“Nudes in Nature” Laura Aguilar | Phoenix Art Museum
Laura Aguilar, Untitled, from the series Grounded, 2006-2007 (printed 2018). Inkjet print. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016
Written by Makenna Karas
Photo edited by Max Amos-Flom
You don’t look at a forest and wish that you could change the shape of the trees. If anything, you marvel at their differences. A tree is a tree. Yet somehow, a body is never just a body. It’s a thing to be endlessly examined, reshaped, and held up to some unattainable ideal of perfection.
Laura Aguilar, Motion #46, 1999. Gelatin silver print. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016.
The late photographer Laura Aguilar recognized the unjust irony of this in her series “Nudes in Nature”, wherein she positioned large-bodied women in natural landscapes, highlighting the striking similarities between the human body and the earth, while challenging conventional standards of beauty. Running from December 16 through November 11, 2024, the collection will be on display at the Phoenix Art Museum.
Laura Aguilar, Center #100, 2000-2001. Gelatin silver print. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016.
Unlike stereotypical nude portraits, the women in these shots are not posing provocatively or even looking at the camera, but are flowing organically with the current of the landscape. In each pose there is neither confidence nor shame. Faces are notably mostly excluded, leaving out the desire to connect with the models as humans, and asking the viewer to instead consider them as natural aspects of the world. In #2, the body is positioned on its side, back to the camera, given permission to just exist. You cannot help but notice how the dips and curves of the human flesh bear resemblance to the beautifully irregular shapes of the boulders resting in the periphery. The question is asked, why would you ridicule one and not the other? Why are bodies not allowed the imperfection that we admire in the earth?
Laura Aguilar, Nature Self-Portrait #2, 1996. Gelatin silver print. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016.
The series also beckons an interrogation of sisterhood, that close bond that society corrodes by claiming certain bodies as more worthy of attention than others, pitting women against women. In #59, all different bodies are embraced in an entanglement that mirrors the branches just behind them. It dares the viewer to consider a world where we protect and hold all bodies with the organic grace that the branches extend. There’s also a notable act of rebellion against the upright, sucked-in, seductive stance that women are conventionally ushered into. These bodies are hunched over and at peace, completely apathetic to your gaze. The skin is allowed to bend and roll.
Laura Aguilar, Motion #59, 1999. Gelatin silver print. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016.
In these ways, the collection offers rebirth. It invites a revolution that turns attention away from the idea that we are, or have ever been, any less beautiful than the earth itself. #91 solicits your remembrance of that primal union by portraying a human emerging from a body of water in a manner that can be understood as birth. Naked and wet, the body is emerging from the womb of the world, asking the audience to always remember that the earth was their first mother, the body that coalesced their atoms and continues to nourish their needs.
Laura Aguilar, Center #91, 2000-2001. Gelatin silver print. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016.
In doing so, Aguilar pulls the viewer into a space that allows for a reorganization of thought. Much like when staring up into a sky full of stars, bodily existence begins to feel far more like a miracle than a thing to be constantly edited and critiqued.
Laura Aguilar, Stillness #37, 1999. Gelatin silver print. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016.
