Portraits - Century Project by Frank Cordelle (nude pageants)

Jesse, 14

"The reason I agreed to have my picture taken was I am tired of the stereotype that all nude pictures are dirty. When I saw some of the pictures it never occurred to me that the women were naked. I really liked the way the pictures were taken. They were very tasteful and respectful to their subjects.

In my session, I was very nervous. I’m not comfortable with my body and having it duplicated on film increased my self-consciousness. I was very tense and wanted to cover my body, but Frank encouraged me to show my body without flaunting it. I (was) put at ease and don’t think anyone could have handled it better. Thankx!"

Katie, 16

Katie and her Mother attended an exhibition of Century at UNH a few years ago. She left the following note:

�...This brought out a lot of emotions for me, who struggles every day to accept my body as a recovering anorexic.�

While certainly started on the path to recovery, she was in fact in denial/relapse at the time. Two years later, however, I received a lengthy, very personal letter from her in which she described where she had been, and what the pressures on her were. Her candor, plus the fact that her weight was finally in a normal range, lead me to believe that Katie is now OK. She added:

�Posing for you was one of the greatest experiences of my life, though I didn�t realize it at the time.�

Also included was the following poem:

Your airy grace onstage astounded me But! Your bone thin body impressed me more.
Never mind that you
	Chain smoked,
		Rarely ate,
			Purging what you did consume.
In my eyes you were beauty, lusted after Goddess.
Every night I dreamed of being you - and I took
all the steps to the Golden Palace of Skeletalness.
Caffeine was my best friend, diet pills my lovers
Death and I tangoed, salsaed, and walzed,
Him leading, I following.
Every new bone visible - my twisted trophies -
ribbons on a barn wall.
Pain and anguish - Familiar faces. Anything
	to be a
		Dancer.

Renee, 17

A year or so after I photographed her, Renee�stayed up until 3 AM one morning playing cards in a girlfriend's apartment. A guy they knew came in and started to show off a pistol he had just scored on the street. One of the women suggested he put it away before someone got hurt. It went off instead. Renee� was shot in the head and died instantly. She leaves an extended family, including a son who was about a year old at the time.

Paula, 20

Paula is a tad more than just another weekend “gym-rat.” At nineteen, she was the U.S. National Teenage Body-Building Champion. Is she proud of her body? Of course! She is equally proud of being completely drug-free - no steroids - just a lot of hard work.

Yet there is a price one must seemingly pay in order to compete at this level; in the weeks leading up to major competitions, losing all weight that isn’t muscle becomes a real priority. Paula’s diet at those times is hardly healthy: she is on the edge of being eating-disordered in spite of her magnificent physique.

Reema, 25

"...Being nude in front of others has always been difficult for me. It's a combination of feeling ashamed of my body, being totally vulnerable, and feeling humiliated that I'm opening myself up for exploitation. I wonder where those messages of shame and humiliation came from, so that even now, in my 25th year, I'm still uneasy with my nakedness. There always seems to be, for me, something bad, unclean, and sexual about nudity.

The picture I'm posing next to is a drawing I did this past summer. The woman in the drawing is very unhappy. Her body is dying and decaying but she is resigned to it. There is a feeling of peaceful acceptance. There's a sense of letting go of the fight. There is an opening up to the inevitable, for her, there can be no change without expression and acceptance of her feelings and situation. Posing with the picture was a way for me to confront this as well. For me there is no was of moving beyond my fears and pain other than confronting them and working through the emotions that arise; pushing myself to question, learn, and accept. I'm still uneasy about the pictures, however, I know it helped open a door for me and I'm still in the process of going through and exploring my new surroundings."

Reema was born
and raised as a
Muslim in Pakistan

Jody, 33

"It is with a great sense of joy that I have come to participate in this project among so many real and vibrant women.

Fat women are real women. We are the forgotten goddesses of softness and sensuality. I believe that fat women are uniquely nurturing and powerful. However, in a society obsessed with being thin, we goddesses have been cast
aside. It is for this reason that I have posed. I want to be a reminder to our culture that beauty exists in many forms. Some of the most beautiful forms are large, juicy, and cuddlesome.

