I recently received a message from a visitor of Graceful Nudes that required some explanation on my behalf of the philosophy of Graceful Nudes. It was a very enlightening message as it allowed me to analyze my fascination of beauty. I also realized that I haven't(or do not remember that I have) explained how nudes can be moral and how it can affect your life.
First, I need to say that photography in all its glamour and beauty is somewhat a poor medium. It is able to eternalize a single moment and to capture fine details that our busy minds ignore, but it has an inherent weakness, it cannot fully capture the personality of the model. You can see charisma, you can see attitude, and you can see beauty, but you cannot see beliefs or converse with the model. A picture is a mere collection of pixels with different color values.
Second, the world is not perfect. The motives of the models and the photographers range from purely selfish to altruistic. Therefore, I cannot claim that every model is an angel or that every photographer is a messiah.
You have probably pondered the thought of exploitation and how "the models are represented as bodies when they are in the nude", whether it's right or wrong to view those images and whether you are respecting the person or doing someone injustice through inspecting and experiencing the beauty in the images.
Does this mean that Graceful Nudes and Super Nudes are just an attempt to give you what you want to hear?
Of course not.
Why?
None of us has ever met the woman depicted in La Joconde, have never met Artemis or Aphrodite. Yet, we are fascinated by their characters. We can claim that we have met them, felt their personality, and that they are the most beautiful females that have ever roamed the Earth(or mount Olympus).
Our minds create that fascination.
Some Graceful Nudes are more than pixels, my mind connects those pixels together and creates a live image of the model, a beautiful canvas from another dimension, a temporary utopia. She becomes the most beautiful and ethical woman in the world, the true essence of perfection that somehow appeared on earth and was enigmatically captured by an obscure but a very lucky man. I let the perfect lady in the picture guide me towards the light and perfection, through the darkness, and through bad times. It did change several aspects of my life and I am glad about it.
A pile of rocks is nothing but a pile of rocks, but arrange those rocks properly and you can build a Rome.
Your mind is the engineer that puts those pieces together. However, many fail to see what those nudes have to offer due to some preconceptions that probably are implanted in their minds by pornography. Like a virus, those malicious ideas infest the inspiration and one's ability to see beyond the colors, the curves, and the bodies.
I tend not to be cynical about the models and the photographers, whatever their intentions may be. I just trust them until they betray that trust, I have never met Stefan Soell or Helena. Judging them will be extremely unfair.
Saying that tasteful nudes exploit models is like saying that we should never visit the Louvre, or that we should burn Botticelli's or Bouguereau's works. We acknowledge the fact that the model is a human being, and breathe a spirit into what she represents in a picture. It's like how you can be fascinated with the role of an actress in a movie, and falling in love with the character. This doesn't mean that you love the actress or that you negate her existence in real life. You just admit that you do not know her, you know the role she did, and it is that character that you love. Ignorance can sometimes be a bliss. You will be living a delusion if you love the person behind the character.
It's a melange of imagination, beauty, freedom, and all the beautiful meanings in the world; It is a representation of human compassion, feelings, and love, but we just need to listen, to put our hatred aside, and to become what we always wanted to be.
This gallery was in my queue, but a very respectful visitor of this website has convinced me to feature it now.
If you are a regular visitor of Graceful Nudes or any other website offering tasteful nudes then you probably are familiar with Stefan Soell, the photographer who is well-known for his ethereal works and beautiful photographs. It's his settings and the fantasy world that he creates that make him truly stand apart from all of the other photographers.
Famous for sets with very few and handpicked images he sure cares more about beauty than anything else; very few sets of his deviate from his high standards. This gallery is a perfect example of what a man who is searching for beauty can achieve.
Shooting a model next to a waterfall is an old theme, he has done it before with Corinna(it was a blue waterfall), but if you compare any other set of his with this one you will find that they are very different(except maybe for Nebelwald, but this one was shot in a cloud forest, and had more green). My favorite picture in this gallery would be the 7th one(counting the cover), in which Lia is looking up to something with shimmering lucid blue eyes, it's as if she's found enlightenment or had a revelation about how to ease the pain in this world; my guess is that it was how she is indeed helping change the world by not loathing her beauty.
It's easy to connect the dots, draw some lines, and then to see those images come to life. It takes a very skillful photographer to produce an image that is that awe-inspiring.
But then I remember that this is a Stefan Soell work, with fantastic beauty.
Keep imagining!
In real life I often admire a person who has principles and who's doing everything for a reason. In my opinion doing anything without having a good reason is like being a toothed wheel in a clock, you are there and are doing a good job but have no idea why you're there and don't care about it. It's those idealists who have principles that I admire the most, because those are the ones that are changing the world.
