Debbie says:
What a delight to find a “new” photographer taking beautiful pictures of fat bodies. Substantia Jones is apparently a well-established photographer under another name.
Her “Adipositivity” Project
“aims to promote size acceptance, not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that’s normally unseen.
“The hope is to widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally.”
You gotta love that “these things are easily seen all around us”!
In the interests of separating the viewers’ preconceptions about fat from the actual physical beauty of the models, Jones made an entirely different aesthetic/political decision than Laurie did. Jones says:
The photographs here are close details of the fat female form, without the inclusion of faces. One reason for this is to coax observers into imagining they’re looking at the fat women in their own lives, ideally then accepting them as having aesthetic appeal which, for better or worse, often translates into more complete forms of acceptance.
Laurie, of course, decided that including faces, and the personal details of environmental portraiture, makes the women more real, and harder to distance yourself from, as in this photograph.
The really exciting thing is that both photographers are right: Laurie’s photographs personalize and Substantia Jones’ photographs separate the body shape from the person: two completely different approaches, both of which work brilliantly to showcase the beauty of fat bodies.
Isn’t art amazing?
A few people have pointed us to this wonderful work, which is now linked in our “image resources” section on the right, but Stef was first.
fat, photography, art, size acceptance, body image, Body Impolitic