According to Sir Kenneth Clark in his book The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art (1953), the nude as a form of art was invented in the 5th century BC by the Greeks, who viewed the human body as a thing of beauty. I’ve always held that view.
Photographers have been experimenting with the nude as art since the camera was invented… including in my country of specialty: Cuba. In his coffee-table book La seducción de la mirada (The Seduction of the Gaze, 2014), Rafael Acosta de Arriba, director of Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte (which, coincidentally offers nude photography classes), explores nude photography in Cuba from 1840 to the present. The scores of Cuban photographers represented include my close friend Claudia Corrales Mesa, who acts as local guide-assistant on my various photography tours of Cuba.
Claudia’s images (and the works of other Cuban photographers–male and female alike–currently exploring nude photography) inspired the idea for my own decorous and humanistic art-nude project. In 2022, therefore, I launched ‘Sensual Havana: A Celebration of Female Beauty’ Art-Nude Photo Tour (offered annually every December) for photographers–from beginners to professionals–who appreciate human beauty as art. Click HERE for information.
‘Sensual Havana’ has since expanded to become a nude-art coffee-table book project in which I photograph Cuba’s most beautiful women in settings evocative of time-worn Havana… as fantastic a backdrop for glamour and erotic photography as exists in this world, given its astonishing architecture, its wealth of 1950s American cars, and its stimulating aura of exoticism. To which add Cuba’s self-assured women, and their joyous at-ease delight in being photographed.
A tribute to the female form, my respectful and elegant treatment of the subject pays homage to the Cuban Revolution’s advancement of women’s self-determination, while also honoring their own unashamedly self-confident pride in expressing their sensuality. See samples below…
© Photographs by Christopher P. Baker, 2022-2024. Images may NOT be reproduced in any format without explicit written permission.
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