A website has a character, I treat every website the same way I treat a person. In real life you can find a greedy person without morals, someone who's working just to get money but managed to maintain some morals and values, and that who's working to make the world a better place. To me, FEMJOY is like that second person(money + some morals), and I have some good reasons that have led me to that conclusion.
They offer a smorgasbord of content, varying from the very erotic(I am not using this adjective in a good light) to the highly artistic and retouched sets. This is a good thing, but I don't see any text anywhere that says why they have such a variety of content. Most of the text describes the girls in a way that I will never use to describe them. I honestly don't care whether you, my dear visitor, prefer a certain "body type" or a certain look of a woman, why should I?
In my opinion the text must describe the true model's personality or the editor's feelings, not a fake biography or how her body is perfect(nobody's perfect and no body is perfect). I want to hear how a certain set inspires the editor or how it is different from the other sets that are out there. A set that doesn't add to a website subtracts from it, as those sets act as rust, they spoil the appearance of the sets surrounding them at first, and then completely destroy the look of a page.
But then two updates per day is a high rate of production and you need to feature those quick erotica sets in order to satisfy your users and to meet your deadlines. Whenever I see a website with a high rate of updates I almost always think that the true motive behind the creation of that website is monetary gain. Every true artist in history has a limited capacity of production, and inspiration comes randomly. Therefore, you can't expect a steady rate of updates because you can't predict an artist's ability to produce a masterpiece.
This great collection also leads me to think that they are trying to satisfy the taste of all of their visitors, it isn't a bad thing, but it also reaffirms my belief that it's all about the money.
I am not trying to judge them, they have wonderful photo sets there(and I will keep promoting them as long as they are ethically treating their models), but I always prefer that person who has a vision, whose beliefs are everywhere and who inspires those around her. Most of their videos are absolutely beautiful(they had an unstable update rate, but now that a video is added periodically I can guess that their quality is going to deteriorate). I may be biased because I am comparing every single website to a my favorite website(Body In Mind), but I still think that they will have much more to offer if they state their philosophy(if it's not related to using beauty to make money) openly. It will make each and every visit worthwhile.
However, when I put all of this aside. I realize that their sets are still able to inspire me, let's take this Jadi set for example, it's name the tree of knowledge means a lot. It can mean that beauty is the source of all inspiration and wonder, and that's not just feminine beauty. Beauty is the ultimate teacher of the world. The set is beautiful, Demian Rossi is highly skilled, and Jadi is beautiful(I am really wondering whether she has an eating disorder or not, beauty doesn't mean being as thin as a coat hanger). It's worthy to watch this beautiful set, but it is still missing the secret ingredient of beauty, a belief.
Embrace Beauty!
Raging thunder, black skies, dead sun, an endless black sea of ashes on the horizon, and a complete destruction. There's no hope, no living thing. Everything has died as a result of human greed.
As it seems that this is the end, beauty resurrects itself. It's a new dawn, and the time for life to be reborn in the hostile world.
Beauty will never die.
An umbrella, a shelter from the rain, from chaos, and from the world. One tends to think that the best thing about an umbrella is that it helps its holder in creating an isolated sphere where natural laws can be changed and manipulated. An umbrella may be a room, a closed door, or anything that gives a sense of protection. However, it always helps its holder have more control on their world.
One of the many fascinating things about umbrellas is their offering of more freedom. Freedom is one of the first attributes of nudity that one admires. This is why this gallery is all about freedom. One may wish that it was shot in an outdoor location, there the meaning of having an umbrella will be very obvious, but this studio photo session still offers a lot for a creative mind.
The gallery starts with Susann holding an umbrella and then it changes to show her putting it to her side. That is a symbol of bravery: she dares to face the chaotic world and to take control of it. Again, bravery is one of the many things that make a woman beautiful.
That's why Susann is beautiful.
The world will be a better place if one starts listening to what beauty has to say. Once one gets rid of the sexual mindset, they will learn a lot from beauty.
Listen!
Eternal beauty, that's what nude photography is all about. Showing how beauty can always survive hatred, wars, blood-shed, senseless dogmas, lies, and massacres. It's the essence of everything, the blessing that no one can rob you of. They may try calling those wonderful models name and falsely claiming that their courage is the source of misery in this world to serve their own purposes, but they can never kill beauty or its appreciation in anyone of us.
Why?, just open this gallery in a new tab and click on any image. It will tell you all the things that I can't describe, it will give you the key to happiness and tell you the secrets of life. It will teach all the things that no educational system being employed in any country can teach. I by no means have the ability to teach you what a single image of those can, not even in a century.
Never be too afraid to learn!
We often search for miracles in the wrong places; looking for them in the sky or in trivial everyday coincidences, but we rarely inspect the beauty around us to learn that this beauty is the best miracle of all, not that it's rare, but that it's a true gift of nature, not to its bearer only, but to those surrounding him/her.
