Is Project_ISM art? It gets more visitors than the Guggenheim and has more original portraits than the Louvre. Is it crude? That depends on what you do with it. Is it culturally valuable? That's not for us to decide.
If you like to look, the artists of Project_ISM need your help. Sponsor us and we'll reward your philanthropy with access to every artist's entire gallery. Or better still, stop freeloading, get a camera, start shooting, and pickle yourself in the adrenaline rush of public nudity.
Check out some more examples in » the free tour
When we first put ISM up on the web in 2003, our » credo alluded to the cultural epidemic of microcelebrity, made possible for the first time in world history by the Internet. We created ISM as a venue for ordinary people to unleash their inner exhibitionist to a worldwide audience, while remaining virtually anonymous, earning a cash fee as well as ebullient adoration. We called this 'selfploitation'.
In the years which followed we've met, either personally or online, over 3300 people - mostly women - who have come forward to nudify themselves (and sometimes their partners and friends) on the Internet in a daring corporeal confession. Every one of them has been asked 'why?' and somewhat surprisingly to us, fame is not a common motive.
The word which comes up most in conversation with our participants is 'control'. The female nude has, and always will be, highly trafficked. But whether the subject of prurient desire or simply a fundamental beauty in the human aesthetic, it has been captured, manipulated, and presented, so far, almost entirely by men.
And so ISM has become a venue for women to present themselves on their own terms. Some come here with art, some with porn, and most with an adventurous spirit; for most of the participants you see on ISM, this is the first time they have been seen naked outside of their own clique, and participating in the Project is no small abandonment of years of self-suppression. Some have body image issues and use ISM as a confidence builder. Some are venting a long term curiosity, and some make political statments. Some come for the compliments and others desire to be the object of sexual fantasy.
ISM is not the first web site to invite amateur submissions of nude imagery, but it is the first to do so in an artistic context and set a minimum standard of technical quality. Although the artists are free to submit images in whatevever style they choose, we encourage them to challenge and subvert the popular paradigm. And so we offer a monthly Art Prize, and in our role as curators of this gallery we may choose not to show folios which we believe float in the mainstream of porn or so-called 'erotica'. That is not to say we don't exhibit porn - on the contrary, some of our contributors see this as a medium for sexual self expression, and they go to great lengths to shock us with their imagery, which is frequently explicitly pornographic - but it is done on their terms, and it is for this that some have foisted upon us the label of 'feminist porn'. And we don't mind that. ISM is run almost entirely by women after all.
As you browse the thousand+ folios of ISM, think of the intention behind each image. Some are blatantly made to arouse, and would you not expect that where full frontal nudity is a mandate for participation in the site? But don't presume their target audience is male, for we have many female members and they are often among the most vocal in their appreciation. Most women, it seems, would sooner look at other women naked, than to look at men. Which brings us to the most frequent enquiry on ISM - why not men?
In fact we put a call out for male submissions in early 2004 but the response was, to make an understatment, disappointing. Men fail in the role of exhibitor when their erotic sensibilities are manipulated by their egos.
Each week we receive many sample submissions and even more full folios from new contributors from which we must select 7 to feature as 'prime' folios. Guided by the comments left on folios, and by a simple nomination system, we offer many artists the opportunity to resubmit, or as we say, 'reload'. Many of the artists find the project addictive, and resubmit many times. Some artists return with a friend, partner, or other artist, to submit 'duets', which contain more images, are generally more playful and often sexually raw.
But it is the fine art folios which we enjoy receiving the most at ISM, and you can see samples of these in the Art Prize archives. There have been some astonishing images submitted to the Project; sometimes randomly opportunistic, but often the result of great skill, imagination and effort. Some of the best of these will soon appear in a glossy book celebrating the best of the first few years of the Project, for release, if all goes to plan, towards the end of 2008.
Among the contributors to ISM are artists of all media, professional and amateur photographers, students, housewives, professionals and the unemployed; ordinary women of al ages and sizes, from various ethnic backgrounds. ISM aims to be a truly global project and all continents are represented - sometimes you'll see bios written in languages other than English, because the contributors are invited to write in their own language.
Is ISM porn, or art? Yes. But it's women in control of their own image. It's also performance art, it's fun, it's liberating, and it's Reality.
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