiarity for me with their bodies, their expressions and mannerisms – all part of my love. Also, I just notice and enjoy them – I spot the line of their neck, folds of skin, the shape of eyes, fingers, nose, ears, moles, scars – I know their shapes from a distance, from behind, from the side, as I look up and down at them.

I have seen most of my closest friends naked too – not that often and still with a sort of casual not looking, seeing but not quite noticing as it feels intrusive to peer. I have had partners that I have looked at in close detail, the sights goes with the taste from kissing and licking, and the smells of skin, feet and genitals. Warm skin, soft, I have almost not looked, my eyes tending to shut as I feel and sense my way savouring touch and taste. So, while I have known the sight of their bodies, probably better they they have directly, I have known them most intimately with my other senses.

Now, through this process I know from photographs what I look like from all around and I no longer shy from looking and getting to know myself. Seeing myself, through hundreds of pictures, as objectively as I am likely to be able to imagine. I don’t think that is a common experience.

It has been a good experience. Getting to know more of myself, the parts of me that I have never really seen or chosen to see through the lens of my own delusions of what I am.