I have never been anything but fat. I have learned to celebrate myself. I have given myself permission to acknowledge myself as beautiful, powerful, and dignified. I consider myself to be a role model for the modern fat woman.

I am an activist for the civil rights of large people. Posing in this project for me, was perhaps the most political of all statements I can make about fat people... especially fat women... we have a right not only to be, but to be seen and appreciated.

I am proud to be both an image and a statement. I am grateful to Frank Cordelle for his talent, compassion, and validation."

Linda, 33

Linda has been diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy; as of the time I photographed her nude, she was given five years to live. She is in all likelihood going to beat that sentence, however, and when she does, it will clearly be the result of her attitude toward life, toward people, and toward herself.

Several years later, I got the following email from Linda:

I am now 46 years old, living on a narrowboat in London, writing and illustrating books about working women of the nineteenth century.

Your photograph of me was a life-changing image& the first time I perceived my own body as something other than the painful dysfunctional
enemy. Through your lens, I saw myself as capable, fun, and sexy. The muscular dystrophy continues it's inexorable process of weakening me spindle by spindle, but I refuse to let my physical limitations prevent me from pursuing my dreams. I am exploring England by canal and reveling in life!

Thank you!

Linda.

Maye', 36

Yo soy artista.
I am a nude friends and relative artist.
I see the human body
as a marvelous creation of nature,
full of every variety
of curves and contours
that lie within the skin
covering muscles and ligaments and bones.
This is our vessel.
full of atoms of empty space,
It holds our essence, our spirit, our soul.
It contains my blood, my heart and my nerves.
I am the creator of three outstanding sons.
They are my masterpieces,
they grew in my body,
kicked around and wiggled,
found their way out to the light.
My body housed their vessels,
I am not ashamed of my body
Through it, I gave life
through it, I create.
It houses God energy, universal energy,
the christ, the light, the Buddha, the earth, the son, the manna of life,
Our bodies,
the infinite variety of human beings,
expressions of a creative universal power.
It flows through me,
to my sons,
to my artwork,
to my hands,
in my cooking,
and walking,
laughing and crying,
it flows through me in times of pain and anguish,
and It flows through you, too.
My vessel, skin like the earth, houses a fire like the fireplace that I stand next to.

Carol, 37

This was one of the most spiritually amazing photo sessions I have ever experienced. Carol is a professional singer, and spent an hour in the studio one afternoon singing lullabies to her unborn child.

It was mesmerizing. While I normally dislike supplying technical information with photographs, it is worth noting that this picture was made with an infra-red film which is somewhat heat-sensitive, and thus records the venation in which maternal energy courses throughout her body.

Jacqueline, 38

"Today I am wearing long and flowing purple without my false front and feeling stunning. What do I mean my false front? My prosthesis that mimics that diseased part of my body that was cut away years ago to save my life. My fake boob, my rubber tit, my concession to society's denial that women lose breasts every day. My bra goes along with the farce, holding my other breast high and firm like a sixteen-year old's that has never seen battle. Well, my breast is not high and firm, it hangs from my chest and rolls when I walk. It has nourished and nurtured dozens of children and it smiles at the memory of those lips that have rested there. Tiny rosebud lips and grown men's lips, all there for the same thing, nourishment and nurturing. There is a shooting-star shaped scar on my breast, a sickle, a half moon. There are crevices where the skin has stretched taut with passion and stretched full with milk. No, this is no sixteen-year old nubile breast, it is the breast of a warrior woman, proud and regal."

Christina, 44

"As you stand before this photograph looking at me, this woman in black and white facing her image in a mirror, I doubt that you can really see me.

Why? Because I’m an expert at hiding: I’ve been doing it for decades. On the outside, I’m a successful business woman, well-educated, well paid, in control - I have a perfect life.

But there’s another me on the inside: a woman with a twenty-year history of Bulimia. A woman with so much rage and self-hate inside that all the binge-ing and purge-ing on this earth cannot wash it away.

My life is a constant hour by hour, day by day struggle. Power and success in the boardroom countered by lonely late night eating binges. Purge-ing, kneeling in tears, trying to cleanse myself again and again. Desperate to be thin. Looking at myself in the mirror afterward, promising never to do it again. Hating myself even more because I knew I would. I couldn’t stop.