Looking at this amazing gallery of Corinna you can't help but notice her beauty and charisma that permeate every image. She has got what it takes to be a beautiful woman: self-confidence, a radiant smile, and the willingness to share that smile with the rest of the world, that's true divinity.
No matter what happens, we should always be glad to have women who are as beautiful as Corinna in this world.
I hope that you will enjoy this gallery by Stefan Soell.
FEMJOY shines from time to time with amazing gems. They are dealing with a lot of photographers and most of them are very talented, this means that they will have some beautiful galleries once in a while.
FEMJOY may be serving its own form of nudes, they do have some erotica but they do have some beautiful nudes as well, and that deserves some respect.
This gallery is one of those beautiful gems that I have mentioned earlier, I couldn't let it go unnoticed. I hope that you will like it.
It's ironical how some human beings still bash those females who take the opportunity to express themselves and to share their beauty with the world. What is so threatening about a beautiful naked female?
There are a lot of answers to that, one of them is that they use nudity to explain their inadequacies, if something is wrong then blame it on the nude women and their sexuality. Some even go as far as to sat that every problem any society has is the direct result of the nudity of their women.
It's the same seductress theme. They will be very glad to watch some pictures of nude women Online, but if they discover that their girlfriends or wives have done the same then they will turn their lives to hell, if it's a coworker then they will make sure to report her to her superior to rid their firm of "her evil". What will her showing her beauty to the world affect her efficiency?, why do they have to intrude into the personal lives of their female employees?
They simply demonize them, it's as if a woman's beauty is a curse; indeed, some of them treat it as being so, treating beautiful females cautiously as if they are some explosives on the verge of exploding. If any woman starts to show any sign of her appreciation of her beauty then she will be miraculously metamorphosed from an angel to an ogress who's about to destroy the world with her club.
This kind of treatment is a form of discrimination and is very unfair, there's no sense in penalizing a woman for just being a woman, the double X's in their chromosomes aren't at all a reason to attack a woman or slander her. Beauty shouldn't be a stigma, it should be something that's celebrated as one of the heritages of humanity, not to be chased away by the hypocrisy of some misguided members of our societies. Maintain an open mind and criticize any claims that are made about the nudity of women, nudity isn't something that will bring destruction to our world, it's just an enemy that was created to serve as a scapegoat and as a source of distraction from the realities of life, respect the models and their bravery, receiving a heroine with a noose being placed around her neck shouldn't be how she is treated.
I recently have been updating Graceful Nudes less frequently, this is not due to some laziness on my behalf, it's that there aren't enough galleries out there that reflect the philosophy of Graceful Nudes. You can always subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified of new updates (check the icon in the address bar of Firefox, Opera, and IE7).
Also, You may have noticed that there have been some problems with Graceful Nudes recently, those were due to my hosting provider upgrading their infrastructure. Please try to report any difficulties that you may have with the website to me via the contact form, Thank you!
The more galleries I see, the more I appreciate the outstanding works of Stefan Soell. Indeed, if it wasn't for him FEMJOY wouldn't be what it is today. I don't intend to mean that the other photographers whose works are featured at FEMJOY don't have his talent, but most of them simply don't pay as much attention to their locations and their works as Stefan Soell does.
This gallery of Sylvie, one of his works, simply shows how he can beautifully capture the beauty of his models in the exotic locations at which he shoots those amazing galleries. The colors, the smoothness, the tranquility just make his galleries not just beautiful but artistic as well.
His models simply adorn the pages of FEMJOY with their majestic presence and elegance. They are featured in the most beautiful and inspiring videos on FEMJOY, take for example Corinna in Touching the Sun, one of the most inspiring videos that I have ever seen(it stands next to Body In Mind's "Amazon" featuring Nikkala Stott). If it wasn't for Stefan Soell, we probably would never have had the chance to see her heavenly beauty captured on video.
Apart from his models, locations, and photography know-how, you can still appreciate his deliberate image choice process. His galleries often contain few images, but those few images are often more inspiring than the galleries that can be found on most of the other websites.
Back to this gallery. I chose to feature this gallery because of it's beauty and the sense of tranquility that permeate it. The pristine nature simply embraces Sylvie's body as she lies there on nature's green carpet in peace. It's not just appealing to the eyes, it has the ability of improving one's mood and engraving a picture of beauty that will last for a long time.
I just find it very hard to imagine FEMJOY without Stefan Soell, or even imagine being deprived from such beauty.
Anyway, I hope that you will enjoy this Sylvie FEMJOY gallery by Stefan Soell.
Copyright © 2007 GracefulNudes.com.
