The Full Monty for real!
Britain Sheds Inhibitions And Clothes
LONDON (Reuters) - Bashful Britain is shedding its inhibitions and Londoners
are stripping naked to prove it.
Be it the 69-year-old accountant wearing only a beard or the serene publicity
manager with a tantalizing tattoo, Londoners are revealing all in a new book
that seeks to end Britain's reputation as a nation of fuddy-duddies.
There are bent penises, misshapen breasts and pregnant bellies. Wizened
men and fat ladies mix with gorgeous girls and women of a certain age and
clear charm. Bodies deformed by birth, cancer and genes mix with figures fit
for Playboy.
A cook stands proud, a knowing smirk about his lips.
A drag queen downs wig, drops his frock and smiles.
The buttoned-up banker is a model of naked joy, a naughty nurse steps out of
a starched uniform and a prim air stewardess blossoms when finally released
from her dour outfit.
``'Londoners would never pose in the nude for a book,' everybody told me
when I went to London,'' said Greg Friedler, an American photographer who
captured London's underbelly on film. ``I heard the same thing over and over:
'The British are repressed and introverted people.'''
But not so repressed they can't show their scars, their wounds, their bulges
and their tiny shriveled bits in public.
NO TRICKS, NO TITILLATION JUST NAKED FLESH
``Naked London'' portrays people from all ages and walks of life as they
transmute from respectable city dwellers into naked beings. Using a Mamiya
7 camera, a 65 mm lens, some strobes and a few white panels, Friedler has
produced simple black and white portraits of real people at their most real.
There's a man and his shaggy dog, a make-up artist and her sausage-eating
son he keeps his clothes on -- and a research scientist cradling crutches.
Friedler found a publisher with a smile to die for, a shaven porn artist in love
with the lens and a recruitment consultant bulging with manhood.
All are captioned just by age and profession, but are bound together by their
city and their nakedness.
``Photographing someone nude is linked more to sexual gratification,
eroticism or our conventions of beauty,'' said Friedler, whose portraits can be
seen online at www.nakedlondon.co.uk. ``My concern is not to represent the
way people want to look, but to record the way they DO look.''
He has created a touching picture.
There are no tricks and there is no titillation these are the flesh-and-blood,
imperfect forms we all see in the mirror.
``The most exciting thing about the book is not the tattoos nor the piercings
but the overwhelming number of everyday people, normal people, not
exhibitionists nor freaks,'' said Friedler, who has already portrayed naked New
Yorkers and captured Los Angeles without its clothes on.
NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE BRITISH
But why would buttoned-up Britons agree to do it?
``I can strike a blow for women of my age,'' said a 53-year-old customer
services manager featured in the book, which is due out in April. ``Even if you
have a funny shape or you have scars or whatever, it doesn't matter because
that's just the shell. It's what's inside that counts.''
The full-breasted nanny says she is shocked by the size of her chest yet the
gardening mother is sanguine about her sags.
``From here on, everything is going south and is rippling. I have spent most of
my life doing things for other people and pleasing other people and I am doing
this for me. There is a little part of me that wants to be a little mad,'' she said.
For some, it is a sort of coming out. For others, a secret.
``My wife would kill me if she saw this, she doesn't know I'm doing this. We
have a different background and different cultural upbringings,'' said a
computer software manager who dropped his suit and his guard for the lens.
Friedler saw it as a chance for him to get to know London and for Londoners
to get to know themselves.
``When I thought of London and the British, for the most part I thought of
Princess Di, punk rockers, royalty, tradition, fish and chips, an odd sense of
humor and brilliant musicians.
``The British are certainly not as open about their bodies as the Swedes or
other Europeans. But then neither are we Americans, by a long shot,'' he
said. ``Surely for many Londoners, the act of posing was a step toward
shedding their shell.''