GAYLETTER

Is beauty only skin deep? In considering how our world of social media and dating apps pushes us to have a certain idea of beauty and desire, Paris-based photographer Jonathan Icher attempts to answer this question. His new series, Send Nudes depicts models with their organs on display. “Models with perfect figures pose naked and offer a new degree of intimacy. Their smooth and perfected organs are offered on display without reserve. Sometimes in excessive proportions, they try to provoke our envy.” Icher is responding to how easy it is to present yourself as perfect on social media with filters and editing. In planning this project, Jonathan posed the question, What’s the next step? How can we make our bodies even more perfect and attractive? “I imagined that the inside of the body, guts and organs, could be the new way to show our fake perfection in a new media. Organs are presented in this series, perfect, really clean and bright on the bodies.”

There’s a sexual element to Icher’s perfectly proportioned organs. In some photographs, organs like the heart, intestines, and lungs are excessively large and sit outside of the body. Like muscles, butts, and bulges, their large scale attracts sexual attention from the viewer. This was Jonathan’s first time using organs in his work, but he’s incorporated the human body and body modifications in previous projects. Jonathan loves to mix sexiness with weirdness. “Most of the time we are attracted to certain kinds of bodies (depending on what the fashion or porn industry is showing us) and I like to confront these kinds of bodies with something strange, or….not supposed to be attractive.”