Image from Le Louvre, a recent Jurgen Teller shoot in the famous Parisian art museum for a magazine, where apparently they are not as Puritanical as the NY Met.
For this week’s Chron column I had the sheer luck of interviewing Zach Hyman, the young NYC photographer whose model was arrested last week — I managed to catch him after the arrest and all the press, but before anyone had a chance to report on a development that makes the whole story even more unbelievable. Not only did Hyman’s nude model get arrested for nudity in a gallery full of antiquated nudes, but the gallery, it seems, had a hand in destroying Hyman’s film when they had custody of his camera. Shameful. The interview is great, here’s a snip from Arrest At The Met – Violet Blue: Art model arrested for nudity at the NY Met: a non-ironic interview with the artist:
New York photographer Zach Hyman (zhfoto.com, NSFW) made a splash across the Internet last week when his recent show at NYC’s Chair and The Maiden Gallery was announced. Not simply because the artist is talented; his new show features unplanned — and quite sexy — nude portraits shot in public.
One might think this would “frighten the horses” but we’re talking about New York City. In fact, everything was fine until Hyman decided to take a model out for one of these trademark, unstaged situationalist-style shoots to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Where they keep a lot of other nudes. Zach and his model found out the hard way that the Met doesn’t like competition.
When Hyman does a public shoot, it goes like this: Zach and his model — or models — jump into an unsuspecting subway car. The models disrobe for about 30 seconds of nudity, during which Zach snaps as many shots as he can. Then they cover up and move on. He’s shot in a variety of places without complaint, including a church and Times Square. Hyman tells me, “The typical response is disbelief and excitement… Which is what I feel the world needs at a time like this. Some spontaneity, some bare essentials, and — for God’s sake — some fun. There have never been any hostile responses or physical altercations.”
The Met felt otherwise. On Wednesday, August 26, Zach and model Kathleen “KC” Neill visited the Met for a shoot, to add more images to Hyman’s exhibit, “Decent Ex Posures: (An Exhibition for Exhibitionists.)” When they got to what Hyman felt was an appropriate time and place, Neill dropped her dress and they did a quick photo shoot. After the model got her dress back on, a museum guard began following the pair, ending the shoot with Neill’s arrest for “public lewdness.” (…read more, sfgate.com)
Confronting and challenging people’s expectations is an important tool in any artist’s toolkit. But also I’ve been eves dropping on some really interesting debates in the slash community about warnings, especially what the community standards should be for warnings in publicly accessible archives. I wonder what the reaction would have been if the Met itself had put a naked woman on display without telling people, or if they had some of Jeff Koons giant cibachromes of he and his wife fucking displayed out in the lobby.