Eye Contact
It's not an undiscussed feature. In regular movies it makes people love or hate the whole movie when actors go into contact with the audience (Ferris Bueller)! In comedies a single smirk to the camera is allowed and can even become a highlight of a movie (Kevin Smith). In more dramatic movies it's completely unusual up to impossible to break through the fourth wall to the audience. In fashion modeling it is a permanent feature when models look to the camera, go into contact with the audience and the success of a model depends very much on her ability to be 'flirtatious with the camera'. Not only in this regard solo Nude Art is very related to fashion modeling, but due to what is called 'storyline' in Nude Art photo sets and movies, things can be discussed particularly.
In Nude Art I read many complains, when a model does NOT go into eye contact in a movie or photo set! People even combine character attitudes with it. Shyness, disrespect, introversion. I invite you to be more open minded. A Nude Art production without eye contact is just something very different. Watching a beautiful nude woman playing at the beach in the surf is a delight to watch. Oblivious to all around her she can hardly get a scolding for not looking around. The same with other activities like cooking and even dressing up or off. To be lost in thought during any activity is a very special mood, which can make a shoot unique and precious. And it will be shoots like that which find the best reception from true voyeurs, who like to be unnoticed. Not going into contact with the camera is emphasizing the fictional character of a production. It's an imagination about how the model behaves, how she feels, what she does when unobserved! When we think that any person always is not her- or himself in company, shoots like that provide us with an almost impossible sensation of truth. But fictional, as long as it's not a candid camera, which would be a much more obscene matter.
In solo Nude Art eye contact is the ordinary. And what we believe to see very much depends on two things: first is what we want to see and second is the performance ability of the model! There are real actresses who perform a new personality with every shoot. Depending on the style of the shoot. There are models who always perform only themselves. And there are models who always perform one particular person: their artificial character. The best of them - I call Milena being one of them - are so good in what they do, that they manage to juggle playfully with all 3 of those variants. What the eyes tell us is actually the topic the model unfolds in the set or movie! A photo set with eye contact is a conversation with the model! It can be very specific like "This is how I live. Here's my living room and over there's the bedroom." and it can be highly abstract. I know a model who explains the world to me! Everytime! Another model doesn't like me! She explains what she hates about me in many sets, while I watch her getting naked and admire her unbelievable beauty. Another one really likes me a lot. This conflict between respect and disrespect (tease and denial in BDSM) is a traditional feature of Erotic Art and exists since the first striptease dancer entered a stage in a bar for the very first time, hundreds of years ago! And it all works not only but especially via eye contact! And the topic of what we see depends very much on the performance ability of the model, but in the same amount on what the observer wants to see! As soon as the model discovers her performance skills, the true personality of the model becomes impalpable! And the most of what we see is our interpretation! But within these strict borders of the performance and our own needs and wants, a conversation takes place. And even when we think about the model and HER personality all the time, WHEN we open up our minds, we can learn extremely much about ourselves during our talks with a model. And when it is said that books, movies, every kinds of art can have a therapeutical effect on the consumers, I can easily say that this can also count for Erotic Art - when you make up your mind, when you stop being a fictional character yourself during or after watching Erotic Art!
When you don't believe that, or don't know what I mean, I can give you an example of myself: in porn movies (which I don't like too much and rarely consume, because I get jealous watching them! Here I already learn something about me!), in porn movies I get enraged when the female actress goes into eye contact with me! I'm a monogamous romantic! When I watch porn, then I identify in the best of cases with the male actor. (In some other cases, as in regular movies, I identify with the heroes. And the heroes in porn movies are ALWAYS the women! You can imagine how complex my relation to porn movies is.) So, when I see a beautiful woman, one I like very much, giving a blowjob to a man, I can only enjoy it, when I imagine the man to be me. And when then the model looks into my eyes, into the camera, but not as in a POV sequence, I'm not happy anymore! I feel really bad! And by experiencing that, I learn stuff about me! Good stuff! Art has a therapeutical effect and eye contact or not is both a tool for it. You learn different things about the models and even more about yourself. It's really great when you learn to use it right.