‘But why naked pics, Nath?’
A few friends have asked, upon seeing me *literally* butt naked in black and white shots.
If I may run with an analogy in order to bring you in, please…
THIS HUMAN EXPERIENCE, AS BREATH.
And what does me being naked in front of a camera (and yes, therefore a photographer also) have to do with life and breath?
Well if breath is a flow of inhales and exhales, and the quality of those breaths the seamlessness or the transition point between in and out, the effortlessness between vital phases, then the breath that is my life was opposite of that.
Most of the time my breath was held, physically and metaphorically, in an equal blend of fear and shame. Lacking ease, plagued by effort, covered in seams stitched by the blind drunk seamstress.
Exhausted by the exhaustion of standing behind mistruth and pretence.
The moment captured in these image was one in which I took a deepest of breaths, inhaled the fear, exhaled the shame, and dropped that physical and metaphorical robe, nothing left to hide.
Neither afraid of the fearfulness of hiding whatever shame still resides in my being, nor shameful of the regularity in my experience of fear.
Not hiding the separate parts of myself.
I went from my heart, not my head, a somewhat new way of showing up.
Anything else is a fragment, a partition, a breaking down of the completeness of this human experience, and therefore a lie…a partial view of my self.
On my quest – in this somewhat jagged journey to a life based on truth and clarity – no stone goes unturned.
If it hurts, there is the possibility for healing;
If it jolts, there is the potential learning;
If it slaps me around the face, then there may be a nurturing.
If there is to be a teacher, then make the teaching real;
If we are to walk the path, then walk it baring all.
Overturn every stone in your curiosity of what’s possible for you.
Ugly is a world where a starlet flashes her minge, or a sex tape gets ‘leaked’, and it receives column inches – for validation by those fed by a system of media which is deeply distorted and biased toward falsehood.
Falsehood is comparison to any other person, believing you are anything less than complete, anything less than an imperfectly perfect spiritual being having a human experience.
Beauty is the oftentimes gnarly journey to loving our state of being – unconditionally.
Truth is bringing in all the separate parts of our selves to the point of realising that they never were real in the first place.
Naked photos of a man who used to live like a boy — now not afraid of being clear and true — is at once:
A middle finger to the systems that malnourish us;
an affirmation that the era of old bullshit I used to feed myself — the era of hiding, unwittingly by choice — is over;
living as the example of the first step in my program — LOVE YOUR BODY — by being in love in my own.
My naked ambition is that you clear whatever isn’t serving you.
Hello, sweet surrender.
Hello, you.
Meet your me.
Wherever you are.
Photography by Kyle Hoffmann.