The day this photograph was made, I stood in front of another mirror: naked and alone, and for the first time in years, I had to SEE myself.

It was terrifying!

At first I was repulsed, I wanted to turn and run. All I saw was fat, undesirability, flaws and failure.

But the more I forced myself to look, the more I began to see her. She was reaching out to me and I was willing to let her.

Watch, see me moving toward her - see her arms opening wide, encircling me as if to say: 'Come, let me embrace you, only I can give you permission to be content with who you are - and WE are beautiful!'"

Kana, 52

"I had my nude picture taken yesterday. Frank behind the eye of the black machine, me standing there naked with all the lights on, a second radiation. This time the camera was taking zaps from my body, me, emitting rads, saying I am a lady with only one breast, a freak, dancing on the edge of your mind. See it’s gone, that breast, sliced off, cut up, and discarded… medical waste perhaps to float up onto the shores of New Jersey. I’m stitched up to keep the rest of my life inside. But scarred. No more breast. Gone. Down to the hard bony core. Put your hand on it. You can feel my heart beat, right there under your hand, pounding away, sending signals to the world: I am. Funny old, freaky old, scarred old me. I am. Burning my heart onto the film. Look at me. Listen to my life. A Woman. One of the hundred, shoulder to shoulder, soft arms touching, smooth skin with edges blurred, looking out at you.

Look at us."

By the time that I photographed Kana, she had already experienced a relapse and a second surgery; unfortunately her cancer would reoccur
yet a third time, and metastasize to other parts of her body. She passed away on 4/19/01. She was a great lady.

Lumina, 54

"When Frank showed me his portfolio of Century shots, I was very aware of the respect and caring for women which was so much a part of each photograph. I was struck by the feeling that, somehow, posing for him would be a healing and freeing experience for me. At this point in my life I no longer believe in coincidence and the feeling was strong that I was being offered an opportunity that I would regret turning my back on... this from a woman who has for years tried to avoid being photographed at all costs.

I walked into Frank's studio feeling almost completely divorced from my body. I'd come a long way in the past year toward making my peace with that attitude - self protective, in part, after a violent rape a little over a year ago that put me in the hospital for eight days, severely injured internally as well as emotionally. The
physical injuries healed and I dealt, in one way, with the emotional pain and confusion by cutting my "self" off from my body... I tried to believe that my body was somehow apart from "me" - my soul, spirit, inner self. Intellectually, of course, I knew this was ridiculous, but I chose to see my body through bruised emotions - not my mind's eye.

Another contributor to this detachment was the fact that I had had breast implants over 25 years ago. I had accepted my then husband's verdict that my breasts were no longer as firm and attractive as they had been when we were married. For all those years I had never come to terms with this, so, for me to stand naked facing the camera - no props, no poses - just me - was painful at first. A deep sadness, along with some anger, well up in me over what had been done, what I had allowed to be done to myself over the years and I wasn't able to hold back the tears. I found, though, that by the end of the session I was able to acknowledge to myself the hurts and disappointments I've suffered in the past, but no longer feel defeated or separated by them. I'm strong in the knowledge that these - while all a part of who I am today - will no longer hold power over me.

I feel as if I've walked through a wall which I never have to step back behind again - a joyous feeling and one for which I am truly grateful."

Isis, 60

Isis embodies a modern incarnation of what I imagine some pioneer women might have been like.

When I met her, she lived alone on a 100+ acre farm. She had a huge garden, lotsa chickens, turkeys, and guinea fowl, barnyard cats, and a few horses - both saddle-stock and a draft horse.

The farm was in a region which was downwind of one of the Great Lakes, and thus subject to what are called �lake-effect� snowstorms. After such a blizzard, Isis would simply hook up the big horse to a V-shaped plow she had bartered with a local Amish community, mush down to the highway a quarter mile away, turn around, put the horse back in the barn, hop in her four-wheel drive and she was off!

Joan, 69

"I was somewhat startled to see myself for the first time, because you never get to see yourself like this with the earth pulling your body. I feel like one of the trees when I do this posture outdoors; like I have roots and am very grounded and that my legs are the branches blowing in the wind. And there it was, expressed in the picture!"

