Artist, Model, Photographer, Content Creator
Years ago we only talked about models. Maybe about the sites which featured them. Talking about photographers was rare, but happens more often today. In most recent times we talk increasingly often about content creators. And since we are moving in an artful environment, we can proceed in the assumption that they all are artists of Erotic Art. But not before we take a closer look at all of them. Who are these people and what do they do?
1. Artists
Saying who's an artist - and who isn't - is not easy! Art is creation. When 100 people create the same thing, for example a painted self portrait, you will have 100 very different results. The differences we call the personal style of the painters. The personal style results from the decisions every single creator makes regarding the result, the painting. There are hundreds of artful decisions to make, before the result can be presented to the audience. And the audience will make a cruel decision by deciding who has their own style and who is just not able to paint at all. When somebody makes a self-portrait as a matchstick figure, the painter can pretend that the artful vision is, that all people are equal (just as matchstick figures all look equal). But when this person just lacks the skill to draw anything else than just a matchstick figure, the painting is a creation, but not art! So let us keep the artful vision in mind as a chosen(!) decision, how to create!
2. Models
When you see an experienced model at work, who needs (or accepts!) only few to none instructions by the photographer and knows exactly what she wants (or decides!) to show next, you can clearly recognize the performing skills of the model as an artful process called acting! When the artful vision is on the side of the model, she better gets the lead in a shoot! She unfolds the art of a photo set or movie by her acting skills. She's an actress and photographers better are professional enough to understand themselves as the accomplice of the artful process. Posing and acting in a shoot is called performing art. We can divide 3 kinds of performing art in nude modeling: as a self-portrait, or as a recurring presentation of an artful character, the Alter Ego of a model, or as a performance of different facets of being a woman (WHEN the model is female!), a different one in any shoot. Without any doubts the 2nd and 3rd possibility are artful processes. While the first one depends on the models performance skills, according to what I told above about drawing matchstick figures!
As the photographer needs an object, models and actresses (and actors) in general need the audience. Acting is in its core an exhibitionist activity. Nude or not.
3. Photographers
A photographer knows to deal with the technique. That makes photography craftsmanship (which guarantees the quality!). But after making hundreds of (visual and technical) decisions regarding a single photo or a set, also in post-production, the result is very often recognizable as the creation of this particular photographer. It becomes very clear that those photographers are artists in the meaning of the word! Photography always is depending on having an object. While performing can also happen on a stage, the photographer loses any inspiration without knowing what or who to shoot. When the objects are people, models, very much depends again on who has the artful vision! The visionary always is advised to take the lead of the artful process! And this really needs the insight of all participants, who the visionary is. If this insight is not given, when it all just depends on who the more dominant character is, the results will be highly repetitive and lack of development and progress. If model and photographer build a team and work together for a longer time, even exclusive, the artful vision will come as a result of both people's inspiration, but as far as I see things in Online Erotic Art, those cases are very, very rare.
4. Content Creator
They are the newest party on the field. And hard to define. Yet! They are not a homogenous group, many of them are loners. Milena Angel is a content creator. Modeling for many years, selling professional sets as photographer to sites (not the Club!) since at least 2014, very experienced in things like set design, shoot preparation, equipment. A multi talent who can even play the piano if wanted or needed. She's definitely inspired and comes with a sophisticated artful vision. But that is, as far as I can see, an exception. Many content creators came new to the scene and right now it is not to estimate how big the amount of people is, which we later might call artists, who choose their own styles of creativity from among the many different skills of expression they have. Some of them will have heard about Nude Art and they were totally driven and inspired by the idea to add their horn of the plenty of ideas to it. This group might be the stars of tomorrow! They bring fresh ideas, new ideas and are able to revolutionize Nude Art, which right now seems a bit in need for people like that. Others of them are models with a long time experience in nude modeling and some insight into business structures. What we don't know is, how many matchstick figure drawers are among them. It may sound hard and even cruel, but at the moment it is not clear, if they all can be called artists. Maybe not. Maybe there is no artful vision involved, but only the newest smartphone generation.
Content creators, as far as I see, are independent. Which means they are in need to keep things going once they started. They can't rely on the traditioned processes in biz like producing and selling content. They work on more or less independent platforms and have to win their own audience! Which means they must provide a steady flow of created content. Professional creatives can produce a whole group of sets and movies, sell them and wait for feedback to find new inspiration for upcoming shoots. Things are different for content creators. They don't know if there will be a way to make a living with what they do in a longer term. There are no established business structures they can rely on. The conclusion must be: right now defining content creators and putting them into our well known categories of creatives is difficult. But they decided to be active in an artful way. Nude Art is art in established structures and also quality standards! The artists among them will evolve towards those structures and standards by improving their skills and developing their creativity, or they will even revolutionize it by proving that many standards are debatable and by making the new, the better Nude Art. They may give us the Nude Art of the future.
Here we see the limitations of everything we say today about the very new group of content creators. We might judge them according to today's rules and standards. But they just started to do their things in today's given structures and possibilities. Those who will establish new structures, re-invent Nude Art, will laugh about everything we say today, once they proved that their direction leads to something new and exciting.
I love the idea of a collaboration of independent talents for a while now! A think tank of experienced and still active artists, free-spirited and inspired - who love the previous and the great things we had, but also experienced the limitations - together with the newer group of visionary content creators who started independently in the first place. They could inspire each other and very much rock the future with a new found freedom in their artful creativity.