About twenty years ago, Joan’s son drowned in a local river. Feeling as if her whole being was under assault, she took up yoga in an effort to pull herself together and find some meaning in chaos. She also got a college degree in Gerontology, directed an adult day care center, and has "retired" to the world of senior activism. Daily yoga and - most currently - Chi Gong gives her a sense of vitality and centering.

Florence, 70

Florence was one of the first older women I asked to model for me. She clearly wanted to, but, with a touch of vanity, decided she had to lose five pounds first. Every now and then I would run into her and she would laugh and announce that she was still working on it. I lost track of her for a while, and wound up photographing several other older women in the meantime.

Then one day I was waiting in the check-out line of a big market. All the registers were backed up with bored and impatient customers. I looked in back of me, and there was Florence, a few shoppers astern. I waved "hello."

Florence, who as you can tell from the picture, usually speaks with the volume cranked up, replied:

"I’m still trying to get it ready for you, Baby!"

Dozens of people jerked their heads around, looking first at her, then at me, and back again, seeking an explanation.

They never got it.

I photographed Florence a few days later, presumably including the aforementioned five pounds!.

Carol, 75

"Voila!! On the opposite page you see the pathetic, but slightly comical remnant of what was once my right breast. Thanks to a fine prosthesis and a pretty bra, nobody sees it naked like this. To me it looks like a couple of cartoon characters having an altercation. I didn't expect that...I imagined a flat, blank area of skin with maybe a line of scar across it.

I found the lump myself and from the moment of discovery to my return home from the surgery only three weeks passed...too rapidly for me to assimilate the implications and impact of cancer and mastectomy on myself and my family. I'm still not used to this weird scene on my front. I may live to be one hundred and still be surprised by my one-sidedness.

My surgeon forewarned me that I would be numb in my upper arm and right breast area for six months, and that I would experience twinges or discomfort...he didn't say "pain"...for six months after that. I think my emotional course followed the same schedule. Three months post-surgery I was still numb, but grateful that I made it through without more infection, more cancer, radiation or chemo. I take two Tamoxifen a day as a preventative and precaution.

The whole experience was less horrendous than I had always imagined. I'm still here."

Else, 87

Else passed on a little more than two years after I made this photograph. Though wonderfully sound of mind, she was by now trapped in a very painful body. Her politics and philosophy were never particularly conservative; she believed strongly, for example, in euthanasia, and ultimately chose that option for herself.

Her full name was Else Maria Rosetta Charlotta Outzen Cordelle.

She was my mother.

Mary, 94

"Life at it’s fullest at 94. A little Halloween Birthday Party DVD always. I love men and adore the Naturist clubs that have rejuvenated me.

I posed nude so some old lady will not fear age and some old men would know old women are not so strange. I loved the challenge of posing
nude, such excitement!

My husband would have said:

'Some picture, kid!'”

A Message from the photographer:

I hope that you have enjoyed and perhaps been helped in some way by the preceding sequence of pictures and statements (which represent but a fraction of the total to date).

I�ve been working on this project for approximately twenty years now and, while close to being finished, am not quite there.

To be honest, I never envisioned that Century would take over my life to the extent that it has. For example, I recently sold my home in New Hampshire where I had lived for thirty years, said good-bye to family and friends and moved to the Bay Area in California where I now live with an old friend. Why? A deeply felt commitment to make Century as racially inclusive as possible.

Century is meant to represent all women, but unfortunately for me, New Hampshire is 99% Caucasian. Trying to solve that problem by traveling when I could afford it ultimately had the effect of putting myself out of business as a commercial photographer back East, because when on the road, I wasn�t available to clients at home.

There are certainly a lot of risks associated with this move, but it was one I felt I had to make in order to complete Century on the level demanded by the grassroots, emotional response it consistently generates on a national basis.

That said, I need some help. While part of the completion process, i.e. meeting people as subjects, finding a publisher, etc., is a matter of contacts and networking, the nuts and bolts part ultimately comes down to dollars and cents. While I don�t want to charge people to visit the Century website, nevertheless, if everyone who came here gave so much as a dime on average, budgetary concerns - to say nothing of financial survival - wouldn�t be such pressing issues.

If you can contribute at all, it would be greatly appreciated.

Small donations, large donations, they all help.

Thank you very much,

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